Memes

 I should probably research its origins, but I learned of memes from the Galactic Center science fiction series. Consider the meme that it is self evident how emergent properties of individuals affect the emergent properties of their collectives. This underpins the long history of socialism failing. They take as received wisdom that collectives are good, and explain their failures by denying that any bad collectives are not collectives at all. The absurdity of their axiom that individual greed explains corporate irresponsibility opens them up to stress created by the neoliberal hypothesis that greed is good. In fact, greed does not matter. All that matters is which companies do more harm than good. The reason the considered meme is so persistent is because it helps out so many other memes. By blaming the individual, corporations create stress that prevents individuals from thinking straight. The primary advantage of the scientific method meme is not finding the truth; the primary benefit is reducing stress. Reduced stress is not only directly an example of the goal of society, taking care of individuals; it is also a way to allow individuals to think of ways society can take care of them. During my embarrassing divorce, my lawyer kept saying “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” That went over my head, because I was stressed, and it increased my stress because I think it would be good for beggars to ride. Now, I’ve converted the beggars riding meme into “if wishes were beta, dirtbags would send.” That makes more sense to me, because dirtbags do indeed send; dirtbags are vagrant rock climbers, sending is completing a climb, and beta is how to climb. Anyway, we could replace bad positive feedback to stress caused by and benefiting oil companies. Replace it with good positive feedback from fewer oil companies leading to less stress leading to more ideas. We can’t lead with individuals consuming less because that would increase stress, and individual stress is already maxed out.