The evolution of culture
How anti-rational memes sabotage culture, education and the Enlightenment.
Memes
“How can I drop the anti-rational part of my mind that interferes with me taking my children seriously?”
When you struggle against or take a coercive approach with another person, the natural response of that person is to defend their corner and fight back. The same happens inside our own minds. When you are fighting a part of your own mind, that causes the part you are trying to stamp out to dig in, to entrench itself, to defend its corner more vigorously.
“How can I become more aware of anti-rational parts in my mind?”
Drop the second guessing and scrutinising and judging. It is as toxic for us as that kind of thing is for our children. If you are not feeling free—free to think, free to be and free to act in accordance with your own ideas, your thinking flying free as a bird—it might be that you are seizing up your thinking with scrutiny and judgement, objectifying yourself as a parent.
“How can I overcome the antirational memes disabling my creativity, with my disabled creativity?!”
Although antirational memes as it were fight attempts to criticise an drop them, that does not mean that they are immutable. We can use our creativity to dissolve them. The situation is not as devoid of hope as “disabled creativity” makes it sound.
“If antirational memes are compelling me to coerce my children, what hope is there?!”
There is every reason for hope! And the fact that we have noticed that coercing our children is problematic is progress compared to how things were in the static society of the past. (And hey, maybe the fact that coercionists these days seem to feel more need to justify their advocacy of coercion is itself progress?)
“Why did my mother’s coercive words fly out of my mouth?!”
There are probably antirational memes operating when parents are feeling compelled to go along with the standard coercive approach with their children despite their doubts about its rightness.
“If a parent has an aversion to something a child enjoys doing, how do you solve that problem?”
Such questions are in effect asking how we and our children can solve the problem created by us in effect having a visceral aversion to our children innocently enjoying themselves learning. Why is that the case, and when we are in such a state, what can we do about it?
“Why does it sometimes hurt to think about Taking Children Seriously?”
Life can be messy for all of us. Sometimes when we try to make improvements, part of our mind panics, and that can hurt.
Memes survive by being good at getting themselves replicated
The ideas that have been around for a long time have not survived because they are the best at helping their holders survive or prosper. They have survived because they are successful at getting themselves replicated.
The fittest memes—survival of the meme
Enacting an anti-rational meme causes other people (typically one’s children) to lose the ability to think critically about the behaviour in question, and to become unable to refrain from enacting the meme themselves.
Breaking the spiral of coercion
What can we do about coercive antirational memes passed down the generations?