What Keeps Empires Together?

The sacred memes of society

One of the darkest moments of the Roman Empire was when Emperor Valerian was defeated and captured by King Shapur 1st of Persia in 260 AD. It was a consequence of the weakened structure of the Empire, hit by an economic crisis which, in turn, had caused the loosening of the “glue” that kept it together: the idea that the Emperor was a sacred being. It is a story that resonates in many ways with what’s happening today in our world. Here, I present a qualitative memetic analysis that highlights how we are losing the sacred memes that keep our society together.

There exists, for everyone, a sentence—a series of words—that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first. (Philip K. Dick)

In 258 AD, Thascius Cyprianus, bishop of Carthage, was imprisoned on orders of Galerius Maximus, the proconsul. The acts of the trial have been preserved and have reached us.

Galerius Maximus: "Art thou Thascius Cyprianus ?" " 
Thascius Cyprian: "I am."
Galerius. "Art thou he who hath borne the highest offices of their religion, among the Christians?”
Cyprian: “Yes”
Galerius: "The most sacred Emperors have commanded you to conform to the Roman rites." 
Cyprian: "I refuse." 
Galerius: "Be persuaded for your own sake." 
Cyprian: "Do thou as thou hast received orders: for me, in so just a cause, no persuasion can move me." 
Galerius, "Thou hast long lived in impiety, and hast made thyself the center of a band of pestilent conspirators; thou hast acted as an enemy to the gods and to the sacred laws of Rome: neither the pious and most august princes Valerianus and Gallienus, nor the most noble Caesar Valerian, have been able to recall you to a dutiful adherence to their religion. Since then thou art convicted as the author and instigator of so many iniquities, thou shalt become an example to those whom thou hast seduced: the authority of the laws shall be vindicated by thy blood. It is the sentence of this court that Thascius Cyprianus be executed with the sword." 
Cyprian: “Thanks be to God.”

The clash between Cyprian and Galerius reminds us of the warriors of Homer’s Iliad when they are overtaken by their thumos. It is an inner force that moves them to a state of fury in which their actions are dictated by the words they hear from Gods and Goddesses. Here, too, Cyprian and Galerius are overtaken by an inner force that leads them to stand for their beliefs as if a God were directing their actions.

In modern terms, we call memes the entities that take control of the human mind, the equivalent to the thumos of Homeric times. The term “meme” is an invention of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who proposed it in 1976 as an analog of genes in biology. Memes rapidly became popular, giving rise, among other things, to the concept that ideas “go viral” on the Web. However, as could have been expected, linguists were not happy about taking lessons from a biologist and fought hard to keep memes outside the respectability sphere in Science. The same thing happened to “The Limits to Growth,” an idea proposed just a few years before that of memes.

Nevertheless, memes and the associated science of “memetics” remain alive and well, although normally considered heretical. Some scientists understood the importance of the concept; for instance, the philosopher Daniel Dennett correctly said that human beings are “meme-infested apes.” We are. Most of what we do is not under the control of the rational part of our mind, even though we may believe it is so. Memes play the role of Gods in the “Iliad,” pushing us to act on the basis of simplified mental models entrenched in our brains. It is the way our minds work.

Here, I will use memetics as a qualitative tool not just to understand the clash between Cyprian and Galerius, but how memes are the backbone of all social structures. They act in this way, especially in the form of “sacred memes,” concepts that cannot be doubted or denied since they are held as sacred truths by almost everyone. A sacred meme in a social system is the equivalent of an apex predator in biological ones. No species has the apex predator as prey. The idea that the Emperor was a sacred entity was a sacred meme at the time of the Roman Empire. When it was challenged by Christians, the result was a deep fracture in society that eventually destroyed the Empire. In our times, we can identify a sacred meme in the concept of democracy. But, just like the Emperor was losing prestige with the decline of the Roman Empire, today, the decline of the West is causing a loss of trust in democracy and a deep fracture in society. Even the top predator may get old and become prey. It is an ongoing story that deserves to be told in detail.

The memetic collapse of the Roman Empire

What is, exactly, an empire? You can’t see it; you can’t touch it. It has no material consistency. It exists only as long as people believe it exists. When they stop, it dies. An Empire is a hierarchical structure of memes, a meme itself. The late Roman Emperors knew nothing about memes, but they correctly identified the “backbone meme” that kept the Empire together. It was the idea that the Emperor was a living God. It was a sacred meme. A meme that couldn’t be doubted or challenged.

But there was a problem. Memes do not arise out of nothing; they are simplified representations of the real world. So, the Emperor had to prove in the real world that he was a living God. He could do that only by defeating Rome’s enemies. But, by the 3rd century AD, that had become a nearly impossible task. The precious metal mines the Empire had in Spain were depleted, and gold wasn’t flowing any longer inside the imperial coffers. The economy was collapsing, and how could the troops be paid without gold? The military machine of the Empire sputtered and collapsed. The Empire went through a series of defeats that shook the belief that the Emperor was a God.

The Emperors couldn’t create gold that wasn’t there, but they desperately tried to keep alive the meme of their divine powers. Two of them, Decius (reigning 249 — 251) and Valerian (reigning 253 — 260), enacted laws that forced citizens on pain of death to offer a sacrifice to the Emperor. You can see how subversive the behavior of Bishop Cyprian was when he refused to obey Valerian’s decree and paid with his life for his stance. But Valerian’s victory over Cyprian was only apparent. In 260 AD, just two years after Cyprian's execution, Valerian was defeated and captured by Shapur 1st, the king of Persia. It was not just a defeat; it was a tremendous humiliation for the Empire. Legend has it that Valerian was forced to act as a stool when the Persian King mounted on his horse.

That was seen by Christians as proof that the Emperor was not a God. They were operating on a different meme. Their idea was to replace the Emperor as a dual being, both human and God, with a single entity, an all-powerful, incorporeal God who would rule on the basis of the scriptures collected by His adepts. The advantage was that the Christian God was not subjected to the human failures of Emperors, often perverts, madmen, or idiots. It was considered a form of subversive madness, but, eventually, Christians took over the empire.

Constantine “The Great” (ruling 306 — 337 AD) converted to Christianity, but that created even more problems. Constantine still saw himself as a living God, Solis Invictus, a solar deity. This idea had a basic contradiction: if the Emperor was a God, how could he be a Christian? If he was not, on which basis did he rule? In the long run, it couldn’t work, and it didn’t. The Western Roman Empire disappeared two centuries after that Cyprian was beheaded for having insulted the divine emperor. There followed a few centuries of an attempt to manage society on the basis of an incorporeal God. Then, sacred emperors returned with Charlemagne’s “Holy Roman Empire,” but it is an ongoing story.

Godkings as the memetic backbone of states

The idea of the ruler as a divine being is a common meme in human history. Not only did the Roman emperors claim to be gods, but many powerful rulers claimed at least a special relationship with divine powers — a general term for these rulers is “Godkings.” Human history is dotted with Godkings, or “sacred kings,” larger-than-life figures who claim to be living Gods or chosen by the Gods or, anyway, having special relationships with divine powers. The idea was successful for very practical reasons. All human social systems are hierarchical, and there is always the potential for conflict between the lower classes (the commoners) and the elites (the nobles). This potential is often released in an explosion of violence, as in 1789 in France and in 1917 in Russia.

The Godking is there to avoid these clashes. He is not just a member of the nobility. Being a god, he is above both the nobles and the commoners. Hence, he is not taking sides. He can guarantee that the commoners will not storm the castles and hang the nobles and that the nobles will not round up the commoners and put them to the sword. In Europe, the last Godking was Napoleon Bonaparte, who built his claim on his military victories and the trappings of the old Roman Empire, including being crowned emperor by the Pope, as Charlemagne had done in earlier times.

The popularity of sacred kings faded in modern times. Probably, it was because they had to gain their divine aura on the battlefield, but the technological developments of the 19th century made it impossible for them to survive near their armies. Napoleon, indeed, was the last ruler who accompanied his armies into battle, but he was wounded at least four times during his career. During modern wars, leaders tend to occupy heavily protected underground bunkers as far away from the frontline as possible.

After Godkings, what?

If a great leader does not lead troops into battle, what is he for? How can he claim the status of Godking? And if there is no Godking, what keeps society together? Over the past two centuries or so, Western and Westernized states have been facing the task of finding and upholding a sacred meme that could do just that. One of the ways to solve the problem was simply to get rid of the Nobles. We saw it happening with the French Revolution in 1789 and the Soviet Revolution in 1917. The problem is that once you have eliminated a layer of nobles, another layer steps in to fulfill the same functions. The Jacobins and the Communist Party replaced the previous nobility, and the hierarchical structure of society was restored.

Several new potential sacred memes that appeared during the past few centuries had in common the suffix “-ism.” Socialism, Fascism, Nazism, Anarchism, and others. Socialism and Communism tried to reverse the social pyramid by having the commoners rule over the elites. It didn’t work: by definition, those who rule are, or become, the elite. Fascism was an attempt to wrap the commoners and the elite together in an egalitarian bundle (the meaning of “fascio” in Italian). It didn’t work because the rich might pretend to be bundled with the poor, but they would make sure that they remained rich while the poor remained poor. Italian Fascism is an especially poignant example of how noble ideas degrade when put into practice. Benito Mussolini, the “Duce,” started his career as a socialist and with the pretense of being “one of us.” Then, gradually, he positioned himself as a militarily successful godking: glitzy uniforms, aggressive posture, violent language, and the like. He was successful for a while. Then, he faced the typical problem of godkings: as long as you win, you are worshiped. If you lose, you are dead. That’s what happened to Mussolini and also to his colleague, Adolf Hitler, who was using similar strategies in Germany.

Nowadays, most “isms” are discredited everywhere in the world. Adding the “ism” suffix to a term (“isming”) means denigrating it, and that applies to most of the ideologies that were popular in the past. This includes the very concept of “Empire,” once proudly proclaimed, now discredited as “Imperialism.” And note how science is now often defined using the term “scientism,” reflecting the loss of prestige of science after the mismanagement of the COVID pandemic. Note also how Islam and Muslims are often referred to as “Islamism” and “Islamists,” again a form of denigration. Some ideas that seemed to be good for everybody up to no long ago are now under attack, such as “environmentalism.” In many cases, isming is an automatic reflex to denigrate whatever someone doesn’t like. So, criticizing the US government’s foreign policy is immediately labeled as “Putinism.” And if, God forbid, you declare that you suspect that someone at the highest levels is scamming you, then you are affected by the ultimate perversion: you are a conspirationist. Our communication system has become an automatic meme-creating and meme-destroying machine, but none of these divisive memes can be a sacred meme.

Democracy as our sacred meme

We need memes to keep society together. The problem is finding ones that can act as sacred memes that everyone agrees upon. In our times, there is one term that is almost never “ismed.” It is democracy. Terms such as “Democratism” or “Democratists” are never used, and mentioning that elections could be rigged is rare, often censored by social pressure or fact-checkers.

That democracy is a good thing is taken for granted in our society, just like Christianity was taken for granted in Medieval times and Communism in the Soviet Union. Many things are done in our world on the basis of this sacred meme. Even bombing entire countries to smithereens was justified in terms of “bringing them democracy.” That soon became a joke, but democracy remains the current sacred meme of the West. The commoners, us, are supposed to have a certain power over the elites by using the electoral mechanism. Our freely elected leaders will surely rein in the worst tendencies of the elites of oppressing, exploiting, mistreating, and humiliating the commoners… maybe.

In practice, the democracy meme is rapidly losing potency. The “fair elections” meme is being challenged by the parallel and opposite meme of “rigged elections.” Besides, voters are discovering that electing a leader is like buying a Ford T car in the early times of mass motorization: you could order one in any color as long as it was black. It is the same with elections: you can choose any candidate as long as he/she is liked by the elites. And if, by any chance, voters choose the wrong candidate, the same powers will make sure he/she is either forced to resign or physically eliminated. In the worst cases, it will be the electorate that will be eliminated by a judicious application of carpet bombing.

The decline of democracy is evident nowadays, but it is still upheld by the elites. People often react by not voting, a behavior similar to that of the Christians at the time of Valerian. Fortunately, we are not subjected to a death sentence for refusing to vote, but that may change in the future, at least as long as the elites think that a simulacrum of democracy is useful for them. But, just like the sacred nature of Roman Emperors, the sacred meme of democracy is on its way to disappearance.

What meme after democracy?

Things change. And they change rapidly. Think how fast memes such as Communism disappeared in the regions where they were held as truth for several decades. Sacred memes are subjected to the Seneca Effect: Growth is slow, but ruin is rapid. Democracy is already showing signs that it could go that way. At least, when you see the candidates for the presidency of the United States seriously engaged in a debate on whether immigrants eat cats and dogs, you can’t avoid thinking that the whole thing has become a bad joke.

Could a new godking put an end to this ridiculous theater? Could he rule “by the grace of God” instead of by an uncertain counting of ballots? It is not impossible, considering human history over the past few thousand years and the fact that what happened in the past can happen again. However, even if you think we need a godking, it doesn’t mean that one will appear soon. Godkings tend to validate their rule through military victories, and that leads them to search for enemies to defeat. That might explain the aggressive stance of the current Western leaders continuously pushing for wars that citizens don’t want. They are looking for a spectacular victory that could push them to the status of godkings. The problem is that they are just squandering precious resources while attaining very little. Like in the case of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, the Western military machine is no longer what it used to be. With the additional problem that, while Persians and Romans couldn’t nuke each other, our leaders are mad enough that they might be tempted to do that with their current enemies. And that wouldn’t create godkings, only radioactive deserts.

If not a godking, what could replace democracy, then? Maybe just a police state ruling by sheer force over the commoners. The modern state has police tools that the ancient Romans couldn’t even dream of: surveillance cameras, drones, rigged electronic devices, fact-checkers, and more. These tools can be used to eliminate unwanted ideas (and the people proposing them) quickly and effectively. But if history teaches us something, it is that pure force cannot keep a society together for long. So, we need new memes to keep it together: sacred memes” — those memes that people accept not because they are bamboozled by propaganda and not because they are scared about being droned by the powers that be. Memes that people embrace because they truly see them as ways to create a just and sane society. It was so for Christianity at the time of the Roman Empire and also for Communism at the beginning of its much shorter history.

An interesting attempt to generate a new sacred meme was with the COVID-19 pandemic. It may have happened by chance, or perhaps it was planned but, in any case, the elites quickly moved to position themselves as defenders of public health. It was a new sacred meme that was later described using the derogatory term “Covidianism.” It worked beautifully for a while. People felt protected by their leaders and empowered to do something to help their fellow citizens. They accepted impositions from the government that, in other circumstances, they would have vehemently rejected. The problem was that the sacred COVID meme rapidly lost potency as the pandemic winded down and the incompetency of the authorities was exposed. At this point, the elites could only do what they do all the time: turn all the problems into enemies to be fought. It was not enough to have a tiny virus as an enemy. They wanted human enemies that could be demonized. And so, in 2021, President Biden officially defined the unvaccinated Americans as “enemies of the people.”

It was the same mistake that Emperor Valerian made with his edict that forced people to worship him. A sacred meme must unify, not divide. Once the unvaccinated were defined as enemies, society was torn apart. The sacred Covid meme is dead, even though many people still uphold it. Incidentally, the collapse of the Covidianism meme took with it the “scientism” meme, which took such a beating by the evident incompetency and greed of health officers that it may never recover, either.

Memetic orphanage. What next?

We are bereft of a sacred meme that can keep society together. We are so distressed that we don’t seem even to be actively searching for it, preferring to squabble about silly issues (do Haitians eat dogs?). But a new sacred meme could emerge and take over, just as Christianity did for the Roman Empire. Just like in those ancient times, the new meme will be something that the elites consider at the same time blasphemous, ridiculous, silly, and held only by a small minority of fanatics. Read the words of Galerius to Cyprian, and you’ll understand what I mean.

So, the new sacred meme is something now living a precarious life at the edge of the memesphere, still dominated by old and dying memes. We are blind to it, seeing it darkly, as in a mirror. But, as Paulus says, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” One day, we’ll see clearly, face to face.