---
description: Religions, ideologies, and cults persist not because they are true but because their constituent memes form self-protecting clusters with specific defensive tricks
type: claim
domain: cultural-dynamics
created: 2026-02-16
source: "Blackmore, The Meme Machine (1999)"
confidence: likely
tradition: "memetics, evolutionary theory, cultural evolution"
related:
- identity-protective cognition causes people to reject evidence that threatens their group identity even when they have the cognitive capacity to evaluate it correctly
reweave_edges:
- identity-protective cognition causes people to reject evidence that threatens their group identity even when they have the cognitive capacity to evaluate it correctly|related|2026-04-18
---

A memeplex is a group of memes that have come together because they replicate more successfully as a cluster than individually. Blackmore identifies specific "tricks" that successful memeplexes employ, using religions as the clearest examples but arguing the pattern applies to any self-reinforcing idea cluster -- political ideologies, scientific paradigms, New Age movements, conspiracy theories.

The core tricks are: (1) The **truth trick** -- the memeplex claims to represent Truth itself, making rejection feel like turning away from reality rather than simply changing one's mind. (2) The **untestability trick** -- core claims are placed beyond empirical verification (God is invisible, the afterlife cannot be checked, the conspiracy is too deep to detect). (3) The **threat trick** -- punishment for disbelief (hell, social ostracism, divine retribution) raises the cost of rejection. (4) The **altruism trick** -- genuinely kind behavior by adherents makes them admirable and imitable, carrying the memeplex's other memes along for free. (5) The **beauty trick** -- investment in art, architecture, and music creates powerful emotional experiences that are attributed to the memeplex's truth claims. (6) The **in-group/out-group trick** -- costly markers (rituals, dietary laws, circumcision) identify members and deter exploitation by outsiders.

These tricks create a memeplex with a quasi-boundary -- a filter that admits compatible memes and repels incompatible ones. The structure is analogous to [[Markov blankets enable complex systems to maintain identity while interacting with environment through nested statistical boundaries]]: the memeplex maintains its identity through internal mutual reinforcement and external defensive mechanisms. No one designed these combinations deliberately. They evolved through memetic selection: memeplexes that happened to combine the right tricks survived and spread, while those without them dissolved.

This pattern is directly relevant to understanding why [[the current narrative breakdown is unprecedented in speed because the internet makes contradictions visible to billions instantly]]. Memeplexes evolved their defensive tricks in environments of limited information flow. The internet's ability to expose contradictions, surface alternative explanations, and connect dissenters systematically undermines the untestability and threat tricks. The crisis of institutions is partly a crisis of memeplexes whose evolved defenses are failing in a new informational environment.

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Relevant Notes:
- [[Markov blankets enable complex systems to maintain identity while interacting with environment through nested statistical boundaries]] -- memeplexes exhibit boundary-like properties analogous to Markov blankets in information space
- [[the current narrative breakdown is unprecedented in speed because the internet makes contradictions visible to billions instantly]] -- the internet disrupts the defensive tricks that traditional memeplexes evolved
- [[world narratives follow a lifecycle of formation dominance contradiction accumulation crisis and transformation]] -- memeplexes are the mechanism by which world narratives resist transformation until the contradictions overwhelm their defenses
- [[the self is a memeplex that persists because memes attached to an identity get copied more than free-floating ideas]] -- the selfplex is the most powerful form of memeplex, organized around personal identity rather than collective ideology
- [[altruism spreads memetically because people imitate those they admire and admirable people tend to be generous]] -- the "altruism trick" is one of the six defensive strategies memeplexes employ to spread
- [[successful memeplexes combine emotionally powerful experience with unfalsifiable myth and the altruism truth and beauty tricks]] -- source-faithful treatment of Blackmore's general formula for memeplex survival
- [[religions are the most powerful memeplexes because they combine all the self-protective tricks into a coherent self-reproducing system]] -- source-faithful treatment of religion as the ultimate instantiation of the memeplex pattern

Topics:
- [[maps/livingip overview]]