Unfortunately, this is a very common question, often asked when we see a car drive the wrong way down the road; when we witness someone duck under the boom gate for a railroad crossing or not long following someone saying “Hey guys, watch this”.
When people act stupid, people tend to find it somewhat confronting and confusing. After all, you have to ask:
“Why didn’t they just think?” or,
“Why didn’t they use some common sense?”
Well, what if I told you that it was caused by a sickness? That ignorance was, in fact, a viral infection, passed from person to person. A soulless, formless, mutating virus that infects the brains of the weak-minded, leading them away from education?
It’s a terrifying thought, and disturbingly accurate. In fact, in many ways, it can explain many different and disturbing forms of ignorance, from racism, transphobia, homophobia & religion to bunkem beliefs like homeopathy, fortune-telling & even conspiracy theories.
For the sake of transparency, I must make it clear that stupidity is not, strictly speaking, a virus. However, if you understand how viruses and sicknesses spread, it is a useful cognitive aid to help explain the real reason why people tend to be so stupid. But, ignorance isn’t like a virus with genetic mutations, it’s more akin to a memeplex with memetic mutation. The word of the day is: ‘MEME’
Meme /’meem/ n. 1. Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes. 2. Slang Something, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, including quizzes, basic pictures, video templates etc.If you are confused as to how captioned pictures are related to stupidity, or you think this is just me expressing my opinion of online culture, then I suggest you re-read the definition above, or pay close attention to what I am about to say.
Although an online image is a means of transmitting an idea, and so may very well be a ‘meme’, it is not the only form that memes can take. A meme is, nothing more and nothing less, than a unit of thought which you can share. Let’s take a simple example: Jokes.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
I chose this for two reasons. Firstly, most people know it, and secondly, the basic punchline of the joke is “to get to the other side” - the setup is therefore that although a chicken crossing the road seems unusual and thus jokeworthy, the actual answer is rather mundane, and your ignorance of this mundanity creates the humour.
Now, I am sure that some of you have heard a variation of this joke. This is a very simple joke, for some people it’s the first joke they have ever heard. But, perhaps as a result of the original answer being so mundane, some people have decided to “improve” it. Even with the same question, the answer may instead be:
“It was too far to walk around.”
“To show the possum it could be done.”
Or, my personal favourite:
“It wanted to watch the builder ‘lay’ a brick.”
Some people even change the original wording “Why did an elephant cross the road?”; “Why did the duck cross the road?” or “why did the dinosaur cross the road?” - all variations of the original joke.
Now, consider for a moment, that although these are just rewrites or recreations of the same joke, even if a person never retells the original “to cross the road” joke, it may yet live on (in a sense) through the “descendants” of the original joke. A person heard this joke, and whilst they were thinking about it (whilst it was in their head) they either enjoyed the joke and so referenced it, or did not enjoy it and so developed it further. In essence, by hearing and adapting this joke, we alter its memetic structure, trying to make it funnier.
But, why do we do this? Well, people like jokes, so we are changing the joke so that MORE people find it funny. So that more people enjoy it and want to pass it on. They tell it to more and more people.
Consider, now, Avian Influenza. Yes, just because I am talking about chickens, I chose bird flu as my example. Now, consider for a moment, that as a chicken’s immune system fights a virus it will try to kill it, but even if the original viral infection is eliminated, the illness may yet live on in the virus’s “descendants” as it spreads. A chicken gets sick and whilst it is sick (whilst the virus is in their body) its immune system fights it, but at the same time the virus replicates. Either the immune system is too slow, or the virus adapts in a way that the immune system has not fought before, and so it kills off parts of the virus that are not as strong, and so as it passes on the virus through mucus and secretions, it essentially alters the virus’s genetic structure, making it more infectious.
Why does it do this? Well, it’s not deliberate, it’s just evolution. The immune system of a chicken is trying to kill ALL of the virus, but as it kills off some of it, only the mutated versions of the virus most fit to survive the immune system’s attacks can be passed on to more and more chickens.
Are you seeing a correlation here? Because it’s not just a metaphor, it can help to explain how people think, how different ideas spread and also how we can prevent their spread. When it comes to jokes, we don’t have an immune system, but we have a sense of humour. We are only susceptible to jokes that are stronger than our sense of humour, and we only pass on jokes that have successfully bypassed our systems so that we think it’s worthy of passing on. Each time we tell a joke, it's like we have sneezed to pass on the joke-virus.
But this doesn’t just work with jokes . . .
A joke is just a single form of meme, or a "memotype", but every single thought in your head, if it is transmissible, can be the subject of a meme. The indivisible fragments of thought that construct a meme can be a very confusing, but what we do know is that whether you're dealing with a joke memotype, a query memotype or even a factual memotype, the life-cycle and evolution of the meme is the same.
Let’s say, for instance, facts - or, attempts at facts, let’s call them statements. Say that I tell you:
“Too much sugar can give you diabetes”
Do you accept that?
Of course, whether or not you accept a statement to be “true” or “false” is not determined by your sense of humour (unless someone presents a stupid statement, like “I don’t like roses, they’re too chewy”), but for a statement about sugar and diabetes, often the system by which you confront it is through critical thinking. A sense of humour is really nothing less than critical thinking in regards to subjective, emotional response to something we experience. I am not going to tell you if that statement is factual or not, I’ll leave that up to you - I am not really sure myself, I just made it up. But, the means by which you determine its factuality may be similar for any meme you encounter.
Whether you accept it or not is essentially due to how you think, critically.
This leads on to my discussions of ignorance. See, some people believe that the Earth is Flat. These so-called “flat-earthers” are not actually less capable of thought than us. Rather, when they attempted to learn, they came across something which bypassed their critical thinking.
The difference between flat-earthers and people who think flat-earthers are stupid and ignorant is merely that our critical thinking was capable of rejecting this meme. I do use the words 'ignorant' and 'stupid' interchangeably, but it is important to understand that whilst they do fit the definition of the word 'stupid' I am not claiming that these people are "unintelligent".
See, flat-earthers, and other such conspiracy theorists as well as bigots, do, in fact, think about these beliefs. However, just as a person with a compromised immune system may be sick for a very long time, a person with a compromised critical thinking system may be affected by ignorance for their whole life. Even if they are capable of being critical of other things, the reason they are so ignorant is because these viral memes have overcome the immune system of their thoughts or bypassed it entirely.
Think of a virus. When a virus is spread to you, it doesn’t transfer through psychic link. It needs to attack through a weakness in your immune system. Through food you eat, through air you breathe - it may even be attacking you constantly but your immune system is too strong, so it is left waiting for your immune system to weaken so that it can finally break in. Or, if you have a cut in your skin, it gets in through the the wound, as it can bypass the protective layer straight to your insides.
When it comes to viral memes, they attack through the weak points of your critical thinking system - your emotions. Either they attack without warning, making you feel without thinking - like, when a Neo-Nazi tells others to be afraid of foreign invaders or when a homeopath offers water to make you feel healthier and happier.
Or, it could wait for your critical thinking system to weaken, perhaps during a moment of grief or hardship when a priest offers to pray with you or during the initial stages of euphoric, newfound love when your partner attempts to get you to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It may even attack through a weakness, like a wound in your skin, it may attack a sore point in your critical thinking, like when homophobes and transphobes attack your own disgust at people who harm innocent children, or when fortune-tellers and mediums tells you that they can help you find love, just after a breakup.
The memetics of these ideas are such that they attack us where we are most susceptible - our emotions. If you are interested in learning more about this particular facet of memetics, there is a very informative video by CGP Grey that divulges more on this topic. It helped to inspire this very post, so I suggest you check it out.
But, this is where it gets truly insidious. This is often not conscious. Religious people aren’t trying to indoctrinate you because they think they can manipulate you. Racists aren’t trying to lie to you so that you can join their team before they reveal the truth. Even homophobes aren’t trying to spread dissent and hatred for any nefarious political ends.
They are doing it because they are infected too. They actually believe what they say, because whatever the meme is - whether it is that god loves us all; the Earth is flat and governments lie; Jews control money and the media; homosexuals will cause harm to children and society or even that water mixed with onions can cure a headache . . . they believe it to be true, because it attacked a weakness in their critical thinking.
Their ignorance is due to something that bypassed their critical thinking. Either they were raised believing it since their youth, and so their critical thinking never identified the foreign thoughts, Or it’s something that affects them emotionally, and so attempts to remove it flair up that emotion again (or other emotions, like anger, due to the backfire effect) and so the meme essentially protects itself.
These memeplexes, these complex ideologies, are nothing more than the result of memetic evolution. Only transmissible ideas live on, and those which are not fit to survive in human minds and culture inevitable die off. Sometimes, this is due to all of the “carriers” of a meme dying off, like how Mayan gods and culture are rarely (if ever) believed in - the Mayans themselves died. However, because it affected fear, the “2012 Mayan Apocalypse” meme had a brief resurgence.
Sometimes, the idea itself is too cumbersome to be believed, like a belief in Qi or Ch'i (氣) and flow of internal life energies through the meridian network of a body, which is a very outdated and superstitious belief. However, portions of these beliefs live on, like Acupuncture as people rarely know the history of the traditional Chinese medicine that helped develop it.
Then, there are even some ideas which died off because of a shift in the cultural landscape. Like how sex was once considered to be taboo and entirely untoward before marriage by most people, until the invention of prophylactics made problems of unwanted pregnancy and sexual-transmitted infections a trivial issue. However, despite this, some religions still hold onto their outdated beliefs in regards to sex.
These are all examples of ideas on the verge of extinction, whose dying off leads to only its far-flung descendants surviving on.
The ideas that are unbelievable, or unable to be shared, die off - so, even when an idea seems truly unbelievable to us, it can yet survive on because it found an environment within which it could survive. This 'environment' is more commonly known as - a gullible mind.
But this is where things become dangerous. See, some memes mutate within a carrier. Just look at conspiracy theories, these are - more often than not - akin to a superbug. By developing within a person, they can weaken the immune system as a whole, they make it harder for a person to get better, because they are more vulnerable to other ideas, like how people with diabetes are more likely to get heart disease. But in the case of these viral memes, it weakens the critical thinking of the person, making them even more gullible.
Those gives room for the meme - the conspiracy theory itself - to grow. Even if it cannot be passed on, it can replicate within a person to become more complex and self-sufficient.
The most ignorant people we know, they did not wake up one morning believing everything they believe. Every born child is born, tabula rasa, and ideas are presented to them as they grow. Even the most bigoted racist, homophobic monster we know are just the result of a virulent idea that bypassed their critical thinking skills.
Going back to the Flat-Earthers. Often their belief starts with something very small and easily acceptable: the ground on which you stand is flat. Building upon this that round ground, like a hill, makes things roll and fall off, this develops into a simple concept that the entire world must be flat. The next step is realizing that others are trying to claim the world is not flat, and coming to the sensible conclusion that, since the earth clearly is flat, those who say otherwise are either trying to trick you, or have been tricked themselves. From there, it can mutate and evolve into a variety of ways, from believing that NASA is trying to eliminate religions that propose a flat earth, or believing in a military presence trying to prevent people from exploring Antarctica.
Even people such as Homophobes. It begins with a very simple thought, often something as simple as the concept of homosexuality making them feel uncomfortable, but it could be someone telling them homosexuals are dangerous or sinful. This then develops into fear and disgust, and reinforcing this idea makes them create wild claims about freedom, disease and child endangerment.
What about Theists? Well, in my experience, the very first thought is either "god loves you", "you have a soul" or "magic is real". Then, developing from there, building up the story from the bible and the fantasy of heaven.
This can even make an idea mutate to work alongside another idea. People who believe in religion are more likely to believe in ghosts. People who believe the earth is flat are more likely to be religious. And when these ideas become symbiotic, it becomes much, much harder to cure.
This is why it's so hard to re-educate the ignorant. It's not just one meme, it's not just "black people are just like white people", it's also "genetics doesn't work like that"; "socio-economics explains crime rates"; "monoculturalism is not actually that easily understood"; "I, and most people, don't accept your definition of beauty"; "the media misrepresents almost every ethnic identity" & "no, that's not what 'white privilege' means".
Even if you can convince them that one meme is actually inaccurate, and so it dies off, the rest are still there infecting their brain.
So, what is the solution? If ignorance is essentially a kind of brainsickness, then how can we make such people better?
Well, the same way we make people safer from viruses. You can vaccinate and inoculate children from harmful viruses by presenting them with an inactive or weaker form of the original virus. So, to inoculate people from ignorance, you test and strengthen their critical thinking skills with logical hypotheticals, riddles and puzzles. You can also give people antibiotics to prevent viruses, or other medicines to work alongside our immune system, but the memetic equivalent is education, an understanding of logic, reason and meaning which boosts how we think overall making critical thinking stronger as a result. And, of course, we can never forget the importance of herd immunity. If there are those amongst us with weaker critical thinking, such as the young or the gullible, then we can protect them by making those around them more critical as a whole.
But, what of the people that are already sick? In all honesty, prevention is the best cure. Some ignorances are too deeply embedded to be easily cured. However, there are some things you can do.
Setting a good example, through herd immunity, can help others to get better. Also, in regards to virulent memes, introspection is equivalent to bedrest. Just as bedrest lets a person rest and let their immune system work, getting a person to stop and think about their own beliefs allows their critical thinking to get to work.
It can even be dealt with through quarantine.
No, not isolating people from you, or bigots from others, but rather, quarantining those thoughts and working on others, to develop the strength of their critical thinking as a whole, so that they can tackle the memeplex later when their mental faculties can overcome it.
Or, if you're incredibly patient, you could treat them symptomatically - deal with one issue at a time. Start with one meme, move onto another, move onto another. This is incredibly difficult and requires a lot of patience and empathy, and at the end of the day, it will only ever succeed if the ignorant person themselves is interested in developing their critical thought.
Unless the two of you have the same goal, you are wasting your time.
In conclusion, before you go home thinking that every viral meme is completely borne of ignorance and degenerate thought, keep in mind that all transmissible thoughts are memes.
The content in this blog is a meme, a belief that "ignorance can be harmful" is a meme. Your brain is essentially the biome within which the complex ecosystem of your memes exist in a complicated, living system of thought. Some of those memes are born of ignorance, some are not, and some are in a constant battle with your critical thinking, trying to survive in the harsh mindscape within your brain. You have to remember that, although I have only ever spoken about harmful, viral memes, some viral memes are helpful - like charity, uplifting fandom, education & comedy. This is why I don't like to judge ignorant people. They, like you, let memes into and out of their brain on a daily basis. By reading this very blog, you are exposing yourself to memes, and testing your critical thinking. Hell, within this blog I left a link to a YouTube video that I thought was worth learning, essentially perpetuating a viral meme. Memes are not good or bad, they are just a thoughts. And the study of memetics is just a tool to understand how thoughts are shared, not whether they are good or bad.
Although I think this can help you to understand ignorance, and potentially even help those around you who have been too gullible for their own good, I know some other may believe that this memeplex I've presented to you today is potentially harmful. As to whether they are right or not, well, you'll have to decide that for yourself . . .
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