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On the memetic nature of conflict: A THREAD on #memetics
The framework of a conflict, that is, the narrative in which it fits, is a memetic object. There are differences between a dynastic war, a war of secession, or a religious war. 1
All religious wars share some characteristics that make them similar to each other. This happens with other types of wars, and is what allows the development of political theory and military doctrine, for instance. IOW, we can say they have a similar memetic nature. 2
This memetic nature is mutable, and may not necessarily correspond to other, more materially relevant dimensions of the conflict: psychological, biological, economic, etc. 3
German participation in WW2 is popularly understood as ideologically and racially motivated. Some might also mention geopolitical struggles concerning resources and the domination of the Heartland domination, Ă la Mackinder. 4
Post-WW1 economic humiliation is also mentioned as a motive. Germany was completely ruined after the war, forced to pay huge reparations and basically accept the blame for everything. 5
Was WW2 rooted in a generationâs collective psychological coping mechanism, after having missed the Greatest Masculinity Rite of Passage Ever (WWI)? Young soldiers in 1939 had fathers who had fought in the trenches in 1914. Was there a deep desire to surpass them? 6
Was it all a matter of aesthetics? Was it a dark, subconscious, animal necessity of expansion, produced by demographic growth, and then later rationalized into a search for Lebensraum? 7
Humans tend to search for meaning in chaos. Political distinctions (in the schmittian sense), such as faithful vs. heretic, oppressor vs. liberator, or reactionary vs. revolutionary, make conflict intelligible. 8
In this sense, participants in any kind of conflict, armed or not, may be acting out of their own impulses, such as personal ambition, thirst for adventure, revenge, desperation⊠Nonetheless, they will assume political identities such as those above. 9
This is precisely the meaning of polarization: contenders will take position like scattered iron filing under a magnetic field. 10
There needs to be a pre-definition of the conflict for somebody to take a position within it. The guerrillero sees freedom fighters v. foreign oppressors. The other side sees order v. bandits/terrorists. These characterizations are already defined in culture as tropes. 11
Modern political apathy is a product of the multiplicity of narratives, which makes it difficult to establish a single memetic framework. 12
Political cults, conspiracy theories, radical rhetoric and purity spirals, far from leading to open conflict, actually freeze it. Potential contenders simply do not know where they stand, and thus cannot politically organize. 13
Lone wolf violence is the staple of a hyperconnected world, where everything has thousands of interpretations and a simple us v. them narrative does not suffice to explain things. The memetic environment is too fragmented for the formation of cohesive factions. 14//
