Reuters headline: Bird flu spreads to humans more easily than thought
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060109/hl_nm/birdflu_spread_dc

There is an interesting theory that treats ideas as infectious agents—mental viruses, if you will. This is the theory of memes. And so this headline, if read in a bit skewed way, fits with that. Bird flu may well be more contagious than some ideas. Thinking is not always easily transmissible, especially to some people who appear to have developed resistance to thinking. Perhaps they have “antibodies to thinking.” I call these anti-thinking antibodies “emotions.”

Unfortunately for humanity, incorrect, demonstrably false ideas may be more contagious than correct ideas in many cases. Truth can be not only stranger than fiction, it can be less convincing. As Robert A. Heinlein said, the truth of an idea does not correlate with its credibility—and vice versa.

Some of this can be explained by the vector involved—the agent of transmission. Adolph Hitler was an example, a man who, by personality, was able to transmit the false ideas of Nazism through German society. He was the Typhoid Mary of socialist and fascist ideas, infecting many of Germany’s citizens with anti-Semitism and ideas of Aryan superiority, and Germanic conquest, and government control of industry.

Karl Marx and Lenin were transmitters of the very infectious but false ideas of communism and socialism, theories which were supposed to improve the lot of the common man, but which have produced more poverty and misery and death than any other ideas in history.

Another idea, another economic theory, capitalism, is more difficult to sell. It is less infectious, less easily transmitted. It just doesn’t sound “nice.” It sounds greedy and vaguely evil to many people. But it has produced, demonstrably, more improvement in human living standards than any other set of economic policies. Countries which have adopted capitalism tend to prosper to the extent that they remain uninfected with communism and socialism. The more socialist ideas a country acquires, the less prosperous its citizens.

My theory is that easily transmissible ideas, more infectious memes, are emotion-based. They just “feel” right to people. They make those infected feel warm and fuzzy and self-satisfied. They make the infected people feel superior to others who have not been infected. Emotionalism increases the contagiousness of bad memes.

The less infectious memes are not as emotion-based. They are, in fact, logic-based and require some active participation in the person exposed if he is to be infected.



To appreciate and support a republican form of government takes critical thought, as opposed to favoring a pure democracy. Direct vote of the people, majority rule, sounds good to many. They don’t stop to consider that such is merely a recipe for mob rule. If we actually believed in pure democracy, heaven forbid, we might have a Christian theocracy here!

Socialized medicine sounds good; calling medical care “a right” sounds good. Most people don’t stop to consider that creating a right to medical care effectively enslaves those who supply that medical care, the doctors and nurses and taxpayers who are obligated to maintain this right for others. It just sounds so nice. It is a very infectious meme. It’s infected and caused economic disease in Great Britain, Canada, and much of Europe. It is spreading here. It’s come close to killing General Motors and United Airlines and Ford Motor Company and others. In fact, those companies and countries appear to be on life support.

When you hear medical care talked about as a right, make sure your immunizations are up to date. Somebody is trying to infect you with a bad meme.