I recently visited a friend, game maker Alec Holowka, who introduced me to Dan Dennett. He was brought up for his book, Consciousness Explained. Here he talks about memes, but memes as parasites. They infect hosts, get them to spread the meme, and continue to live on.
The most interesting part of this talk was his reference to Guns, Germs, and Steel. In the past, we’ve unintentionally killed off civilizations by bringing to them our local germs. Today we’re doing it again, but with memes. The ideas of our culture have certain “germs” we’re accustomed to that if brought to a very different culture could threaten their livelihood.
