Dogma Of Otherness Blog

I was literally dripping with excitement to read Brin's "Dogma of Otherness", literally. First he explained what a meme is. It's basically a set of beliefs and ideas that governs people. He then went on to describe how memes can be spread, much like disease, throughout societies. Good memes will be passed along and spread, bad memes will fade away. Just when I think this Brin fellow can't boggle my mind anymore than he already has, this beautiful son of a bitch lays down the four main memes that have helped to shape the world. These memes being paranoia, machismo, the east, and the dogma of otherness. He describes each separate meme and a society that best exemplifies that meme. He of course saves the best meme for last, the Dogma of Otherness. Brin describes how this is our cultures meme and it is characterized by a thirst for things from outside cultures.

Brin describes that these memes are like viruses or even genes. For each different meme to survive they need to be able to spread. The better the meme, the more it will spread. It is a survival of the fittest type scenario except with memes. I also found it interesting how biased Brin is. It is obvious which worldview he holds above all others, and which society he holds above all others. While he makes good points about each different meme, I can't help but feel this is a one sided account. It's a one sided account written by an american about how awesome our way of life is, and how advanced the United States is as a culture. I tend to disagree with him. How can you lump the entire country together under one meme? I love this country but I don't sit around and think, "Boy, we're great. We are so accepting of other cultures and people. We just hunger for it." That's garbage to me. If you look around this country you see tons of bigotry and hatred. We haven't come as far as Brin thinks.

What I would like to know more about is how these memes spread. What are the most efficient ways of spreading them and what are some examples of this. How have governments manipulated and changed these ideas to best suit them? What did Russia do to keep its country in a constant state of paranoia during the Cold War?

Chris N