Tuesday, July 05, 2005
War vaccine
Book review in the latest New Scientist, titled "A Cure for the War Epidemic". Needless to say, the picture with the article shows some Anglican-looking ladies carrying signs that say "Stop the War Coalition! Don't Attack Iraq!". Also needless to say, Comrade Paul Ehrlich is involved in this.
Here's the theme: ... Memes spread up, down and sideways in a population, not just from parent to offspring. They are impermanent. They vary enormously and quickly. Yet that is exactly how pathogens behave. Like pathogens, ideas must infect a critical number of people before an epidemic starts. .... Because if ideas can spread like epidemics, then epidemiological understanding may suggest controls. The idea of launching a war reaches its tipping point when it has infected enough of the right people. Could there be some way of recognizing where those thresholds are, and interfering by launching counterideas among the right people in the same way that doctors launch vaccine drives against disease?
Of course, these Osama-loving Luddites are thinking of ways to vaccinate America against Bush. But they are missing the point entirely, diametrically, and mirror-imagely. In fact Bush's war is PRECISELY an implementation of this same medical model. He is attempting to inject bubbles of democracy and capitalism into the parts of the world most heavily infected by Mohammed's virus.
[The book supposedly being reviewed is Fever of War by Carol Byerly,
but the review doesn't seem to mention the book at all!] ¶ 4:39 PM
Here's the theme: ... Memes spread up, down and sideways in a population, not just from parent to offspring. They are impermanent. They vary enormously and quickly. Yet that is exactly how pathogens behave. Like pathogens, ideas must infect a critical number of people before an epidemic starts. .... Because if ideas can spread like epidemics, then epidemiological understanding may suggest controls. The idea of launching a war reaches its tipping point when it has infected enough of the right people. Could there be some way of recognizing where those thresholds are, and interfering by launching counterideas among the right people in the same way that doctors launch vaccine drives against disease?
Of course, these Osama-loving Luddites are thinking of ways to vaccinate America against Bush. But they are missing the point entirely, diametrically, and mirror-imagely. In fact Bush's war is PRECISELY an implementation of this same medical model. He is attempting to inject bubbles of democracy and capitalism into the parts of the world most heavily infected by Mohammed's virus.
[The book supposedly being reviewed is Fever of War by Carol Byerly,
but the review doesn't seem to mention the book at all!] ¶ 4:39 PM
