How being able to select memes autonomously increases health

Our brains are great at finding useful patterns and at creating maps of our lives. We evolved to do that, to map out the world that we inhabit. And it’s a social process, I’ll share my map and my experiences with you, you’ll share yours with me, and we’ll remix our two worlds. We’re also great at seeking out mates that add to our world, and we avoid those who destroy it.

Just as we are good at mating our memes, we’re also good at succumbing to authority, and following orders, being coerced. To be human is to be capable of both freedom and enslavement. We’re designed for both. And both work, really, but the latter is detrimental to the health of the slave.

Coercion forces ideas into the mind, and bypasses the natural selection mechanism of mate choice. Once the brain has been reduced to a tool, it no longer engages in the complex processes of personal development through multi-level selection. It just succumbs to being fed ideas by the master.

The easiest way to provide a high quality of life for everyone, with long life expectancy, is to design social systems that let everyone choose their memes by mate choice.