I agree with your point that people frequently seem more interested in the spread of enemy ideas than their own. Only a lazy thinker would hold the opinion that bad ideas because of one cause. I saw a paper just yesterday detailing that advocates of religious terrorism tended to have at least some college. That research only just recently seems to have become mainstream. Why so? The causal mechanisms are not simple for single person.
On the other hand, for looking at a group, that doesn’t mean the causal mechanism has to be MORE complicated. It might even be more simple. A single person can come to a belief for complex reasons, but perhaps the same belief can propagate through society for a simpler reason than the reason each individual comes to embracing it, such as, “it’s included in every 9th grade textbook” or “it allows one to find a spouse more easily.” Maybe this begs the question though? How did the idea get included in every textbook? Why does the idea allow one to find a spouse more easily?
Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without Any Gaps does not discuss the history of how ideas have spread explicitly, but he does deal with the history of the interaction of major philosophical concepts and schools of thought. Beneath the content of the arguments is the story of the history of education, literacy, and evangelization. You pick up any history of Christianity, and it will still go into detail about how different tactics and strategies for the spread of the Christian idea: domestic proselytization, missionaries offering services to kings, centers of literacy, outreach to poor people, conversions of whole households, military force, etc. In some instances we even have the tactics recorded. The Jesuits sent thousands of letters to their superiors detailing their attempts to spread Christianity among Native Americans in the Great Lakes Region.
The Rationalsphere has not even begun to develop a method or programmatic approach to the spread of rationality.
I agree with your point that people frequently seem more interested in the spread of enemy ideas than their own. Only a lazy thinker would hold the opinion that bad ideas because of one cause. I saw a paper just yesterday detailing that advocates of religious terrorism tended to have at least some college. That research only just recently seems to have become mainstream. Why so? The causal mechanisms are not simple for single person.
On the other hand, for looking at a group, that doesn’t mean the causal mechanism has to be MORE complicated. It might even be more simple. A single person can come to a belief for complex reasons, but perhaps the same belief can propagate through society for a simpler reason than the reason each individual comes to embracing it, such as, “it’s included in every 9th grade textbook” or “it allows one to find a spouse more easily.” Maybe this begs the question though? How did the idea get included in every textbook? Why does the idea allow one to find a spouse more easily?
Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without Any Gaps does not discuss the history of how ideas have spread explicitly, but he does deal with the history of the interaction of major philosophical concepts and schools of thought. Beneath the content of the arguments is the story of the history of education, literacy, and evangelization. You pick up any history of Christianity, and it will still go into detail about how different tactics and strategies for the spread of the Christian idea: domestic proselytization, missionaries offering services to kings, centers of literacy, outreach to poor people, conversions of whole households, military force, etc. In some instances we even have the tactics recorded. The Jesuits sent thousands of letters to their superiors detailing their attempts to spread Christianity among Native Americans in the Great Lakes Region.
The Rationalsphere has not even begun to develop a method or programmatic approach to the spread of rationality.