Harmful human cultural practices are classified as being parasites, competitors or amensalists in memetics. However there are hardly any competitors or amensalists hosted by humans—since most cultural practices need to benefit from their hosts by draining them of resources in order to exist—except for a fewmemetic hitchhikers.
I think if you deny deleterious cultural practices can usefully be classified as a form of parasitism then you must do so on the basis of some kind of criticism of the memetic framework. As far as I know the technical criticisms of memetics are all bogus. So: the most critics can say is that they don’t like the idea—or that they find it distasteful.
Harmful human cultural practices are classified as being parasites, competitors or amensalists in memetics. However there are hardly any competitors or amensalists hosted by humans—since most cultural practices need to benefit from their hosts by draining them of resources in order to exist—except for a few memetic hitchhikers.
I think if you deny deleterious cultural practices can usefully be classified as a form of parasitism then you must do so on the basis of some kind of criticism of the memetic framework. As far as I know the technical criticisms of memetics are all bogus. So: the most critics can say is that they don’t like the idea—or that they find it distasteful.