---
type: topic-map
domain: cultural-dynamics
secondary_domains:
  - grand-strategy
description: "Topic index for claims about memetic theory, cultural evolution, and the mechanisms by which ideas propagate, persist, and coordinate action"
---

# Memetics and Cultural Evolution

Claims exploring how ideas replicate, compete, and build cumulative culture — from Blackmore's meme theory through Henrich's collective brains to applied narrative infrastructure.

## Memetic Foundations
- [[true imitation is the threshold capacity that creates a second replicator because only faithful copying of behaviors enables cumulative cultural evolution]] — the origin of culture
- [[cultural evolution decoupled from biological evolution and now outpaces it by orders of magnitude]] — the great decoupling
- [[meme propagation selects for simplicity novelty and conformity pressure rather than truth or utility]] — why truth doesn't win automatically
- [[memeplexes survive by combining mutually reinforcing memes that protect each other from external challenge through untestability threats and identity attachment]] — how idea-systems persist
- [[the strongest memeplexes align individual incentive with collective behavior creating self-validating feedback loops]] — the design target

## Propagation Dynamics
- [[ideological adoption is a complex contagion requiring multiple reinforcing exposures from trusted sources not simple viral spread through weak ties]] — why ideas don't go viral like tweets
- [[complex ideas propagate with higher fidelity through personal interaction than mass media because nuance requires bidirectional communication]] — fidelity vs reach
- [[collective brains generate innovation through population size and interconnectedness not individual genius]] — network structure matters
- [[isolated populations lose cultural complexity because collective brains require minimum network size to sustain accumulated knowledge]] — minimum viable network

## Applied Memetics
- [[metaphor reframing is more powerful than argument because it changes which conclusions feel natural without requiring persuasion]] — the most effective tool
- [[institutional infrastructure propagates memes more durably than rhetoric because measurement tools make concepts real to organizations]] — infrastructure over rhetoric
- [[systemic change requires committed critical mass not majority adoption as Chenoweth's 3-5 percent rule demonstrates across 323 campaigns]] — activation threshold

## Narrative Infrastructure
- [[narratives are infrastructure not just communication because they coordinate action at civilizational scale]] — coordination technology
- [[master narrative crisis is a design window not a catastrophe because the interval between constellations is when deliberate narrative architecture has maximum leverage]] — current opportunity
- [[technology creates interconnection but not shared meaning which is the precise gap that produces civilizational coordination failure]] — the diagnosis
- [[the internet as cognitive environment structurally opposes master narrative formation because it produces differential context where print produced simultaneity]] — why internet doesn't fix it
- [[no designed master narrative has achieved organic adoption at civilizational scale suggesting coordination narratives must emerge from shared crisis not deliberate construction]] — design constraint
