Part 3 — Wildfire of the memes
Modern idols aren’t like the statues worshiped by the ancients, lit by temple torches. Our new overlords bask in the glow of culture’s digital dumpster fire as they enslave us with the precision of algorithmic self-replicators.
Let’s call on Nietzsche and the crew to torch these frauds peddling 21st-century idolatry with the same false promise as in the days of yore: that they’ll ground you in the uppermost values of truth, unity and purpose … lol.
Fritz lit a metaphysical bonfire under these hollow idols, and then Richard Dawkins followed up with his materialistic flamethrower. The latter explained how mind viruses called “memes” spread among humans like how genes sweep through physical ecosystems — with the complexity-building power of evolution through natural selection. While the Distracted Boyfriend, Pepe and Grumpy Cat are well-known examples, let’s not get lost in the smoke.
These bits of self-replicating culture coalesce in our minds into powerful complexes like politics and religion, parasitically providing us with the structure of another idol: our self. A good example of how we serve as their proliferation vehicle is how we feel compelled to sing a song out loud, spreading it to another mind the way a sneeze has us spread genetic viruses. And since we are emptiness in the heart of being (see Part 2, Burned by bad faith), we embrace this opportunity to be something and not have to decide things for ourselves (e.g., WWJD?).
Now let’s shake Buddhism out of its life-denying slumber for some insight into this mess. Idols manipulate us via papañca, a Pali term referring to how our thoughts and obsessions spread like wildfire — kindled by the quality of significance in perceptions (this is what cults control to enchant you).
Our Digital Age amps up this noise to eleven — a meme inflames desires, turning fleeting scrolls into significance traps. Trivial flickerings grow red hot in this bonfire, making us cling even more tightly to illusions that give rise to suffering. Idols jack our citta for likes.
This capture — as with all other idolatry — takes place within our mind’s “chain” of dependent arising: paṭiccasamuppāda. Memes turn up the temperature of nimitta significance, making us feel attraction or aversion to something. The stronger the blaze, the less likely we are to see this is our exact moment to escape the whole mess. We don’t understand ourselves as having the ability to choose — we go with the flow, whichever direction our manipulated feelings point us.
But if we’re mindful enough of thoughts as thoughts and feelings as feelings as they arise in the moment, we can freely choose from a range of possibilities. We won’t allow idols to arrange us in a standing reserve, ready to feed their master plan when we “decide” to act or speak a certain way and create being as becoming. This kamma-bhava is kindling to feed an idol’s will to power, the insatiable impulse of the universe to not only survive as form in the cosmic flux, but to grow as strong as possible without limit until something pushes back.
This citta-fueled hall of smoke and mirrors is superimposed upon and sustained by physis’ existential wellspring, lethe, which nourishes the nimitta called aletheia (presencing of the stuff we call existence). Physis’ contingencies sustain the flux of memes without mind, like black holes birthing universes in Darwinistic selection — a cosmic repetition as nimitta of will to power, which can bestow value outside citta as that which hasn’t yet flamed out.
Signs of the will to power’s nature as a dynamic polarity are evident in the vMEMEs of Spiral Dynamics. These high-level mega memes of culture form our worldviews and trace our path of idolatry and liberation up a spiral that cycles between phases of group-think and individuality — between seemingly solid and protective cool colors (purple’s tribalism to red’s rebellion to blue’s rigid order to orange’s achievement mindset to green’s stifling wokeness, etc. … repeat eternally).
We can ride the spiral authentically with the help of our hunting party. Artemis nocks a flaming arrow, Camus shrugs at the void, Sartre blows smoke in the face of self-deception, Heidegger sparks a call of conscience, similar to Nanavira’s maraṇasati, or awareness of death.
Lethe’s oblivion? These cosmic Chads nudge us to forget the replicating reminders of the memory muse Mneme. But aletheia’s illumination doesn’t have to enchant us with its dazzle. Here, it’s philosophy FTW: raw, rowdy, relentless. Dump the idols, unleash your wildfire. Hunt on, flux rebels — real life’s in the flaming ruins.
Götterdämmerung ends when we cross the Zero Meridian. Read Part 4 — “Valhalla in flames.” Catch up with Part 1. (Originally shared on X)
Rob Robill 