The recent Doctors Plot in the UK highlights a useful way to conceptualize the current struggle between Islamic radicalism and Western (liberal democratic) Civilization.
"Memes" has become an overworked term which has lost some of its utility via such broad usage, but it is a valuable way to think about Islamic radicalism nonetheless.
Biological epidemics typically follow a predictable course. An outbreak occurs in a particular area. Vectors carry the infectious agent to naive populations. Within such populations exist various levels of natural immunity to the agent. In the worst cases, the Middle Ages Black Plague, for example, the natural immunity is negligible and large percentages of the population become ill and perish. As the most vulnerable die, and as the infectious agent mutates to come into some accommodation with the host, the infection becomes less virulent, less infections, and less deadly.
With the advent of the germ theory of illness, scientists were able to find ways to identify the infectious agents and the vectors involved and have become able to attack such infections using strategies based on such knowledge. By interdicting the vectors and treating the agents directly (killing the virus or bacteria) epidemics could be prevented or aborted before their worst effects could be experienced.
Ideas can spread virally in ways that are very closely related to biological epidemics. Infectious memes typically interfere with rational thought, enlist extreme emotional states to leverage their virulence, and can cause great injury or death to their hosts.
Anthropocentric Global Warming is one such idea that has followed a classical pattern.
A small group of climate scientists discern a potential problem lurking in their data. In point of fact, their information is admittedly incomplete and rudimentary, yet in order to raise the necessary funds to support further research, they must find ways to amplify their concern. The rather tenuous connection between human activity and potentially disruptive climate change "feels" right to subjects already steeped in an environmental ethos that depicts human changes to the natural world as somehow malevolent and dangerous. The combination of a vulnerable population and a vector by which the viral meme can be transmitted (the Media) produces an epidemic of people who sincerely and deeply believe that human derived CO2 is going to endanger all life on the planet. Close to 100% of the believers have no particular facility in understanding the scientific data upon which such concerns are based, yet they remain convinced they understand the problem and remain ignorant of their own ignorance. AGW thus becomes an infection that affects a large percentage of the population despite the fact that almost no one actually understands the scientific questions or the uncertainty surrounding them. The "infection" peaks with the panic inducing proclamations of one of the Typhoid Marys of AGW, Al Gore, and has already begun to slowly die out as the antibodies of the body politic has begun to attack the distortions of the meme. If the anti-biotic of scientific reason were to ultimately fail, the infection of AGW would potentially destroy economic advancement and consign millions to continued privation and early death. AGW belief (because of its low virulence and long incubation time) will take a long time to reach endemic, back ground levels, but the trend lines are clear.
AGW hysteria thus has recapitulated the course of biological epidemics throughout history.
The Global War on Terror is very likely to follow a similar course but with much more serious consequences if mismanaged.
The biggest problems with the current approach to the Global War on Terror occur at various points on the continuum. Both Democrats and Republicans have managed to misdiagnose the problem, though in different ways, and such misdiagnosis leaves us prone to enabling the spread of a so far manageable "disease" that is relatively localized into a full blown epidemic with mass casualties and disruptions.
The infectious agent in Islamic Radicalism is a form of Islam which is particularly appealing to disaffected, angry, young men who see themselves as marginalized or identify themselves with an "oppressed" people. Their identification is facilitated by an aging Civilization that lacks confidence and, out of a complex amalgam of guilt, self-hatred, envy, and unconscious rage, offers a ready acceptance of the post-modern, post-colonial construct of Western oppression and Eastern victimhood. Such ideas, which have become epidemic in the West, an already extant infection if you will, have seriously weakened the intellectual immune system of the West, making the individuals exposed to such ideas much less able to fight off the infection of radical ideas. Furthermore the pre-existing infection has led to an auto-immune response whereby parts of the West's immune system have actually become co-opted for use by the infectious agents. This occurs naturally with viruses, which depend upon the host's cellular machinery to replicate new viral particles; it also occurs in autoimmune disorders in which the very cells that should protect the body attack it instead. When the MSM pushes stories that support the agenda of the enemy and refuses to air stories which would assist the antibodies (military and intellectual), they are acting as autoimmune agents attacking our organs of perception, damaging our intellectual defenses, and creating conditions that facilitate the spread of the disease.
Treatment depends on identifying the agents involved and interdicting the vectors. We are doing a sub-par job in both areas.
Most of the discussion between the anti-war forces and the supporters of the efforts in Iraq focus on how to treat the localized infection. The anti-war position discounts the virulence of the infection and believes that a bacteriostatic approach is adequate. (Bacteriostatic drugs work by preventing the growth of the bacteria rather than killing it outright.) The supporters of the Iraq intervention believe that only a bactericidal approach (killing the infectious agents at the source) will be effective. Certainly, the anti-war approach includes lip service toward attacking the infection wherever it appears, with long distance, ie low dose, anti-biotics, but this approach can never work with a severe infection, even when it is localized. To remain in the Medical metaphor, an abscess must be drained before anti-biotics can be effective. Sadly the Democratic and Republican prescription is to kill individual cells that carry the infection; they only differ in the particular anti-biotics involved (large scale military plus Special Forces versus Special Forces only) and neither has presented even a minimal program to attack the viral idea itself. The closest we have come to such an approach was the failed idea that democracy (in isolation) would be enough to inoculate the vulnerable population from the spread of the infection.
Furthermore, neither pro nor anti-Iraq war proponents have attempted to seriously address the vectors that spread the infection to vulnerable populations. In fact, much of the MSM and the left leaning elites continue to propose facilitating the spread of the vectors (Muslim immigrants from areas where the infection is endemic, facilitating the spread of Islamist propaganda in the name of freedom of speech, eschewing criticism of Islamic terror, etc.)
When the Brown government decided to completely avoid commenting on the nature of the terrorist threat as being specifically Muslim, they only added nutrients to the cultural brew that sustains the infection. The infectious memes will spread rapidly if and when the vulnerable population believes that the infection will confer some advantage to them. As Osama bin Laden pointed out, the Muslim will go to the strong horse. When one fears using one's enemies name, even when politically expedient and well rationalized, the message of fear is clearly expressed; the upshot is that the Islamists appear to be the strong horse and the minds of the potential hosts, poorly equipped to resist nonsense, will be more easily infected.
When infections are endemic to an area, a relatively stable dynamic equilibrium obtains after a while which keeps the infection from making the transition from endemic (localized) to epidemic. When the localized infection is underestimated and allowed to escape confinement, naive populations are at great risk. Few can imagine how quickly and viciously such an epidemic can sweep across a poorly prepared population.
We now have a dangerous combination in the West of a large minority of natural hosts surrounded by a larger population from whom the tools necessary to combat the infection have been systemically stripped. Furthermore, there is an immense pool of poorly educated, marginalized Muslims throughout the world whose culture predisposes them to infection; if the infection becomes epidemic only the most vigorous response will suffice to halt its spread.
At the moment, the Western elites, due to their misdiagnosis of the problem, continue to act in ways which make the worst case outcomes more likely.
Recent Comments