A Gilded Planet

Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" in the 1970s to describe the unit in cultural evolution that corresponds to the "gene" familiar in biological evolution. For Dawkins, a meme referred to both ideas and the physical, behavioral and social manifestations of ideas. Like genes, memes replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. This happens through various forms of cultural transmission: writing, speech, gesture, music, image - pretty much anything imitable or reproducible. In recent years, the term "meme" has entered common parlance with a different meaning than that designated by Dawkins and his academic colleagues and acolytes. The new meaning is related yet distinct from that used first in the 1970s. The phrase "internet meme" generally refers to a new breed of inside joke that spreads via the Internet. The most recognizable example is a funny image accompanied by a pithy caption rendered in a bulbous font. I am going to suggest...

Iran is rotting from the inside. A profound destructive urge shrouds it in darkness. The deep rot in Iranian society can best be attributed to the fact that it is massively overpopulated. Massive overpopulation and highly congested living environments does very, very bad things to humans – and modern Iranians suffer horribly from these overly cramped conditions. No one should be forced to live like this. Maybe they would be better off dead. But this seems awfully extreme. We would sincerely prefer to find an alternative solution to the problem in consideration of the fact that Iranians, on the whole, are an intelligent and enterprising people, and thus would be an asset to many nations if a large emigration policy could be devised.  Perhaps we could reconsider bombing them if some of their excess populace would immigrate to Argentina or Canada, where there is plenty of room. Just a thought.