It can be argued that something similar happend to the Watchtower. Russell and his followers were idealists who sought to create a form of Christianity that closely resembled the 1st Century model. This idealism was seen as weakness by Rutherford who exploited it after Russell's death and used it to consolidate his power. He stepped over Rutherford's handpicked successors and consolidated power in himself. The Watchtower leadership has been totalitarian ever since. The Utopian vision of Russell and his followers gave way to the iron-fisted rule of Rutherford and his successors.
I agree, and this scenario has happened over and over hundreds of times since the 1st century: "Let's return to the radical, iconoclastic form of the early church; a sect which was persecuted, reviled, looked down upon as peasants, etc. and who believed in the imminent return of Christ. "
This "Utopian vision" is a strong meme, and it is apparently worth tapping into by all those ambitious enough to reap it's profits. They just have to convince the rank-and-file that they are just like the early church, and then primal instincts will take over the rest. :-))
The lesson of both Communism and Russellism is that Utopian Idealism as an organizational principle does not work because it is vulnerable to the abuses of the ruthless and power-hungry.
Yes, it is like taking candy from a baby. Just like the Somalian pirates! With a meme like that behind your banner of Truth, you almost can't lose, unless you lose your game entirely. That happened to the Watchtower some time back. :-))
Randy
A meme (pronounced /mi?m/)[1] comprises any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.
Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" as a neologism in his book The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe how one might extend evolutionary principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious belief), clothing or fashion, and technology such as the arch.[2]
Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of Darwinian biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. Thus one can expect that some memes will propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."[3]
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