ALARM, ALARM!

A meme has run amok.  Just like the tiger that escaped from the San Francisco Zoo, a meme has broken loose and threatens serious destruction.  But unlike the tiger driven to violence by taunting, this meme has the potential to annihilate the entire human species, not just a few unlucky passers-by.  The destruction will be total.  It is more menacing than the threat of a super-contagious flu virus or the proverbial red button beneath the thumb of a fanatical Pakistani mullah/politico or delusional cowboy president.
    Needless to say, Mirror Reversal is about selfish gene theory and memetics, the greatest breakthrough into the study of the human mind since Freud’s psychoanalysis.  MR is a great place to start the study because it’s the first novel to come along with its own glossary of terms since 1984’s Newspeak.  I suggest you read the glossary of memetic terms first and then watch the scientific concepts fall into place with the characters and storyline.  You’ll enjoy watching Cynthia and her friends heedlessly acting out the dictates of powerful genes and self-interested memeplexes like programmed Disney animatrons. 
   MR is also about the evolution and future of mankind.  As a species we haven’t changed much physically in the last 10,000 years, other than growing a little bigger.  But have we stopped evolving?  Stephen Jay Gould reveals with his punctuated evolution theory that species’ rate of phylogenic change often spikes when the environment comes under stress.  With our planet itself in grave peril, Gould’s theory certainly applies now.  Homo sapiens is in a do-or-die, adapt-or-perish situation.  No organism can survive that is at war with itself, that’s for sure—much less a super-organism.  Think of leukemia.  What chance does Gaia have with her delicate balances of nature—the product of millions of years of slow, patient change—so mindlessly and brutishly knocked out of whack? 
    So what is this horrendous meme that threatens to destroy the entire human species?  It is the belief that an omnipotent, anthropomorphic Sky-God is going to destroy the world, no matter what we do.  He’s coming back with a horde of angels in clouds of glory to punish evil fornicators and rapture the faithful to heaven and eternal bliss.  This computer virus-like meme infects and motivates billions and billions of people.  And it resides in the mind, cryptically, surreptitiously, without the host even suspecting it’s there.  It’s the belief that we can do anything we want to Nature because God’s going to destroy it anyway. 
     (Listen to the first minute of this youtube link:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bB2rt3IKJc  This Jesus Camp talk show host actually urges his listeners to “rape this world, rape this Earth, take everything you want from it.  Because it doesn’t matter.  We’re not here for very long.  Christ is coming.  So cut down our trees.  Use all of our oil.”)
    What’s frightening about this belief (meme) is that there isn’t even a technical word to describe it in any science, medical or psychology textbooks. 
    Our beliefs are important because they determine behavior.  If you believe it’s going to rain, you carry an umbrella.  If you believe that Adolf Hitler is the leader of the master race, you become a Nazi.  And if you believe that Christ and his Four Horsemen are coming to set the world on fire and punish sinners, what do you do?  Self-fulfilling prophecies have ravaged history.  And the vast majority of people on the planet carry this tragic infection of the mind.   
    Let’s at least formulate a word to describe what we’re facing.  As used and defined in Mirror Reversal (copyright Peppertree Press, 2007) the “endmeme” is the belief, even certainty, that the world is going to be destroyed by a supernatural god.  I pray, not to the god of Reason but Reason itself, that good, enlightened, educated people will rise up and be heard.  The endmeme is real and the endmeme is deadly.  (Before 2000, the endmeme was defined as the fear of computers going haywire at the first second of the new millennium.  The term is redefined here because the old definition is no longer of use.)
    Memeplexes are so strong that they’ve actually shaped and molded Western civilization for their own selfish ease of replication.  Most cities and towns in the U.S. and Europe have a church of some sort every few blocks.  Religious badges like crosses, Mecca compasses and Jewish skullcaps are everywhere.  Medieval art, music and literature abound with religious propaganda. The bible meme, a co-meme of the Christianity memeplex, actually motivated and induced Johannes Gutenberg to invent the printing press in the early 1450s, not to print novels, music, or poetry, but so that the bible meme could replicate faster.      
     Realizing the prodigious power of memes, Cynthia states in Chapter 3:

And as religion separates people from nature, it encourages and rewards people for making babies in a dangerously overpopulated world.  The leaders of the church hierarchy don’t give a damn—‘cause they believe the world is going to be destroyed anyway.  And it looks like it will… in a self-fulfilling prophecy. What a cruel ironic cosmic joke!  Books written by goat herders and fishermen, determining the destiny of mankind and the entire planet.”

ALARM, ALARM!  She’s talking about the endmeme.