Antimemes are a culture-specific phenomenon. Different cultures have different antimemes.
Because cultures are nested within one-another, it’s interesting to posit that anti-memes can have their own anti-memes. For instance ethically-motivated vegetarianism is an anti-meme for (most) meat-eaters but wild animal suffering is an anti-meme for (most) ethically-motivated vegetarians.
Also note that the anti-meme of an anti-meme tends not to be a meme. This is a matter of dynamics. Since the meme culture is the default, a culture bonded to an anti-meme may only exist when the meme culture has not developed a way to dissolve the anti-meme. Thus, anti-memes for cultures bonded to anti-memes must be viewed as useless from the perspective of the meme-culture. Otherwise, the meme-culture would just use the anti-anti-meme to dissolve the anti-meme.
Wild animal suffering is a good example of this. Even though people periodically bring up wild animal suffering caused by plant farming as a talking point against ethical vegetarianism, actually taking wild animal suffering seriously would be far more corrosive to the meme-culture than ethical vegetarianism (the anti-meme culture) would be.
I also think some anti-memes might also be culture-generic. For instance, utilitarianism ideology looks a lot like the anti-meme for pro-social behavior. Even if utilitarianism is discussed relatively frequently (and periodically does get attacked as wrong), it checks all the boxes in practice:
Learning it threatens the egos and identities of adherants to the mainstream of a culture[1].
Utiliarianism, roughly speaking, equates saving the life of someone next door with saving the life of someone far away (which can easily be achieved relatively cheaply). This radically re-orients how moral virtue (ie egos and identities) would be assigned.
Learning the meme renders mainstream knowledge in the field unimportant by broadening the problem space of a knowledge domain, usually by increasing the dimensionality.
Utilitarianism dramatically reduces the moral importance of being involved in your local community by broadening the problem of morality to people far away who need way more help. Moral circle expansion (in the sense of considering animals more seriously as moral patients) also does this and even renders local communities unimportant depending on their complicity in factory farming and how much you care.
Mainstream wisdom considers detailed knowledge of the antimeme irrelevant, unimportant or low priority. Mainstream culture may just ignore the antimeme altogether instead.
Definitely true of factory farming. Pretty true of global poverty.
I hadn’t noticed utilitarianism and ethical vegetarianism check these boxes. I wrote this series hoping for exactly this kind of insight. Thanks!
Your comment on the cross-cultural application of utilitarianism makes this extra insightful. I have edited the original post to acknowledge that antimemes are not always culture-specific.
Because cultures are nested within one-another, it’s interesting to posit that anti-memes can have their own anti-memes. For instance ethically-motivated vegetarianism is an anti-meme for (most) meat-eaters but wild animal suffering is an anti-meme for (most) ethically-motivated vegetarians.
Also note that the anti-meme of an anti-meme tends not to be a meme. This is a matter of dynamics. Since the meme culture is the default, a culture bonded to an anti-meme may only exist when the meme culture has not developed a way to dissolve the anti-meme. Thus, anti-memes for cultures bonded to anti-memes must be viewed as useless from the perspective of the meme-culture. Otherwise, the meme-culture would just use the anti-anti-meme to dissolve the anti-meme.
Wild animal suffering is a good example of this. Even though people periodically bring up wild animal suffering caused by plant farming as a talking point against ethical vegetarianism, actually taking wild animal suffering seriously would be far more corrosive to the meme-culture than ethical vegetarianism (the anti-meme culture) would be.
I also think some anti-memes might also be culture-generic. For instance, utilitarianism ideology looks a lot like the anti-meme for pro-social behavior. Even if utilitarianism is discussed relatively frequently (and periodically does get attacked as wrong), it checks all the boxes in practice:
Utiliarianism, roughly speaking, equates saving the life of someone next door with saving the life of someone far away (which can easily be achieved relatively cheaply). This radically re-orients how moral virtue (ie egos and identities) would be assigned.
Utilitarianism dramatically reduces the moral importance of being involved in your local community by broadening the problem of morality to people far away who need way more help. Moral circle expansion (in the sense of considering animals more seriously as moral patients) also does this and even renders local communities unimportant depending on their complicity in factory farming and how much you care.
Definitely true of factory farming. Pretty true of global poverty.
This supposes
1) dissolution is easy enough that it can be used that way
2) That the meme-culture would do that—if the anti-anti-meme doesn’t get people back to the meme, that might not be done.
3) The ability to identify an anti-anti-meme may require taking the anti-meme seriously, or noticing it, which is made difficult by definition:
I hadn’t noticed utilitarianism and ethical vegetarianism check these boxes. I wrote this series hoping for exactly this kind of insight. Thanks!
Your comment on the cross-cultural application of utilitarianism makes this extra insightful. I have edited the original post to acknowledge that antimemes are not always culture-specific.