Glen wrote:
It is not only a metaphor. It goes deeper, and it touches the core of
our civilization and what it means to be human. Religious groups are
adaptive units subject to evolution. They are based on replicating
entities shaped by group selection.
I'm not convinced. The idea is that the gene-related family or the
meme-related group is the map to the cell, with accompanying lineages.
And when that family or group is corrupted in some way, then that seeds
the tumor.
My main criticism still stands: The intervention for cancer relies on
killing the broken cells. You can't just scatter them and have them
blend into healthy tissue. But you _can_ scatter the families/groups
and have them blend into a healthy society.
I agree that there is a difference here... though distributing radical
elements (with enough charisma and motivation) may in fact (trans)plant
crystallization seeds. On the other hand, I think this requires that
the "solution" they are being distributed into be "near saturation"
already... So distributing angry/hurt/disruptive elements into an
already sick or highly stressed "body" can be asking for trouble.
I *definitely* don't want to pick on the Muslim or Middle Eastern world
right now... it is a ripe field for this kind of speculation, but the
stakes there, for the people there are too high for me to be comfortable
using them to further my idle speculations. If I wanted to do that, I
would go into journalism or politics!
But even if we dive down deeper into your analogy, there is another
glaring difference: In cancer, each cell has its own copy of the DNA.
Mutations happen at that level. Granted, there are differences in the
interpretation of the DNA as well. But I don't know of evidence that
cancer is _primarily_ epigenetic. Am I simply ignorant, here?
Granted, the social analogy is *highly* permeable between individual and
group... though once an ideology is embedded in an individual, she *can*
be very resistant to adopting new or different variants from the larger
environment.
Because individual cells have their own copy of DNA, they are more
autonomous than, say, a family/group that uses a holy book like the
bible or quran. A great example might be the consideration of the
various sects. Both Jehova's Witnesses and Catholics claim to read the
bible as a holy book. Same book, seemingly different "group DNA". So,
_if_ the analogy maps cells to families/groups, then the holy book is
definitely _not_ analogous to DNA. Some other structure is required,
something intra-group that allows the group to be more autonomous.
The "book"s are a shared genotype, the heirarchy of religion (from grand
poobah or pope down to a local evangelical whackadoodle) are the
"expression" and "regulatory" system. Watch the movie "Machine Gun
Preacher" for example.
We can go further and nit-pick each mapping. But I think the most
important one is the intervention problem mentioned above. I don't
think we're going to find a "cure" for totalitarianism that is in any
way similar to whatever cure we might find for cancer. At least, so
far, the abatement methods for cancer don't seem to bear any resemblance
to the abatement methods for totalitarianism ... unless your proposal is
that the state of the art treatment for totalitarianism is to kill the
citizens... which seems a bit extreme.
Back to the meta-discussion. The value of metaphor in thinking (and
simulation) is not always it's use as a perfect model, but rather the
contrasts it generates for one to consider. The best use of a metaphor
is to bend, mix, break, blend it in facile ways that help improve
perspective and understanding... to use a physical metaphor myself for
the understanding of the use of metaphor in critical thinking.
- Steve
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