The strength of a Meme depends on several elements, one of them, perhaps the most important is, in Dawkins’ mimetic, the copying-fidelity:
Fidelity to the original will preserve the initial pattern after several rounds of copying. If a painting is reproduced by making photocopies from photocopies, the underlying pattern will quickly become unrecognizable.
We think that if it’s true that the Web is an excellent vehicle of memes incubation and “infection”, it is also true that in Cyberspace, Memes lose their original structure and become lost in chaotic galaxies of Memes that in the end become self-destructive or will immunize the “believers”.
The UFO-ET. Meme is in fact a chaotic galaxy of memes that become meaningless and self-destructive. Why? Just because nobody can keep the original pattern pure.
The UFO-ET meme becomes spectacle and commodity, and this brings competence between different profiteers. These conflicts are frequently violent and aggressive. (My UFO-ET meme is better than yours...you are a psyop and I am the Councilor of Earth..!)
So, the UFO-ET meme is a mutant self-replicating system but there is never one kind of Extraterrestrials. The Aliens become unlimited. The mythologists’ imagination brings into existence hundreds or even thousands of extraterrestrial races “visiting us”.
Each exopolitician or UFO-ET mythologist will create his/her own kind of hypothetical Beings. Good, Bad, Ugly, Beautiful; and of course, these have different agendas.
But there is more. The survival of the UFO-ET meme requires an auxiliary meme: the Government Conspiracy to keep the UFO-ET secret.
Again, the Conspiracy meme will grow and multiply and also mutate. It will grow into a chaotic galaxy of memes. The Conspiracy Meme will mutate into a universal conspiracy, and everybody in the UFO-ET community will invent his/her own Conspiratorial scheme.
There is however, a price to pay. True believers will become immunized or join some UFO Sect. Worst, the whole system or memes will become contradictory, totally unreliable and in the end, chaotic and self-destructive.
The total lack of evidences will force the Exo-gurus to become cultists, demanding from the true-believers Faith, and not Reason.
The “extraterrestrials” will become angels or gods, giving birth to Religious Memes with dogmas, mysteries and pontificates. This, of course, will be a new and unpredictable mutation.
The original ufo-et meme will survive in science-fiction…if it sells enough.
Fraternally
Tomas Scolarici
