Me:
> > In what sense are you using the word power here David? I put it to
> > you that any meme which causes the death of its hosts yet still
> > manages to replicate has a certain power not commonly found.
David Leeper:
> IMHO, the martyrdom meme is not what's causing deaths
> in the examples we've been talking about on this thread.
Point taken. To rephrase: for "causes" read "facilitates" or
"encourages". There is no doubt in my mind that without the martyrdom
meme a (para)military organisation would not attract the same quantity
or quality of support. Yes, without the underlying difficulties these
people face the struggle would never have begun but, once started, the
'glory of dying for the cause' will spur into action some individuals
who might otherwise have remained submissive. So the martyrdom meme
doesn't directly *cause* deaths, what it does is to suppress the
self-preservation meme/instinct (BTW, is there a term for the grey
area between memes and genes? i.e. where a tendency is partly due to
the nature of the human beast and partly due to their memetic makeup).
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-- Martz <m.traynor@ic.ac.uk> For my PGP key, email me with 'Send public key' as subject an automated reply will followGot to make way for the homo superior. David Bowie.