The Good and Evil Meme

The old religious myths that have guided us are being destroyed by education. They just can’t stand up to the scrutiny of an enquiring mind. Do we need to replace them?

We arguably need some form of faith and something to guide our faith. Religion does this so it is likely that we will continue to modify our religious beliefs rather than dump the whole package.

Religions are built to provide for our needs. We should therefore look insider ourselves and examine the way we think to determine how to modify our current religious beliefs so that they can continue to help us evolve our beliefs.

Richard Dawkins talks about memes (Google it), ideas that invade our psyche and influence what we do. One very destructive meme is the concept of “good and evil.” Genesis warns us of the consequences of, “eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” but we continue to do so unmindful of the consequences.

This good/evil “meal” is the basis for our courts where judges hand out punishments. It is also the underlying force behind color and race prejudices and it encourages parents to judge and punish their children.

Evangelical Christians propagate the same good/evil theme, projecting an image of good fighting evil, seemingly ignoring the message in the Bible’s most ancient of texts. To “fight” they must of necessity also ignore the basic theme of Christ’s teachings. These are about “love and forgiveness,” but his ideas seem to get lost in the evangelical good/evil fight. Mohamed, Gandhi, King, and Mandela all tried to get their followers to avoid this meme all made some progress, but the meme lives on.

No one who stops to think can accept that, “fighting for peace,” makes the world a better place, yet we continue to do this, not realizing that we are following a socially destructive meme. A new approach is needed; we must avoid rather than follow this meme.

What new weapons can we bring to this task? What new strategies can we deploy? How can we destroy this meme? Now stop and think. By framing the questions in this way have I not (almost) unconsciously followed the meme?

To avoid this “war paradigm,” we have to move to a new paradigm so that we can study and understand the one we are trying to leave. One possibility is to create a “learning paradigm” where you think of yourself as a student, observing and learning about your society and yourself. To make it appear real we can think of human society as if it were a body, similar to a human body, composed of many cells. Each person is a cell in the body that forms the community.

Think of yourself as a learner in a learning paradigm. You have to ensure your own survival, but this is best done by building a co-operative network of friends and associates, rather than trying to destroy enemies. In fact, having rejected the “good/evil” meme you don’t have any enemies simply because you have refused to make anyone your enemy.

Your new religion does not have a name yet, but it involves understanding yourself as a human being. It also requires that you study many texts (including the Bible) and meditating on the ideas they generate. Your main subject is yourself and you try to understand why you do the things you do, why you have the memes you do have. You then use the knowledge to plan your course through your life. It is an adventure.

Your hymns are the songs you hear every day on the radio, your Church is the World Wide Web, your priests are those who impart wisdom to you. You are living at a time of great transformation, a time of spiritual death and rebirth, when many new ideas and new memes are vying for attention. It is very exciting, too exciting sometimes and you may long for the peace of death. That will come, but while still alive you must continue your quest.

Your god is reason (embrace it), your devil is fear (manage it), and your path is the same one that humanity has been on since it became conscious of itself. You must discover. Your community must continue to learn and you must find a way to contribute to this learning process.

The only way to displace an old meme is to find a new one to adopt. Try something new today.

Why Socialism/Communism Fails

There is no doubt it fails, there is a long list of examples. The most recent attempt to make it work seems to be happening now in Venezuela where Chavez is planning to nationalize everything. It is doomed to failure.

This happens despite the good intentions of its proponents. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, for the time being, and assume that they really wanted to help their community solve its problems. The obvious way to do this is to take control of all the assets of the community and make all the important decisions about who gets what.

Unfortunately this destroys the wealth in the community. This automatically happens when all the assets are nationalised. With government owning everything and no possibility of any other owner, nothing has value. None of the government assets can be sold, none bought. This destroys the private sector and government has to provide all the ideas and energy needed to drive the economy along. But they do not know how to do this.

Reward cannot be used to encourage people to work hard as this is contrary to the socialist ideals. Those who are inclined to innovate can only do this in the underground economy. The majority of people prefer not to get involved with illegal activity and simply do what they must to survive. Oppression reigns.

The central decision making structure of socialist/communist regimes simply cannot make the right decisions quickly enough to make the economy work. The big advantage that capitalism has is that it distributes responsibility and decision making away from a central authority and allows people to get on with adding value to their lives in whatever way they can.

Capitalism's big disadvantage is that not everyone is capable of being successful at doing this. Many people seem to need to be told what to do as they are either unable or unwilling to make good decisions themselves.

In many cases it is fear that blocks their ability to make good decisions. Fear holds them back.

Socialism/communism fails because of its inability to make decisions. Capitalism is partially successful because it gets past this problem, but it is held back because many people are unable to make good decisions in its relatively high stress environment.

The next innovation in social/political structures must get beyond this restraint.