I'm a parasite! Who are you? Wait, am I?

I'm a Parasite! Who are you?

Are you – Parasite – too?

Then there's a pair of us!

I don't know how to continue this poem.

-- not really Emily Dickinson

While I'm studying about parasitism, I recognized that humans have parasitic castrators too. There are many belief systems (memeplexes) that can castrate humans: it stops people from reproducing somehow. Perhaps the most famous example is Theravada Buddhism, and to a lesser extent, Mahayana Buddhism. 

Theravada Buddhism is a parasitic castrator

In Theravada Buddhism, the main way to escape this painful world is to give up attachment to this world, become a monk, and perform various mental exercises like studying and meditation. Mahayana Buddhism is less strict, and gives more hope for non-monks to also escape, but the monks must still remain celibate.

In biology, parasitic castrators are parasites that stop the hosts' reproduction, completely or in part, to its own benefit. 

Now match that to Theravada Buddhism:

• Theravada Buddhism (TB) stops the host from reproducing, by directing the host into a monastic lifestyle.
• The celibacy of the host directly benefits the reproduction of TB, since a celibate host has more time to devote to the duties, such as copying the sutras (part of the memetic code of TB), perform Buddhist rituals like chanting (increasing the social influence of TB), teaching Buddhism to the next generation (TB reproduction), etc.

We see that it is a memetic parasitic castrator, hosted on Homo sapiens, regarded as a genetic creature.

Susan Blackmore's Theory of the Self

Susan Blackmore is a scientist who is most famous for studying memes, with the book The Meme Machine (2000). It's a bit outdated at this point though. She's also a skeptic in debunking some pseudoscience.

I'll start with two videos:

Memes and Tremes

Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive

Living Without Free Will

When I say that consciousness is an illusion, I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.