9
Why Men Embrace Ideas--And Why Ideas Embrace Men
Humans grab at ideas because ideas knit them together in groups
of folks who agree with them. They provide the comfort of
companionship and mutual aid. That's one way memes seduce
humans into their power. What are some of the others?
Memes ride the human mind by offering the men and women
who spearhead their cause a richer life. Fidel Castro, who carved out a
slice of the New World to feed the Marxist-Leninist meme, acquired
the run of half-a-dozen homes, a fleet of Mercedes-Benz limousines,
jeeps (actually, the Russian equivalents--Gaziks), luxuriously
wood-paneled helicopters, a fishing villa, boats, gourmet foods, fine
scotch, and what may be the ultimate luxury--a personal pate chef.15
Memes frequently make the temptation to riches and power even
sweeter by disguising the pursuit of these prizes as selfless idealism,
ascetic dedication to a cause. Castro, after all, was not a greedy man.
He was a dedicated "idealist." Memes also seduce us with the illusion
of control, thus tweaking our hormones into higher gear and turning
up the vigor of our immune system. What's more, sometimes memes
actually deliver on their promises of mastery. The insights and
technologies they produce sometimes actually do help us get a handle
on the elusive forces of our fate.
These enticements are some of the reasons humans embrace the
meme. But why does the meme grab on to humans? So it can use a
social bunch as a tool for self expansion, driving a superorganism like a
tank (more about that in our next chapter). Memes have an ultimate
ambition: taking vast chunks of the world into their possession and
restructuring it according to their form.
It may seem strange to call a meme ambitious. But the mere
shape of a successful meme dictates its acquisitive behavior. In fact,
the evolutionary race between concepts guarantees that those which
develop the cleverest lures are most likely to survive. Take, for
example, the religious memes that include the notion of hell. Anyone
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