Stalingrad, 1943 (credit: Wikipedia) 

If you have been following this space, you will understand that I see the concept of a "meme" as very analogous to the more solidly proven unit of life called a "gene". Whether predictable patterns of neuron activity in human brains, patterns that could reliably be called "memes", exist is so far unproven. Meme theory is in its infancy. Every individual human brain is unique and is evolving rapidly day to day as it takes in new sense data, files them in memory, and adjusts its operations. Thus, memes are hard to pin down. 

But memes are worth considering even if they are still just speculation. 

For example, as I read narratives about World Wars One and Two, I can't stop myself from seeing those conflicts in terms of meme/culture struggles. There was no racial or even ethnic superiority or inferiority to any of the players. The racial theories of the Nazis were nonsense. It was memes that were fighting to the death in those wars, driving their carriers to ever greater sacrifices. The carriers (humans) were largely unaware of the lethal memes they were carrying. 

For example, consider the memes that dictatorships instill. Speer's "Inside The Third Reich" makes it very clear that while a dictator may have the advantage over democracies in the speed with which he can make decisions, as the challenges get tougher, those decisions are more and more likely to be wrong. Autocratic memes (hail the king, emperor, fuhrer, whateverer) are lethal memes in the modern world. Modern, technologically sophisticated societies have grown too complex for any one person to have a thorough comprehension of how a society works. Maybe dictatorship was marginally viable for Napoleon in his time, but its day ended with the dawn of modern industrial states.  

Hitler's unorthodox moves in the early stages of the war overwhelmed the tradition-bound officers and diplomats of his adversaries. But then, as Speer recounts in close detail, Hitler began to make bigger and bigger blunders. He did not understand large scale strategies and he hated having to listen to any opposition. Driven by his own cultural programming, he posed as fuhrer; his underlings, for similar reasons, looked to him as fuhrer. Clear chains of command; prompt decisions. Rapid dissemination of ...mistakes.   

In additon, his state machinery was grotesquely homogeneous. Able, "Aryan", heterosexual males in all the important roles. (We know now that there were homosexuals in the SS, but they stayed in the closet.) No Jews, no Slavs, no Arabs, Orientals, women, etc., etc. 

Talent occurs throughout all slices of any human population. Prejudices aren't so much mean as they are stupid. They cause nations that promulgate them to shrink their talent pool. His impoverished talent pool originated in a mistaken set of memes in his own head. 

Why does love, as a giant value/meme matter? In the long haul, love just means that we accept our neighbors regardless of the categories they might fit into, as long as they aren't getting their livings by force or trickery. Then, when a crisis comes, the pluralistic nation has more resources to draw on. More tools in its toolbox. It's that simple. The US had codetalkers to call on, and Jewish-Americans, and African-Americans. Britain had Arab legions, native Canadians, etc. 

In addition, pluralism results in not only more versatility, but more citizens in general. More population, more resources, more technologies, etc. That is what comes of loving our neighbors. More people want to live here. 

Though, God knows, I'd far rather the struggles were in business for innovations and markets, than in war for land and resources, the point is that the democracies proved more versatile and resourceful in the real life and death struggle called "war". 

Russia, I know, was anything but a democracy, but the totalitarian nature of Stalin's rule, it seems to me, had it huge downside too. Even though Russia and Germany were far more like each other than like the Western democracies, Russia did do most of the defeating of Germany. But what accounts for the huge numbers of casualties that the Russians suffered? In a word, a dictator. 

Stalin made some blunders at least as large as Hitler's. For example, in killing off most of his army's capable senior officers before the war even began. And in refusing to believe for several days that Germany was even invading. He got paranoid and trusted fewer and fewer people, as dictators always do. He just had the good or bad fortune, depending on how you look at it, of having an adversary even more megalomanical than he was. The first Nazi armies into the territories of the Soviet Union were welcomed in may places, particularly in the Ukraine. It was only when people saw that Hitlerian dictatorship would be even worse than Stalinian that the will to fight Germany hardened. 

And Stalin had a more pluralistic army, as meme theory predicts he likely would. Historians estimate that as much as one third of the Russian troops were of non-Russian origin. 

The cultural evolution theory that values pluralism over autocracy - as a meme - holds. 

The nations that hungered for one-man rule with quick decisions, clear lines of responsibility, no free elections, and none of the wrangling that seems so exhausting - those nations got what history deals out sooner or later to all who love autocracy. A lunatic at the helm and suffering beyond measure. (Note well that Hitler and Stalin both died as literal lunatics.)  

In raw courage, the average German or Japanese soldier was the equal of any soldiers who have ever existed. Their armies lost not because of tyrant leaders but because of the memes that produced those regimes in the first place. Hitler was just an attachment that went with a whole set of ideas, ideas not so much evil as mistaken in their worldviews, philosophies and values, ones simply out of touch with the forces of the physical universe itself. 

Most species are driven to behave as they do because of the programming in their genes. If we round up thousands of coddling moth males and expose them to just enough radiation to render them sterile but not kill them, and we then turn them loose in the valley, they will mate will thousands of females who will then lay eggs that will not hatch. But the female moths can't help being themselves. Genes drive their behaviors. So are elk drawn to elk calls - to get shot. So are ducks drawn to duck calls. Hunters know how to exploit programming. The examples could go on. Genes drive most species' behaviors. It's hard not to be a duck if you're a duck. 

In humans, genes are pretty powerful too. But memes are even more so. What man anywhere is not captivated by a lovely female form? But humans are driven by their cultural programs even more than their genetic ones. Men all over are drawn to the lovely female figure, but what each will do next varies between cultures. In some cultures, that male will go home and put on his make-up, then come out and parade in front of the female with the lovely figure. In some cultures, he will puff out his chest, and begin to talk more loudly. 

Of all of our cultural programs/memes, giant ones such as courage and wisdom are the most important. In dynamic, constantly-tuned balance, courage and wisdom program the humans who carry them to cope with entropy, which we know simply as adversity, one of the most pervasive of all the constants in reality. And freedom and love, in dynamic, constantly tuned balance, program those who carry them to handle the uncertainty which is also a basic trait of all reality. 

Note again that the whole cultural memes process happens in ways closely analogous to the ways in which genes program the members of most other species. But we are the only true cultural evolvers. We evolve by the competitions between memes, not genes.  

The memes of democracy - courage that combines with wisdom, freedom, love, and individual responsibility up and down every hierarchy -- prove strongest in the long haul. States founded on hate and fear lack the versatility and creativity that states founded on love foster.  

Cut corners on any of these giant memes when you're training the next generation, and they are one day - in war, famine, plague, or natural disaster - going to pay the price of their teachers' short-sightedness ..as their memes fail them in the real world. 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a great day.



   
  
                                        Sama schoolchildren (Iran) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 


   

                                      American kindergarten (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 



   

                                   Chinese children at summer camp (credit: Creative Commons)