How about examining the degree to which people revile certain
professions? Car salesmen, lawyers, bankers, hackers, etc seem to the
average person to have "secret knowledge" which they then use to take
advantage of others. Plumbing alone mystifies many people, as well as
draining their wallets. Possibly a historical example of memetic
synergies would by the anti-semitism of Nazi Germany. There you had a
populaly percieved notion that because Jews respected scholarship, they
occupied a large percentage of the positions of economic and social
leadership. Due to the hyperinflationary stress of living in Germany in
the 20s and 30s, there was obviously a huge level of economic
apprehension. if you tie these two memes together, plus the historical
Christian bias against Jews, you get the Third Reich.
WHile that movement was focused on bankers, think about the level of
memetic hysteria towards lawyers today. What sort of additional memes
would synergize with the current dissatisfaction with government and
lawyers to the point that we could actually see a true movement to hang
the lawyers? Of course you have a natural mechanism of negative
feedback: to outlaw lawyers you need to pass laws, which takes lawyers,
so this would be a difficult profession to get up in arms against.
Anyways, most people understand how laws work, as they've been on one
end or the other of at least a few laws in their lives.
Using this, think of the building luddism in our society. What sort of
memes would help synergize their memes, and what ones will act as
negative feedback?
>
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael Lorrey --------------------------------------------------------- President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ --------------------------------------------------------- Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Certified Genius.