infective?  A few observations suggest some lines of inquiry andinvestigation.  Although the gene itself was unknown until Gregor Mendel'sexperiments on sweet peas near the end of the last century, farmers andanimal breeders had a practical, intuitive grasp of genetics and evolutionby selection thousands of years ago.  Similarly, advertising agencies andpolitical propagandists have been putting analogous concepts into practicefor a long time, despite lack of the meme metameme.Infection by the memes of television advertising is more likely amonginexperienced, uneducated, or unsophisticated individuals.  Children are morelikely to catch these infections than adults; highly educated individuals whohave previously been infected to some degree by the skepticism meme are muchmore resistant.  A strongly developed sense of humor also appears to confer ahigh degree of resistance, perhaps because humor and skepticism are relatedby way of irony.What about religious or political memes?  Note first that most religiousmeme complexes are mutually exclusive:  one cannot simultaneously adhere toGreek Orthodoxy and to polytheistic Hinduism, albeit hybridization betweenseveral seemingly incompatible religions is possible.  (On the other hand,it is possible to subscribe to several of the Asian religions simultaneously:it is possible to be a Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist at once, forexample.) Political meme complexes, as I mentioned before, seem to occupysimilar locations in our mental landscapes.  Patty Hearst, who had beenexposed only superficially to either Christianity or to the American civicreligion, had a near-vacuum in that space.  So we should not be surprisedthat intense personal exposure to the far-fringe political belief systemof the Symbionese Liberation Army successfully infected her with a ratherbizarre meme complex, one which had very little genetic survivability, sincemost of that group died in a firefight and conflagration in Los Angelesabout a year after she was initially kidnapped.During the Korean War, American prisoners of war in North Korean prisoncamps were subjected to intense brainwashing procedures.  Many prisonerscracked; others did not.  The only consistent difference between thosewho did and those who did not succumb was the degree to which they had beeninfected with the traditional religious beliefs and/or traditional Americanvalues, i.e., belief in the American civic religion.  An important exceptionwas POW's who were "True Believers" in Eric Hoffer's sense.  Most of thePOW's who actually defected to North Korea had such a personality.  It isinteresting to note, however, that the True Believer personality usually hasa poorly developed sense of humor.In the present century, two major meme complexes in the political sphereare in active competition.  Make no mistake:  the conflict between the Westand the Sino-Soviet bloc is not over physical resources such as landor petroleum; neither is it about weapons systems or trade items.  It is abattle between competing memes for survival and replication in the minds ofhuman beings.  At the cores of the respective meme complexed lie Westerndemocracy and Marxist-Leninism, respectively, and it is these memes which Iwish to discuss now.The Marxist-Leninist meme complex has to date been highly successful whenviewed from the perspective of memetics rather than economics, I have alreadyreferred to the role of Lenin and a handful of his companions who arrived atthe Finland Station in St. Petersburg in April 1917 and successfully capturedcontrol of the government within eight months.  It is worth  looking at someof the competitive strategies the Marxist-Leninist meme (MLM for short) hasused to achieve this success.Many of these techniques are directly analogous to techniques in thebiosphere.  Like the common cold virus and the AIDS virus, the MLM frequentlychanges its outer appearance to prevent immunological systems from immediatelyrecognizing it and combatting it.  Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega, forexample, pretended to be patriotic liberators; once in power, they shed theirsheep's clothing to pursue the original purposes of the MLM.  Like thepenicillin bacterium, the MLM emits toxins that impede the replication ofcompeting memes: secret police or Red Guards harass, imprison, or killcarriers of competing memes:  secret police or Red Guards harass, imprison,or kill carriers of competing memes.  Like the AIDS virus, the MLM improvesits chances of success by weakening the immunological systems of its targetsby an extensive disinformation and propaganda machine.  (In the Winter 1989issue of GLOBAL AFFAIRS, John Lenczowski, _The Soviet Union and the UnitedStates:  Myths, Realities, Maxims_ makes a strong case that the current eraof glasnost and perestroika is one more cycle of deliberate strategicdeception.)Like retroviruses which coopt the genes of their hosts to make copies ofthe retroviruses themselves instead of whatever proteins those genes wereintended to manufacture, the MLM seizes control of the machinery fortransmission and replication of memes:  radio, television, and the press aretotally coopted, and other channels (such as mimeograph machines andtelephones) are restricted or closely monitored.  Lenin was so successful insuch a short time because the German Foreign Ministry secretly funded hispropaganda campaign to the tune of some 50 million gold marks or more,equivalent to a few hundred million dollars today.  (See Michael Pearson,_The Sealed Train:  Lenin's Eight-Month Journey from Exile to Power_,New York:  G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1975.)In order to lodge itself more firmly in the mental space occupied byreligious meme complexes, not only does the MLM actively suppress standardreligions, but it takes on some of the trappings of such religions, endowingthe Party leaders with godlike attributes and offering a Marxist-Leninistvision of the future colored by a Heaven-like mystical aura.Let me turn now to the meme complex of the West.  Democratic institutions,some variation of capitalism, and significant personal liberty are thetraditional values attributed to the West, but one other piece of the complexis especially important in this discussion, namely, the meme of tolerance.The meme of tolerance evolved in America under conditions of partialisolation:  relatively small doses of outside memes kept coming in, andcould be absorbed and assimilated into a larger, fairly stable, meme pool.But the American meme pool was not being tested overseas against other largeand fairly stable meme pools.  Thus the tolerance meme was not exposed tocompetitive pressures in the global ideosphere until the middle of thiscentury; it is not clear whether or not it is a "dominant" or a "recessive"meme; and it is not clear what its effect on the competitive survivability ofthe meme complex of American culture will be in this larger arena.Note that in its nineteenth century form, the meme of tolerance did notassert that all meme complexes were created equal.  To allow other memes tocompete freely in the American ideosphere was all the tolerance meme stoodfor; it did not in any way inhibit the meme that the American politicalsystem was preferable to any other.  In recent decades, a mutated version ofthe tolerance meme seems to have become more prevalent in the United States.In this form, the meme asserts that cultural and political meme complexes areof equal worth; in particular, the Soviet MLM complex and the Westerndemocracy meme complex are held to be "morally equivalent."  Judged by thevalues of the American cultural meme complex, however, a meme complex suchas the MLM in which intolerance is inextricably embedded is clearly NOT ofequal worth.It would seem at the very least that the mutated version of the Americantolerance meme weakens the immunological capacity of American culture toresist the MLM.  It is even possible that the political-cultural memecomplex of the Western democracies contains the seeds of its own destruction,not in the sense in which Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted, but in the senseof memetics.Can anything be done to immunize our populations against infection by theMLM?  Simple anti-Communist hysteria is inadequate and, given the tolerancememe (either in its conventional or mutated forms), is even counterproductive.Greater education in the metameme of skepticism would certainly help.  Renewedemphasis in the schools on the benefits of traditional American values wouldbe expected to help, as would cultivation of adherence to traditional,mainline religions.  (How the latter can be achieved with the framework ofthe American cultural system is difficult to see.)The outcome of this competition between the meme complexes of the East andthe West is of vital concern for the next few generations of the survivalmachines in which human genes are carried.Is there any substance to memetics?  Can it be placed on a sound scientificfooting, able to make predictions? If so, applied memetics raises importantethical questions within the framework of the Western meme complex, as thedangers of deliberate manipulation of the general meme pool for personalpower would be very real.  Moreover, adherents of the Soviet MLM wouldhave no hesitation about using such a science to further the spread of theMLM at the expense of the Western democratic meme.Memetics is still at a very primitive stage.  Like biology in the eighteenthcentury, the emphasis is necessarily on gathering reams of data and formingvery tentative hypotheses.  The formulation of universal principles may yetbe years away.  Indeed, it is possible that the entire concept may beintellectually and scientifically bankrupt.  But in the meanwhile, itnonetheless provides an interesting framework for looking at social andpolitical movements.  Join the fun!========================================================Brin, David, "The Dogma of Otherness," Analog ScienceFiction/Science Fact, April 1986.Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene.  New York:  OxfordUniversity Press, 1976.Gazzaniga, Michael, The Social Brain.Hofstadter, Douglas R., Metamagical Themas:  Questingfor the Essence of Mind and Pattern.  New York:  BasicBooks, 1985; New York:  Bantam Books, 1986.  Chapter 3,"On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures."Henson, Keith, "Memetics:  The Science of InformationViruses," Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August1987; reprinted in Whole Earth Review, Winter 1987.Minsky, Marvin, The Society of Mind.  New York:  Simonand Schuster, 1985, 1986.Monod, Jacques, Chance and Necessity:  An essay on thenatural philosophy of modern biology.  Translated byAustryn Wainhouse.  New York:  Vintage Books, i971.Pearson, Michael, The Sealed Train:  Lenin's Eight MonthJourney From Exile to Power.  New York:  G. P. Putnam'sSons, 1975.