Journal Entry 5 Considering Memes

To me, i agree that memes are seen as a replicator, because memes are original ideas that have been somewhat changed, and re-used again. Hence it contains traces of the original idea and becomes a replicate. Many other people takes the first stage of the replicate, and transforms it by changing different elements of the idea, it becomes what they claim to be "new ideas", and hence memes are replicators as the cycle continues and what are claimed to have been "new ideas" are but the replicate of a replicate that was replicated off of another replicated idea.

It becomes a virus in this way because memes are being used as the basis for the creation of new ideas, but these new ideas would contradict the world new, as it contains nothing but different variations of the first idea, and hence thinking in this perspective, no ideas can be new, they would only be replicates of an already-existing idea. What is even more fearsome, is that this "already-existing" idea, might already have been a replicate of another "original idea" in the first place. It is also a virus as toxic ideas that would spread to other people.

Memes become a virus also because it is purely made up of ideas, and ideas. And hence, they would be transmitted into people through any possible way, speech, technology etc. And the people that comes into contact with these memes have no control over whether they want to receive this ideas or not, they have no choice but to accept these memes once they come into contact with the medium that transmit them. Therefore, there is no control over people whom misuse memes, and turn them into ideas that were not the intentions of the "original idea"(if it was truly original), it could also be turned into a toxic idea, which is able to transmit to more people again, and more people would be infused with these toxic ideas. The cycle would continue and hence it is a virus.

The implications for thinking ideas in such a way is that there would be truly no "original ideas", because anything that exists are nothing but a replicate of another idea. People would not be able to think about "different ideas" because they are merely an idea with a variation of the original idea, hence "replicated ideas". In conclusion, thinking of ideas in this way would cause mankind to stop in evolution, because it is as though they are going around in circles, replicating ideas that have already been replicated. And hence nobody would be able to create true new ideas.