The Hellmeme

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/the-hellmeme.html

Richard Dawkins originally coined the word "meme" in his book, "The Selfish Gene". 

From the book, "N. K. Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter:'... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking - the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'" 

An important point to bear in mind is that a meme does not necessarily benefit its host. It does not necessarily have any truth value. It is just good at getting replicated.

So we come to the Hellmeme. It is definitely spread from mind to mind. There is no reason in reason or evidence that it should independently occur to any healthy human mind that has never been exposed to it. It is acquired from other people. And the most fertile ground for it to spread is in the minds of children. Children have little choice but to accept the words of the adults they are dependent on. They do not have much of the wherewithal required to question what they are told. By the time they grow up, it is too late. The Hellmeme has taken up lodging in their brains and is ready to be passed on from them to yet more innocents. 

What more pernicious but effective way could be imagined, to capture young minds and terrify them into believing something for no reason whatsoever, and to compel them to pass the contagion on to their own children?

As someone who has never been exposed to such brutal indoctrination, it is blindingly obvious that it is a foundation-less, mindless mechanism for cowing its sufferers into never daring to reject it. It probably originated in the minds of the deranged, but if it was deliberately invented by a sound but fiendish mind, I can hardly imagine a more effective invention for ensuring its own perpetuation along with all the baggage that accompanies it.