"You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
~ the Matrix
Could humanity be analogous to the spread of cancer in an otherwise healthy body? Jared Diamond has investigated how humanity engineered it's own demise on multiple occasions in his book Collapse.
It must be a flaw in our species. We have big brains, but maybe not large enough to see the full picture. How else do we explain Global Climate Change? It is a disquieting, fascinating idea. Disturbing because it raises further questions about population control, government power and human rights. It's easy to slip into questionable policies, such as the UK funding sterilization programs in India. It's also easy to slip into paranoid YouTube rants.
Some human societies have lived sustainably within their environments. So, maybe it's jumping the gun to say humans are the problem. This is where it gets fascinating. Memetics provides us another factor to study, and frees us from dismissing the problem as a moral failing or idiocy of our species.
With memetics, we see the role the meme & memeplex play in shaping individual and collective thoughts & behavior. Our world is run by memeplexes, not masters.
The modern global-economic memeplex has no regard for us...
It think's it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys. ~ Rilke
But it doesn't have to remain this way. We are the writers of this memeplex. Each one of us. Instantaneous communication has enabled a previously unimaginable empire to emerge, constructed with social as well as material machines. This global culture has polluted our air, depleted soil & fresh water and dehumanized us...but it is evolving. We are aware. We want memeplexes that are beneficial to us, which take a symbiotic instead of parasitic role in the global ecosystem.
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