> >Truth is NOT one of the strong selectors for memes.
>
> But it certainly helps if it meme *seems* true in relation to whatever
> memes are swimming around in one's head (usually ones gleaned from one's
> culture). Certainly the "The sky is made of purple jello" meme hasn't done
> very well...
Of all the things I read in Nietzsche's "The Anti-Christ", this was the
one I was most impressed with:
"Christianity has a number of subtleties in its foundations which belong
to the Orient. Above all, it knows that it is in itself a matter of
absolute indifference whether a thing be true, but a matter of the
highest importance /to what extent/ it is believed to be true. Truth
and /belief/ that something is true: two completely diverse worlds of
interest, almost /antithetical/ worlds -- one gets to them by
fundamentally different roads."
(#23, emphasis as in original)
And to think, he *died* almost 100 years before memetics arrived on the
scene.
ERiC