Patrick Garner- The "Dogma of Otherness"

The "Dogma of Otherness" touched upon Paranoia, Machismo, the East, and the Dogma of otherness. This arcticle describes each of Brin's four worldviews as "memes". A "meme" is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. However, these four "memes" are all very different from each other.

I found Brin's example about alieans landing on our planet and the different scenarios they would be in based on the type of people they were flying into. It reall got the point across about how different these "memes" actually are and how ignorant groups of people can be. I agrees with Brin's argument that we need to pass alond the 'dogma of otherness", but this will take a lot of time and will probably never happen. Peopl are difficult to change and when they do it needs to be on their own and without influence.

The "Dogma of otherness" is a very positive thing. However, how tolerant should we be of other society's actions and lifestyles? I believe that there is a fine line of what people should tolerate. If the world would have tolerated Hitler's beliefs and grotesque actions who knows what the world would be like today. Too much of anything can be bad.