The Nose of a Rat and the Human Mind
Rats are obsessed with genes. They absolutely love their relatives. In their nests, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and children crawl over, under and around each other, seeking constant body contact. But the kindness of rats only extends to family. Rats will mercilessly hunt down members of a rival clan. And if a non-relative accidentally stumbles into their nest, the homey little creatures who a moment before were hugging one another will turn on the guest with the foreign genes and tear him limb from limb.
How do rats know who's kin and who's not? How can they tell who shares their genes? Those guesstimates are based on smell. Each rat household has its own tell-tale odor. And every inhabitant wears that living room perfume. Chances are that if two rats are sporting the same aroma, they're carrying the same genes, since the pair were raised in the same spot--probably by the same mother and father. One scientist removed a rat from his nest, washed the complaining creature off, then rubbed it thoroughly in the shavings of another nest...giving it the smell of a stranger. Then the experimenter put the innocent beast back in its own home, where it should have been safe among its brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, he'd returned home wearing the wrong cologne. His loving family, blind to his familiar physical appearance, bared their teeth and lunged. When the experiment was over, the unwitting animal was dead, killed by those who had always hugged and nuzzled him. Smell had told the brood that their brother was carrying the wrong set of genes.
Rats use smells to determine whom they love and whom they must hate. Humans use something else - we use memes. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme:
Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
A population has arisen within the U.S. which self-identifies its members via shared memes. This population is, not to put too fine a word on it - Conservatives. Conservatives have a complex collection of memes, which they share. Like Bloom's rats, Conservatives wallow in their own memes, which combine to produce an identifiable 'aroma' about them. The more memes they share with others, the more they know they are in the company of a kindred fellow. Much of what constitutes communication consists of a series of clicks and grunts, with the expectation of a/the correct corresponding grunts and clicks. Like rats sniffing each other's butts, conservatives will sniff out each other's memes.
One of the reasons I left Facebook was because I saw it had it had become a method for the rats to propagate memes. I found myself encountering old friends and began to notice a change in them. Since I did not share the memes in which they were wallowing, I became viewed as "an Other" - a non-rat. I had become the enemy of the rats.
Most rats make the mistake of assuming that all non-rats are united against them. The rats need to perpetuate this meme in order to justify the actions they are planning. It is important for them to feel threatened - actually, physically frightened of all non-rats (who are, of course, ALL against them), so that their actions can be rationalized as merely defensive. They're simply reacting to the perceived threat from everything else in the world.
Rats don't want to discuss or debate. They don't even want to be understood. What they want is agreement. Rats have to know who's with them and who's not (because "if you're not with us, you're against us"). If you don't agree, you are a non-rat and are therefore one of the others who are, of course, all united against the rats. It doesn't matter whether or not the meme has any basis in reality or fact. It truly doesn't. In fact, the further removed from reality the meme is, the more tenaciously it is believed and defended against the onslaught of any contradicting evidence.
Facebook is still a big petri dish for the spreading of memes and it stinks like a fully infected microbiology project. I say leave the rats to their own stench.
