Re: virus: Martyrdom

David Leeper (dleeper@gte.net)
Mon, 27 Aug 1956 21:00:18 +0000


Martz,

: 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

Perhaps. This seems difficult to verify.

: (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).

Don't know.

-- 
David Leeper         dleeper@gte.net
Homo Deus            http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/index.htm
1 + 1 != 2           http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/CMath.html