Drugs: The Antimeme
This was not written by
me, but by a user on the Awful Forums by the handle of Rohypno. I just found
it to be interesting, so am puting it here before it is lost beneath the mound
of new posts that the forums receive daily.
Memetics
Memetics is a theory that regards ideas as viruses. Interestingly enough,
this theory makes a lot of sense. Take for instance the basic meme, an Internet
phenomenon, ALL YOUR BASE. (http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/index.shtml).
ALL YOUR BASE is a particularly uninteresting flash movie containing an excerpt
from a Japanese video game of the same name. When the video game was translated
to English, it displayed massive amounts of broken grammar in the introductory
movie. Funny? Well, maybe a little bit, but you would never have expected
it to be seen by MILLIONS of people. Forums and chat rooms all over the Internet
aided in the spread of this virus; they advertised it as funny, as interesting,
as something necessary to view. The virus/idea spread exponentially until
some people realized that the video really is not all that funny, and thought
to inform other members of their community that ALL YOUR BASE “is stupid shit,
post it again and you’ll be banned.” Although they may not have realized it,
the people who advocated the destruction of the meme birthed the antimeme.
The antimeme works in a similar way to the meme, spreading exponentially by
using the human mind as a vector for communication; the antimeme works to
eradicate its corresponding meme. The creation of antimemes is highly discouraged
by those who are slave to the meme. Of course, if you like a particular TV
show you would never support its cancellation.
Society: The meme
Society can be considered a multicellular meme – a meme consisting of other,
smaller memes. Society propagates itself by spreading to the minds of newborns
from the minds of parents, from the minds of friends to the minds of friends,
and from the minds of teachers to the minds of students. Society spreads through
TV and through clothing, through foods and through notebooks. Just like all
other memes. Society tells people that work is good; that houses should be
clean; that you should wipe your ass; that drugs are bad; and most importantly,
that society should never be questioned. “Your parents are right, they are
older, wiser”, and have accumulated more memes than you.
Drugs: The antimeme
For all intents and purposes, and I am referring specifically to psychotropic
drugs; such as marijuana, LSD, P. Cubensis, etc. (Although other drugs may
fall into this category as well).
Drugs are dangerous. Some people have died from drugs. Other people have acquired
certain disorders, mental or otherwise. However, only a fool can hold our
government officials in such low esteem as to think that the reason for the
illegality of drugs stems from their danger. Cars are thousands of times more
dangerous, and countless people have been fatally injured from a car crash
that occurred by no fault of their own. Countless others died because they
were dumb on the road. Countless others were killed by a drunk driver. It
would be a shameless lie to say that a joint could do this much damage to
drug users and their families. However, drugs are still illegal… but why?
One possible answer can be found in memetics.
Drugs are the antimeme to society. They allow the mind to erase its memes,
and to function in an introverted manner. Drugs allow their users to explore
the structure of their psyche and to determine the degree of their mental
stability and the emotional satisfaction their life brings. People often reconsider
their life choices after experiences with any Ego de-emphasizing compound;
thus replacing a society meme with a self-engineered meme.
Society is a very smart meme. It promotes the destruction of its antimemes,
and attempts to isolate the development of antimemes by threatening restriction
of hosts within the meme. “If you do drugs you’ll never get a job” “If you
do drugs you won’t even have a house to clean” “If you do drugs you will become
a vegetable and won’t be able to wipe your own ass.” Since society has already
contaminated the minds of its hosts, it must no longer worry about direct
propagation; it must only work to ensure that it does not meet an untimely
death by the hand of an antimeme.
Of course, memes must be at least marginally helpful to someone, or they would
never work. ALL YOUR BASE was slightly entertaining, as was pokemon, and many
other gimmick memes. However, the antidrug meme (not to be confused with antimeme
drugs) produced by society serves a very different purpose. It is a scapegoat.
It very easy to blame problems on a minority group… Jews, gays, gypsies, blacks,
drug users. It is simply much easier for a politician to win office with the
promise of eradication of a never existing problem than to learn real issues.
I wrote this because I thought of it, and didn’t want to forget it. Don’t
be too quick to accept it though, its just a meme.