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> On 23 Oct 96 at 0:58, David Leeper wrote:
>
> > 1] Martyrdom is usually thrust upon someone. If you want to die, it's no big deal when your
> > killed, we all saw it coming. But when someone (like, say, Jesus) whos memes have little to do
> > with death its martyred, it has a powerful effect.
> >
> > 2] People who willingly sacrifice themselves, like those at Jonestown, do not usually do it as a
> > sense of martyrdom and they do not usually make great changes to other peoples memes.
>
> The IRA are a prime example of how powerful the martyrdom meme is.
> With their catholic roots, dying for the cause is a familiar concept
> to them and their leaders (wittingly or not) have propogated this by
> ensuring that their fallen troops are remembered as heroes. I would
> also think that this applies to all armies to some extent; it's one
> way of getting someone to place themselves in a foolishly dangerous
> position on command.
There are other ways. Although I doubt anyone actually reasons this out,
it's easy to choose between a plausibility of death 1-epsilon and
plausiblity of death 1. [epsilon: A ridiculously small positive number.
Name a positive number, then force epsilon smaller than IT.] The real
question is "how does someone end up in an army in the first place?"
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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