The "Genes of Culture" In Civilization

Van Gogh: "Ward of Arles Hospital"

I. The Evolution of Culture

How is the evolution of culture different from the evolution of individuals?

We don't miss a beat or a step when the notion of individual people having genes is discussed.

But that is not so when it comes to the "genetic make-up" of a culture.

The reaction to that would be "how could a society, culture, or civilization have genes" except within individuals of that culture?

That is a fair question.

We are not talking about adding up the unique, physical genes of all the individuals to thereby derive the overall quantity of "genes of a culture."

No, as will be discussed below, we are talking somewhat more about epigenetics, as well as memes and memetics than we are talking about physical RNA / DNA.

That said, neither are we talking exclusively about memes and memetics, because group dynamics are often talked about in terms of culture and observable characteristics swirling within that culture (see e.g. Comparing a Meme Complex to a Cultural Amygdala, Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala).

II. Where Do We Observe It?

A reviewer noticed that sometimes it can be a bridge too far to try to equate or link individual genetic dynamics to the dynamics of a group/culture:

But for the same reason that the book has a near-flawless takeoff, it crashes in the end. The way that Trivers structures the text requires that he zero in on a concrete example within each chapter’s more general subject. For biological concepts, this strategy makes the reading highly accessible.

But it backfires when Trivers uses it to apply his theory of self-deception in the areas of war, religion, and false historical narratives. These subjects are too broad, and his links to self-deception too tenuous, to be compelling. By having such specificity, Trivers pigeonholes his arguments and greatly simplifies issues that are not as black-and-white as he claims.

(Review of Folly of Fools, by Robert Trivers). It is difficult to build a bridge across that gap between individual, physical genetics and some of the troubling behaviors of groups.

That is why there are other "takes" on that same book and its theme: (Academia Edu, Deceit by Trivers, Deception, Is Trivers Deceiving Himself?, Trivers Wikipedia, Trivers von Hippel, evolution of self-deception).

One thing is for sure though, when self-deceit becomes a part of culture, it goes all the way to the bone:

The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists.

The report is the first to examine the association’s role in the interrogation program. It contends, using newly disclosed emails, that the group’s actions to keep psychologists involved in the interrogation program coincided closely with efforts by senior Bush administration officials to salvage the program after the public disclosure in 2004 of graphic photos of prisoner abuse by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

(American Psychological Association Ok With Torture). It is a bit disconcerting when the groups responsible for watching for, identifying, and then treating a social malady are overcome by that very social malady (Minds in Tumult, Presidential Psycho Team).

One of the dangers of the type of hypothesis that seeks to find and analyze the maladjusted behavioral dynamics inside the culture of a particular group, is a type of group-think influenced by the notion of "collective guilt" (The Psychology of the Notion of Collective Guilt).

Individuals can be slandered by it even though they are not individually guilty of the wrongs of the group itself (e.g. "all Islamic believers are evil therefore it is ok to torture or mistreat any of them").

It is important to remember that groups are composed of individuals who can and do differ, and therefore must also be considered in that light, i.e., as individuals as well being considered as group members.

Individuals in a group could metaphorically be considered as the individual genes of the group, which we know do have different characteristics.

It is clear, then, that as a preliminary matter we ought not paint everyone with the same group-brush merely because they are members of a group.

This is especially so when we now know the importance of epigenetics (One Man's Junk Gene Is Another Man's Treasure Gene?, The Uncertain Gene - 11, On The Origin of Genieology).

III. Where Does The "Cultural Deceit-Gene" Originate?

The phenomenon of deceit also happens way, way down in the unseen, tiny realm of individuals in groups which, for the most part, help us at every level of the ecosystem on Earth.

I am talking about a veritable universe of microbes and viruses: "there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe"  (The Real Dangers With Microbes & Viruses).

At a higher level than RNA and DNA, individual microbes or even groups of them can go crazy to become pathogens.

But, they can also return to sanity (Microbial Languages: Rehabilitation of the Unseen, 2).

Perhaps, by sophisticated honesty via communication they can even be separated from the misbehavior which uses deceit as a technique of survival (On The Origin of Propaganda, 2).

IV. The Toxins of Power Are Hidden

Scientists differ on the dynamics of deceit, and whether deceit is a good thing or a bad thing for society, because for one thing the origins of deceit are hidden.

Some of the hidden details may be because the origin of maladjusted viruses and microbes is part of the history that was made well before humans came to be (Are Microbes The Origin of PTSD?).

In other words, are the catastrophes of history, which cause mass extinctions or mass damage to biological organisms, a source of pathogenic behavior (What Did The Mass Extinctions Do To Viruses and Microbes?)?

V. Conclusion

We need to resist allowing either our education or our knowledge to degenerate into a cultural trance which can morph into mob psychology.

A mob psychology that can threaten our very civilization (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2).

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The following video is a brief discussion of collective guilt by association:

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Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power - 3

by Leonhard Kern

In this series we have been discussing the source, or the origin, of the toxins of power.

If such toxins do in fact exist, where do they originate, how then do they make their way into the thinking, whether conscious or subconscious, of a person in power, and how do they then affect the thinking of that person in power?

We began this current series at the level of microbes, specifically human - microbe symbiosis (microbes within humans).

Then we zeroed in on phages and prions, to get a bit closer, because microbes are much larger than those viruses that impact them.

So we looked closer and deeper, down all the way to prions and phages in the Toxins of Power Blog post Are Toxins of Power Machines or Organisms?

Those prions and phages may be tinier than microbes, but still they pack quite a punch.

In the case of prions, they can and do cause major damage; for example they cause what we call "mad cow disease".

It would be tempting to stop there to remark that "mad cow disease" and dysfunctional politicians in power are very similar, so prions must be the source of toxins of power.

Yet, we can dispense with that populism and focus on actual data, because we have an example to work with, an example of a specific dementia in humans caused by prions.

That human dementia is called "kuru":

Kuru is an extremely rare form of dementia ... like ... mad cow disease ... [it] was the first transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (prion disease) discovered in humans ... involved eating the brain of the dead to show respect in mourning.

(Health Central, Kuru). We can conclude (since prions cause that dementia, and since those prions get into a person by that person's eating of the brain of their human ancestor) as follows:

1) prions are inside human brains,

2) prions survive some adverse conditions (cooking),

3) prions survive the human digestive system (acids),

4) prions somehow become reactivated thereafter,

5) prions morph then affect the new host human brain,

6) in a seriously damaging way,

7) causing a specific dementia.

The first question that came to my mind was "why didn't those prions cause dementia in the ancestor" before the ancestor died, and a descendant ate the brain?

That question was answered by further review of the research into kuru:

A common coding polymorphism at codon 129 of the prion protein gene (PRNP), where either methionine (M) or valine (V) may be encoded, is a strong susceptibility factor for human prion diseases.

(New England Journal of Medicine, emphasis added). The answer, then, is that the prions must go through a morph, a change, that is, polymorphism, before they induce dementia.

Thus, let's modify the hypothesis of this series, at least for this post, to say that "Prions Generate Toxins of Power", and use the dynamics of kuru dementia to lay the foundation.

We see by the kuru example that the morph can take place with physical ingestion.

We have seen with other examples, prior to this series, when we looked at the morph of memes taking place within the brain, that memetic morph can take place without physical ingestion (see A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes - 3).

For example, if we say that Stockholm Syndrome is a form of dementia, then we know that some dementia can be caused without alien prion incursion into the brain.

That is, a person can contract Stockholm Syndrome without external, physical influence in the form of ingesting foreign prions, because that syndrome manifests internally by way of psychological shock to human cognition.

Let's conclude by considering the hypothesis that the influence of power causes some prions to go through polymorphism, which negatively impacts the human cells or symbiont microbes that those prions thereafter invade, causing a domino effect beginning with brain cells or microbe symbionts, which thereafter affects the thinking of the person in power.

This is not a stretch, because even as we blog, damage to prions, phages, or microbes themselves is resulting in a change in behavior to certain fungi microbes that are, as a result, destroying amphibians worldwide:

The crisis of global amphibian extinctions is profound, it is changing ecological systems in ways that we barely understand, and it is teaching us painful lessons about research and conservation. Amid all of the horrible environmental insults we inflict upon the planet’s biodiversity, Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog did not disappear in the wild because of overharvest for food, pets, or science, and we cannot lay the blame on familiar threats such as deforestation, climate change or environmental pollution. The culprit was emerging infectious disease. Amphibian chytridiomycosis is capable of directly eradicating otherwise large and stable populations and directly causing extinction of species that are otherwise unthreatened.

Amphibian chytridiomycosis is a disease caused by the recently discovered chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.

(Lessons of The Lost, emphasis added). Amphibians have co-existed with fungi microbes for millions of years, so this all-of-a-sudden change in those microbes has very recent polymorphism of a bad sort as its source or origin.

If this were to happen to a symbiont microbe species in humans, then we could expect an adverse impact on human cognition.

If a future post we will look at ways that could take place, using the Lakoff model.

That model includes the embodied thinking metaphor, which ties nicely into the recent microbiology discoveries that some microbes within us are symbiont to us.

Noting the power microbes have to do significant chemistry, and impose on the "constantly changing brain", we can easily develop this part of the hypothesis into a working dynamic model.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

These Are Not The Droids You Are Looking For

We all remember the Star Wars series.

Most will probably remember the episode where the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi did a "Jedi mind trick", using the words "these are not the droids you are looking for" when he was helping the Rebels (YouTube).

That popular sci-fi movie illustrated the hypothesis that memes in memory can be changed.

As this blog has illustrated with science fact, not fiction, there is a growing change in direction, within scientific circles, a change in direction that is heading toward the conclusion that toxins of power can corrupt the pattern of memes even while they are in memory.

The following video has a similar theme, i.e., that the government has done a mind trick on vast numbers of people by using the MOMCOM media to spread propaganda.

The individual being interviewed in the video below is an explosives expert (the attached videos after the first are not recommended).

Specifically he is an expert who has experience working for the famous Controlled Demolition, Inc., a company that does controlled demolition of large structures:

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Here is a video of a Nebraska nuclear power plant in trouble due to flooding, a situation that was originally guarded to keep most people unaware:

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The powers that be shut down that video, so here is another one:

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Propaganda is a function caused by the toxins of power. The "toxins of power" is a theory of our forefathers who felt that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

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They blocked out the videos above, so here are some more:

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A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes - 3

In a couple of posts within a couple of series here on Toxins of Power Blog, such as A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes and Phase One & Two: Toxin v Meme, we advanced the hypothetical notion that memes in memory can be morphed.

That is, they can change into a different structure, a variant meme, while still in memory, a notion that is resisted by some scientists.

In those posts we specifically advanced the notion that the toxins of power alone could trigger such a morph.

Then in the post The Toxic Bridge To Everywhere, we added another specific mechanism whereby the toxins of power could trigger such a morph by working within an already existing structure in the subconscious Amygdala.

A new study supports such a notion, and like this series, challenges an existing theory:

The team's study challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain.

(Science Daily). The study shows how certain drugs can cause memory morphs by unlinking certain threads of memory.

But at another level, in another context, the realm of marketing, certain researchers in that discipline are quite bold to declare that memory in the brain can be morphed:

A group of US marketing researchers claim that brand owners can make their customers believe they had a better experience of a product or service than they really did by bombarding them with positive messages after the event. Advocates of the technique, known as "memory morphing", claim it can be used to improve customers' perceptions of products and encourage them to repeat their purchases and recommend brands to friends.

"When asked, many consumers insist that they rely primarily on their own first-hand experience with products – not advertising – in making purchasing decisions. Yet, clearly, advertising can strongly alter what consumers remember about their past, and thus influence their behaviours," he writes in his book, How Customers Think. He says that memories are malleable, changing every time they come to mind, and that brands can use this to their advantage. "What consumers recall about prior product or shopping experiences will differ from their actual experiences if marketers refer to those past experiences in positive ways," he continues.

(Memory Morphing in Advertising, cf. PDF, emphasis added). Actually, this realm is described elsewhere as a gigantic business which has itself morphed from product marketing into the political arena known as marketing "political products".

The world renowned linguist Noam Chomsky points out that it is common practice to market politicians in a manner not at all unlike the advertising of a commercial product:

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries — in Britain and the US—roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.

And by now these are huge industries. They not only dominate marketing of commodities, but they also control the political system. As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing. It's the same techniques that are used to market toothpaste.

(Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). It is the specific intent of an election team to convince you, during a re-election campaign, that your experience with the candidate was better than you thought it was.

That is just like the marketers who seek to morph your memory about the use of a commodity, a product you have been using, into a better recollection than what you actually experienced ("brand owners can make their customers believe they had a better experience of a product or service than they really did", see "Memory Morphing in Advertising" link above) .

The event alluded to above, this "changing of the mind", requires a morph of the type we have been discussing in this series, i.e., the corruption of memes.

In this series memetic memory morph ("meme corruption") has now been demonstrated to occur, whether such corruption comes by deliberate actions, by personal experience within a meme complex, or by some subconscious working of the toxins of power upon memes in an individual's memory via some manipulation of the amygdala.

The Toxic Bridge To Everywhere

The bridge to nowhere received a lot of media cover (not much coverage though), so let's discuss the bridge to everywhere, which is on the highway that toxins of power use to get anywhere and everywhere a seat of power exists.

Regular readers know that Toxins of Power Blog has previously considered the territory that the toxin of power increasingly inhabits, in the sense of idea propagation, or meme propagation, via various group dynamics.

Likewise this blog had a series which discussed how toxins of power can cause ideological change or "memetic morph," once ideas or memes are in memory.

The amygdala nodes are midbrain between the ears

Now, in this post Toxins of Power Blog will try to get to the nitty gritty, try to get to the main entry point where the toxins of power produce the initial trigger which intoxicates / morphs ideas or memes within the memory of the brain.

That place where the toxins of power begin their mysterious work is called the Amygdala (see also "the lizard brain", a.k.a. "the reptilian brain", not the same, but also strange).

This is a vast subject, however, if we stick to the fundamentals initially, there are elements that can be quickly and easily grasped:

The amygdala's response and regulation are thought to be critical to people's social behavior through the monitoring of daily life events such as danger signals.

(Science Daily, "New Clues"). Social behavior is a result, in some degree, of the dynamics of our amygdala:

During studies of the almond-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala – a region associated with processing emotions ... scientists have uncovered a cellular mechanism underlying the formation of emotional memories, which occurs in the presence of a well known stress hormone ... noradrenaline ... by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for memory formation.

"This is a new way of understanding how neurons form long term memories in the amygdala," Dr Faber said.

"Our strongest and most vivid human memories are usually associated with strong emotional events such as those associated with extreme fear, love and rage."

"For many of us, our deepest memories are mental snapshots taken during times of high emotional impact or involvement," she said.

(Science Daily, Traumatic Memory, see also Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala). What this means is that ideas or memes that are already in memory, already part of a circuit, can be overridden in whole or in part by subsequent events, using either a technique or a phenomenon called fear conditioning, working on specific circuits:

There is a large amount of data indicating that the amygdala, a particular structure in the brain, is strongly involved during the learning of "conditioned" fear. However, until now, the underlying neuronal circuits have remained largely unknown.

Now, research ... has been able to identify, for the first time, distinct neuronal circuits within the central nucleus of the amygdala which are specifically involved in acquisition and control of behavioural fear responses.

(Scientific Daily, "New Circuits"). Long term use of such techniques or phenomenon can cause damage to the amygdala:

... a primitive region of the brain responsible for sensorimotor control also has an important role in regulating emotional responses to threatening situations. This region appears to work in concert with another structure called the amygdala to regulate social and emotional behavior ... researchers have recently discovered that activation of ... the deep layers of superior colliculus (DLSC), elicits defensive behaviors such as an exaggerated startle, hypervigilance, cowering, and escape. Researchers say it is possible that a prolonged activation of this defense system may lead to emotional disorders.

(Science Daily, "Emotional Balance"). These papers work hand in glove with previous posts on Toxins of Power blog.

For instance, in a series beginning with "A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes" we looked at how modification of ideas or memes can occur when circuits of memory are disrupted in individuals.

Then, in the post "The Territorial Realm of Toxins of Power" we attempted to graphically show how these mechanisms work on ideas or memes in the social group context we call meme complexes (see also "ruling group mind" below).

In conclusion, the toxins of power use circuits on the bridge of the amygdala to get to existing ideas or memes, cause a morph, then those morphed ideas or memes propagate within a meme complex (social group), and then ultimately they get to areas outside that meme complex.

The article "What Orwell Didn't Know" by Professor George Lakoff is in accord with this post:

Probably 98 percent of your reasoning is unconscious - what your brain is doing behind the scenes. Reason is inherently emotional. You can't even choose a goal, much less form a plan and carry it out, without a sense that it will satisfy you, not dis­gust you. Fear and anxiety will affect your plans and your ac­tions. You act differently, and plan differently, out of hope and joy than out of fear and anxiety.

Thought is physical. Learning requires a physical brain change: Receptors for neurotransmitters change at the synapses, which changes neural circuitry. Since thinking is the activation of such circuitry, somewhat different thinking re­quires a somewhat different brain. Brains change as you use them-even unconsciously. It's as if your car changed as you drove it, say from a stick shift gradually to an automatic.

(What Orwell Didn't Know, pp. 68-9; cf this). The amygdala can become "propaganda central" since it gets a first look at all incoming sensory perception, that is, before the "conscious brain" gets a look at it:

So some of the key interconnections of the amygdala — and these connections actually define what it does in a sense, at least with respect to fear — the amygdala gets sensory information directly from the various sensory systems that process the external world. So the visual system, the auditory system, olfactory, touch, pain, and so forth. All of these kind of come together, or converge, in the amygdala.

(see video below). Regular readers know that this blog hypothesizes that the toxins of power hijack the process of normal pattern formation in the brain circuitry, so as to convert that pattern into a corrupt pattern.

Thereafter, the meme complex (social group) helps propagate the corrupted idea or meme.

A classic example is detailed in a Dredd Blog post, where an individual knew that a memetic or ideological morph was taking place within his brain, but he was unable to get help or otherwise do anything about it.

Moving on to the civilization level, the issue of mass murder in the form of Ecocide engenders a discussion that focuses on subjects such as the meme complex, vaccime, and other group thinking, such as ruling group mind.

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Professor LeDoux on the amygdala ...

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A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes - 2

In the first post of this series we talked about memetic morph whereby a meme changes through some corruption of memory.

Some of the morph that takes place in such a case has been described in our series as a partial corruption of the strands of memes within an individual's memory.

One allegorical or symbolic example can be demonstrated by comparing what happens when there is a phenomenon that appears as an "innocent corruption of memory" described by Dr. Roger A. Pielke Sr. engendered by the inaccurate reading of text.

Even this can lead to memetic morphs that generate corrupt memes then their propagation throughout a meme complex, and even beyond that.

A paper released recently, which we will shortly get to, informs us of a scenario where corruption can take place in a structural manner which could lead to promulgation of corrupted memes, even though the subject matter is scientific data that is not itself corrupt.

First however, lets consider the case of the memes of climate change skeptics & global warming deniers within the meme complex harboring the notion that global climate change & global warming are the greatest hoax ever fostered on humanity.

Some of their ilk hacked into servers (central computers) of climate scientists to steal database data, email records, and documents of other types.

Upon analysis of that stolen information they formulated the meme that scientists were fabricating data to the degree that reports constructed from the data was biased to the point of being fraudulent.

That meme spread far and wide and is still strong within the denier meme complex.

Clearly toxins of power were at work when theft was chosen as the method of discovery in place of logic, argument, and scientific debate.

But there are other ways memes can become corrupt in an innocent manner, well short of theft.

Take the case revealed by a recent paper mentioned above, pointing out what is called citation mutation (a form of morph):

Few scientific studies have attracted as much attention as the "Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4", published 40 years ago by Uli Laemmli. Referenced an estimated 2 x 10⁵ times (about 15 daily citations), it is unavoidable that the article is often cited incorrectly. Indeed, database searches reveal more than 600 variations of the correct reference ...

The omission, addition or replacement of one character on the keyboard by another lead to variations that can be described in genetic terms and classified as deletions, insertions, point mutations and inversions of characters, or as complete nonsense mutations.

(Mutations of Citations, The Scientist). The mutation of citations can lead to memetic morph when the wrong citation leads to an unintended paper that has similar sounding text, but in actuality is different.

Governments do deliberate memetic morph activities during propaganda wars where HTML links are studied, then sometimes changed, when the government wants to continue to cover up activity it considers harmful to the image it wants to project to the public.

In the case of deliberate corruption we can see the work of toxins of power, but in the case of negligent or mistaken corruptions, the toxins of power move in later in the process, so that, they are not always the primary cause of memetic mutations or morphs.

The next post in this series is here.

The Toxins Corrupt Frames of Mind

In a series of posts beginning here, we graphically depicted, in simple constructs, how a meme is stored in the "mind" and is transported via language into another mind.

This post is intended to expand upon that construct.

We will be focusing on the strands in the web that theoretically compose a meme, depicted by the globe of strands in the graphic above, to show that the extent of the meme reaches to more of an area than we traditionally conceive of as "memory".

In the original post we quoted Noam Chomsky, so in this post we will quote from George Lakoff, who was a student of Chomsky, and who is now sometimes said to be a proponent of some theories contrary to Chomsky.

Be that as it may, here we only want to learn from both of them as well as from other scientists, not to join one "side" or the other.

What Lakoff can add to our construct is that the composition of the strands of the web of a meme theoretically extend out to our bodies and to our emotions.

Using that extension we can see that the toxins of power work on an expansive field within those exposed to power, not just on the area covered by conventional notions of memory, but on reasoning, logic, and emotion as well.

But more than that, the toxins work on areas where cognitive frames of mind are interwoven together, that is, at the junctions such as morphemes, lexemes, and of course words.

There is an entire area of study dealing with the effects and purposes of "benign" propaganda or deceit, for example, showing that it is a massive endeavour.

One of the tactics utilized in that questionable endeavor is to change the meanings of words, for example, which would in turn change the structure of a meme and in some circumstances corrupt it.

As a recent example, recall the efforts to change the meme described by the word "torture" into the meme of "enhanced interrogation".

When any one of the components of a meme becomes corrupt, it can change the structure of that meme into a corrupt form, and thereby lead to propagation of that corruption.

Phase Three & Four: Toxin vs Meme

This post is the third and last of the series where we build a construct to visualize and conceptualize how a meme in memory is morphed from its original state into a corrupted state.

It is then promulgated to a new host via the use of language.

We dealt with the overall concept in the post A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes, then Phase One & Two, so now we are ready to complete the construct in this post.

The illustration, above, entitled "Memetic Strands Are Converted Into Language" shows a meme that was corrupted in memory and is now being converted into language.

The original meme in its language format was "It is always wrong to embezzle the people's money".

During the corruption phase the toxins of power were working on the politician's mind, such that some of the meme strands were realigned by first selfish, then later, corrupt thinking. The classic Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde conversion or morph transpired.

The language which resulted after that morph had taken place had become: "It is wrong to embezzle the people's money unless it is done for a good cause".

The politician, in this case, then used the English language to communicate the morphed and now corrupt meme, within that politician's own mind / brain, to a person on the politician's staff who was easily influenced by the politician.

When the meme was converted into language from thought, the corrupted meme was transferred then stored in the memory of the recipient as if it was not corrupt, because the recipient had been convinced of its validity during the communication session.

The illustration "Language Conversion Back To Memory" shows the final phase where the meme is stored in the new host, the politician's staff member.

I have not used technical language in these posts, but if you care to peruse some of the technical language used in memetics, a lexicon of memetic terms is located here.

A continuation of this discussion is here.

Phase One & Two: Toxin vs Meme

The overall description of the four phases of a meme becoming corrupted by the toxins of power, then propagated through language, forms a foundation of sorts for this post.

That description is posted here.

In this post we are going to form a construct for visualizing / conceptualizing how the toxins of power morph a meme in memory from a pristine condition into a corrupt condition.

As we move from the macro concepts down into the depths of research details, we run into scientific controversy or conflict. It is said that "the devil is in the details". To avoid as much of that as possible we will stay in the areas of consensus where possible.

When staying away from controversial detail is not possible, we will show how the construct works with several competing hypotheses or theories for that section of the subject matter.

As an example take the notion of consciousness and cognition. Penrose and Hameroff postulated that those take place because human thinking is a quantum computer. In that Penrose - Hameroff theoretical quantum computer thought processes take place within micro tubules.

To the contrary, Tegmark published a paper countering that hypothesis, showing that neural networks can explain the notion better, because of various speed factors.

The task here is not to solve those problems of detail, instead, at a much higher level we envision a process where an explanation can be constructed showing how toxins working on memes in memory can morph those memes into a corrupted state.

We can use analogies of gravity or electromagnetism instead of detailed quantum micro tubules, for consideration of a construct to get a better handle on the notion of a "corrupting influence".

The toxins we are concerned with exert a push or pull (influence) on the cognition of politicians, who are thereby influenced to think more about themselves ("themselves" meaning the extended self too, such as family and friends) than they think about the public they are to serve.

The effect of the influence is measured in terms of increasingly selfish thoughts and deeds eventually benefiting the politician rather than the public.

Lets envision an interwoven fabric of memes, in the memory of someone in power, to be like the pattern in the first illustration to the right.

This original memetic pattern is balanced, orderly, aligned, and uniform, not having been exposed to toxins yet.

In the next illustration, lets envision that pattern having been changed by tugs and pulls of the toxins, with some memes now having a new location in a dysfunctional pattern.

The toxins are causing some of the memes to jump the tracks that link it to other memes, so that the network of memes then becomes linked to a map different from before.

Those memes in the illustration, which have red dots, have been moved out of their original pattern or configuration.

The individual memes as well as the memory map of those memes would likewise change.

We can see how the content of an individual meme would change by using the illustrations we already used to represent the original meme.

The original meme in its pristine condition is represented with the illustration "PHASE ONE" at the top of the page.

The corrupted meme, after the tugs and pulls of toxins change it, is represented with the illustration "PHASE TWO".

With this type of construct we can envision memes in memory as being part of a memory pattern. After toxins tug and pull on them, we envision a new memory pattern where some of the memes are no longer where they originally were.

We also see a change in the individual memes, in that, now some of the strands of coded mapping have been changed to record the meme's new location within the memory pattern.

As we will see in the next post, the new location and new strands of codified mapping end up causing a change in what this meme will translate into, as language, compared to what it originally translated into as language.

The next and final post in this series is located here, the first post of this series is located here.

A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes

It will take several posts to completely construct it, but let's attempt to fabricate a structure which can follow toxins moving from that mysterious force we call power, into a meme in memory, thereby corrupting that meme.

Specifically, it will be a construct that shows how a power toxin infects a meme, is stored in that meme by becoming a part of that meme, and then is propagated to others.

The subject of memes is difficult, in the sense of the toxins of power, because it crosses several realms composed of both mystic and scientific knowledge.

It makes the subject of the corruption of those in power all the more difficult, because both power and memory are described in whole or in part, depending on who you are talking to, with the words of mystery and the words of science.

Likewise the distribution of memes is a difficult subject, primarily because the fundamental method of distribution is language, which has engendered a library of opposing, even contradictory, papers, books, lectures, and theory all by itself.

Lets try to focus, then, on the consensus of scientists when we touch upon language during this discussion of memes, such as:

It has been recognized for thousands of years that language is, fundamentally, a system of sound-meaning connections; the potential infiniteness of this system has been explicitly recognized by Galileo, Descartes, and the 17th-century “philosophical grammarians” and their successors, notably von Humboldt.

(Chomsky, Science Magazine, Nov. 22, 2002, Volume 298, p 1571). So when I discuss the structure or process of converting a meme out from within an individual's memory into the language mechanism (intending to transfer that meme from one place to another place) I will stick to consensus ideas about language.

The "sound-meaning" linkage theory, says that meaning is linked to sound in language, and inversely says that sound is linked to meaning in language.

This of course is talking about cases of meme transfer between those who can hear and speak audibly.

Obviously the hearing impaired would use sign language to transfer memes, which is visual-meaning linked, not sound-meaning linked.

Of course there are other means of communication as well, not of sound and not of sight, but we focus on the basic forms to illustrate the construct.

The process being used here to show how a toxin can contaminate a meme is shown as a four part process in the illustration "Four Phases - corruption".

Phase 1 shows the toxins of power working on a meme in memory; phase 2 shows the morph of the meme from a non-corrupt meme into a corrupt meme; phase 3 shows the conversion of the corrupt meme into language; and phase 4 shows the corrupt meme replicating by being communicated to the memory of the recipient of that language.

With this construct we do not postulate that the meme itself comes from power, rather we form a premise that a toxin of power distorts a meme already in memory.

The illustration "PHASE ONE" shows a meme in memory surrounded with power during phase 1 of the process.

This construct represents the meme as being constructed of various codified strands composing a web like structure.

The strands map to memory areas where the various components of the meme are stored. Links on a web page to other web pages might be a reasonable way of envisioning it.

The illustration "PHASE TWO" shows the same meme in memory at the completion of phase 2 of the process, where some of the web strands or links have been "corrupted" by the toxins.

The meme is no longer composed of its original codified strand links, which mapped to original memory areas where the components of the original meme were stored, because some of the links have become corrupted or broken.

Some of the codified strand links now point to areas of memory that will result in a corrupt form of the original meme.

Bad links on a web page might be a reasonable way of envisioning the distorted or corrupted state of the meme at phase 2 of the four phase process.

When the strands of the meme are unwound during the process that converts a meme into language, the corrupted strands are also converted into language.

Then when the language is converted back into the memory version of the meme the corrupted strands are handled as if they were the original, so the meme in the new memory is a meme depicted in the PHASE ONE illustration.

That is, it is as if it was the original in terms of how it is stored in the new memory after conversion from language back into the memory format.

The notion of distortion or corruption, as used in this construct, is the definition at the macro level already explained in the post "What Is Corruption?".

Thus, "corruption" as used in this construct, does not have the medical or psychological meaning in the technical sense.

The next post in this series is located here.