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====== Ideas are Alive ======

If you are one of my friends or family, I have alluded to this concept several times, but not fully fleshed out the idea. In this essay, I intend to explain this idea, and also how it relates to my personal political beliefs and life philosophy. This is how I explain the turmoil in today's world.

===== Explanation =====

==== Things that make copies of themselves ====
I think we can separate all things into three-ish categories, based on their origin ((Don't worry too much about the specifics of these categories. I labored quite a while trying to get a precise definition of all three, but I realized that this was mostly a waste of time, because ultimately all of these are categories that I impose on the world so the specifics don't really matter. If you're interested, howerver, I can talk more about the specifics))

  * Non-reproducible: The thing was created as a part of a finite process which began at some point, and will never begin again. Example: A mountain was created as a part of the finite process of geology. Although more mountains will be created, the process of geology will, at a certain extent, cease.
  * Psuedo-reproducable: Things that have several copies, but can not influence the creation of copies in any way. Example: Pebbles in a stream are all very much the same, and are being created because of the process of erosion. However, the reason that pebbles look the same is not due to any influence that pebbles exert over their creation?
  * Reproducable: Things that create copies of themselves. Example: Plants, animals, humans, bacteria... ie, anything alive.

These three categories cover pretty much anything. Emphasis on pretty much, because there is another category that I will explain in due time. First, however, I want to talk about the properties of reproducible objects.

Reproducible things are subject to an evolutionary process. This means that objects that are more capable of reproducing end up becoming dominant in any population of them. In plants and animals, and, indeed, every living thing, this happens through DNA. In animals, both parents share a bit of their DNA to create their offspring.

This is such a strong tendency of established reproducible things that we sometimes talk about these things "wanting" to reproduce, which is naturally a little confusing, because that "humanizes" the behavior. For example, I might say that a bacteria wants to multiply, when bacteria are incapable of "wanting" anything, as they lack a brain. So, what I mean is, these things have a _tendency_ to do certain things enabling them to reproduce.

The fourth category of things is what I call "meta-reproducible". These are things that cannot directly create copies of themselves, but can influence their own creation. The best example of this are viruses. Viruses do not have the capability to reproduce on their own, so they hijack the reproductive qualities of cells to mass produce their offspring. This puts them in an interesting middle ground of requiring some other reproducible thing to reproduce but still being subject to a separate evolutionary process.

Which leads us into my next point, 

==== Ideas are like viruses ====

This might be a confusing thought for some of you. How can a non-physical thing be like a virus, a physical object? The truth is, however, that ideas *are* physical objects. The brain is a physical organism, made of physical neurons, and those neurons (and the connections between them) are what make up ideas. That doesn't change the nature of what I'm saying, but it might help some of you get more comfortable with what I'm speaking about.

Ideas are like viruses. They want to reproduce, and they evolve to get really good at reproducing. They reproduce when someone, who has the idea in their head, communicates some information about the idea to another person, who then, without realizing it, constructs a working copy of the idea, capable of repeating the process with another individual. 

Here's an example. Imagine a classroom full of students. Each student has a notebook. One student in the room passes a note to the students adjacent to him in the room, with this message: "Tear out a sheet of paper from your notebook, and write this message on it. Then, give the note to a person sitting next to you." imagine also that the students obey any instruction given to them. The note will therefore propagate itself throughout the room, despite being completely inert.

Of course, the critical assumption there is that humans are completely obedient, which is not true. In order to propagate, the idea must employ various strategies to cause humans to propagate it further.

==== Positive and Negative Ideas ====
I divide all ideas into two categories. These categories are not cut and dry, but are pretty good, in my opinion.

The first category is //positive ideas//. Positive ideas are ideas that propagate because they are useful. They are the equivalent of tools. The way these work is that one person will see another person doing something, and will decide to copy them. A person might see someone using a hammer, for instance, and then copy them.

("Usefulness" is anything that improves a person's life. So, a game is a positive idea, as is a song, a recipe, etc.)

The second category is //negative ideas//. These are ideas that spread by other any other means besides objective benefit.

Now, positive ideas could be described as being "pro-human". That is, positive ideas "want" to improve human's lives, as this is how they propagate. On the other hand, negative ideas often grow to become "anti-human". That is, any benefit provided by the idea is tangential to it's purpose of propagating by any means necessary, meaning that they become vestigal and eventually get shaved away as cruft.

===== Application to politics =====

==== The problem with ideology ====

Political Ideologies are almost always negative ideas. That's not to say that it is wrong to hold political opinions, or even that it is wrong to be politically active. It is only through the efforts of dedicated groups of political activists that positive change can occur within the government. For example, if there were no political activists during the Civil Rights movement, would there have ever been a change in the way that society treated black people?

What I am more focused on is a particular type of political community, where likeminded people slowly transform from individuals with distinct opinions into nothing more than a mouthpiece for a vague set of ideas, sacrificing their own quality of life for no discernable benefit to themselves. These groups of people are growing, entrapping more and more people in their ranks. While most people can see this form the other side of the political spectrum, few are willing to introspect and consider that it is also happening to them.

It seems to me that there are two types of politically active people. On the one hand, you have a group of people that is more interested in finding solutions, and achieving their goals, than squabbling over pedantry. On the other hand, you have a group of people that believe it is locked in mortal combat with another group of people, who distorts reality such that it favors them, and that care more about "scoring points" than either being objectively correct or achieving goals.