There are some major discussion and research sites out there on "memetics." This is basically the application of evolutionary/selection theory to ideas. You perhaps do not understand that the same kind of evolutionary selection mechanisms that produce biological speciation, ecosystems, etc. operate universally. Success succeeds. In general, whenever the survival of a type increases the probability of similar types reproducing, the Darwinian process comes in play.

The more intelligent a species, the more of the information needed to survive, prosper and mate is carried as memory instead of DNA. When members of that species learn how to pass this information on to the next generation, then that process plus the units of information that are transmitted become the equivalent - for evolutionary purposes - of DNA genes, so we call them memes to distinguish them, as memes have their own distinctive characteristics.

A meme, for example, may act like a virus within an individual person. An example is the nonsense concept of "faith" - to believe without rational cause or ground. One can have "faith" in literally anything - Buddha, Jesus, Hitler, female intuition, "The National Enquirer," but all it means literally is that you can't support that belief or set of beliefs, but you have tagged them with this special word "x", where "x" = "faith" in English, which means that you have decided that you will act as though you believe them regardless.

I say "act as though you believe" rather than believe, as I don't think that it is possible to so thoroughly subvert the natural processes by which we normally accept things as true without doing major violence to the entire structure of consciousness. Our consciousness is not built in. It evolves through interaction and feedback, such as the touching of finger and thumb in the womb, or the exchange of smiles between an infant and an adult, telling the infant that we see what it feels, creating a mirror of the proto-"soul."

Because our sensory and processing hardware evolved to keep us in contact with reality, there are major similarities in the outcomes of this process between individuals - and even between species, similar to what we call convergent evolution re DNA - eg., the structure of the eye in both vertebrates and certain highly intelligent mollusks such as octupi or giant squid.

We recognize emotional states such as anger or love even in species that have diverged from ours by hundreds of millions of years, such as birds. In general, four billion years of survivors - which is what we are all the offspring of - did not make it by losing critical contact with reality. "Faith" should be called "agreeing to act like something is true, for social or psychological reasons having nothing to do with its actual correspondence to reality." People claiming to "know" by faith - unless they have genuinely become insane or live in a sheltered social environment that protects them from the consequences of poor judgement - are actually lieing, but they fudge the issue by mystifying the concept of "knowledge" itself, reducing it to behaviorism - "knowledge is identical to whatever I will behave as though it is true."

The plot thickens, however, when we subject noncepts like "faith" to memetic analysis. Children are taught in many variants of religion that "God" knows their every thought and feeling and is constantly judgeing them. Thoughts can be "sinful" - contrary to "God's" will - so God may punish them for "bad thoughts." In particular, questioning the very existence of "God" may result in "God" choosing to make an example of them, by perhaps sending a bolt of lightning to strike them down, from whence they will be transported to a state of eternal torture to make the worst that could be done by the Guatemalan School of the Americas graduates look like a pleasant dining experience. Of course, "God" does not simply reveal himself like a mountain or a cow pattie. This is a test of character - separating the intelligent from the faithful. Believe that "I" exist or "I'll" kill you and then fiendishly torture you - FOREVER!!!

As Joe Strazinski, noted Hollywood screenwriter and producer of the famous "Babylon V" sf TV series, put it, this "God," if we subjected him to judgement by human norms, would come off as "a malign thug." I would add "psychotic" and a few other choice epitaphs.

But, if you attach ANY credibility to this idiot's tale of "God," then you are sucked in, because of basic decision theory. Decision theory says that you multiply the value or disvalue of an outcome by the likelihood of it happening. We all do this every moment of our lives in every decision we make - including what we believe. Most knowledge is empiracal, based on a judgement of the meaning of experience. We believe that if we drop something it will fall down, based on perhaps years of experience with things falling and perhaps also a degree in physics with an understanding of what appears to be a coherent theory of universal motion, backed by the refined, recorded and analyzed experiences of millions of other people.

However, it might fall up. A mini-black hole might just be passing through the area and for an instant overbalance the local gravity of the earth. We don't bank on that. We don't assume that meteors will strike us - although they certainly could (we even have one known and verified case of this). If we came into the path of a large comet, we might have to change our behavior, but in the meantime, even though a meteor hitting us might well be fatal, so are a lot of other things, like being hit by a stray bullet on the 4th of July. So, even a disasterous outcome, when multiplied by a very tiny probability of actually happening, will be disregarded by a rational person.

But what happens if we plug an INFINITELY bad outcome into that process? Then, no matter how small the chance, so long as it is non-zero and positive, will yield an INFINITE weight to that branch of the decision tree. Right?

So, if that is as far as your analysis went, then you would have to take "Pascal's Wager" (which actually focussed on the alleged positive side - infinite paradise for the believer). A child might be too frightened by the prospect of eternal damnation to carry the analysis further and be trapped by this version of the "faith" meme - and many are (I know from personal experience).

Only if one realizes that there are an infinite number of possible variations of "God" to be considered, does one realize that the argument fails. Why believe in the particular version some nut tells you? Maybe "God" actually wants you to only believe what you can prove, and this malign Mafia "protection" version is just nonsense. Then you could miss out on evolving to the next level that "God" has provided for the intelligent people. But you believe it because your parents tell you, and there is a high psychological cost to a young child in challenging or judging their parents - or living a lie, if your "faithful" parents are the kind that will help "God" out in "His" divine thugery.

Another telling example of this is NAZIism. Harsch, in "Pattern of Conflict" notes that he tried for years as an American news correspondent in NAZI Germany to find anyone who actually believed in the NAZI philosophy. Every single person, regardless of their position in the NAZI machine, would tell him in private that "of course I don't really believe in any of this nonsense, but one does have to get along, eh?" Then he finally found some minor functionary who apparently really did sincerely believe - but only the social/economic parts - not the silly racial stuff, which he agreed was total nonsense. Harsh is not by far the only witness to note this strange phenomynon.

So, here's an example of a meme that virtually destroyed civilization, killed tens of millions of innocent people, and yet only probably a handful of people actually believed it.

In contrast, in China we have the infamous "Thick Black Theory," never translated except in parts or in reference, but making Machiavelli look like a proponent of truth and innocense. The book was the outcome of scientific research by the author, who studied the traits of successful Chinese in the early 1900's in Beijing, and noted that the strongest correlation to success in terms of wealth, power, etc. was a combination of absolute ruthlessness and total hypocrisy. So, he wrote a manual for success based on those results, and that manual is still a major best seller in China, required reading for business students along with Sun Tsu's "The Art of War," "The Romance of the Threee Kindoms" etc., even though it has been legally banned for the past century.

Bottom line? A culture that vocally espouses one set of beliefs - Marxist / Confucian / Taoist - while systematically doing just the opposite. A set of memes reinforcing deceit as a cultural fundamental has evolved to sustain itself like the fundamentalist Christianity or NAZI memes described above.

Just as the NAZI meme ultimately ate Germany like some Lovecraftian Cthulu, so the variants on the "faith" meme always mutate and turn on their siblings (eg., the "Reformation") when they have fully occupied their ecosystem and have no more opponents to devour. And China always reaches such a point of internal corruption that the barbarians sweep in, becoming corrupted in turn.

I could provide a whole grocery list of such memes that parasite themselves on the "progrssive" left and have not yet evolved to a state of successful symbiosis by which they can successfully promote the growth of the movement as such. I have mentioned before the examples of feminism and black power, both of which are inherently in contradiction to the supposed leftist ideals of humanism and equality. These and other similar memes function as engines of corruption, sucking resources from legitimate efforts and funnelling them into the veins of the vampires. But this will have to wait for another night, as my ancient laptop is blinking at me, and I too am about out of gas for now.... Later.