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.

I think we can separate all things into three-ish categories, based on their origin ¹⁾

• 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,

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.