I sort of believe in something like this, except without the magical bits. It motivates me to vote in elections and follow the laws also when there is no effective enforcement. Maybe it is a consequence of reading Pratchett’s Discworld novels when I was in impressionable age.
My mundane explanation (or rationalization) is a bit difficult to write, but I believe it is because of:
>It gets in people’s minds.
When people believe something, it affects their behavior. Thus memetic phenomena can have real effects.
As an example I feel is related to this, I half-believe that believing in magical rationalizations[1] can also enable good societal outcomes, as long as enough people believe that also other people believe them, and it facilitates trust.
Have you read Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo? It deals with how valuable things and what they do affect people’s behavior, both on the societal scale (how corruption in imaginary South American state of Costaguano seeds more corruption) and personal scale.
[1] “if I vote in the national elections, it somehow makes difference, maybe because then more people like me are encourage to vote in elections” and “if I obey the law of not serving alcohol to underage people when there is no probably harm to them from it, or stop at the traffic signs at deserted street in midnight, the world somehow becomes a better place because world would be better place if more people followed the laws”.
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I sort of believe in something like this, except without the magical bits. It motivates me to vote in elections and follow the laws also when there is no effective enforcement. Maybe it is a consequence of reading Pratchett’s Discworld novels when I was in impressionable age.
My mundane explanation (or rationalization) is a bit difficult to write, but I believe it is because of:
>It gets in people’s minds.
When people believe something, it affects their behavior. Thus memetic phenomena can have real effects.
As an example I feel is related to this, I half-believe that believing in magical rationalizations[1] can also enable good societal outcomes, as long as enough people believe that also other people believe them, and it facilitates trust.
Have you read Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo? It deals with how valuable things and what they do affect people’s behavior, both on the societal scale (how corruption in imaginary South American state of Costaguano seeds more corruption) and personal scale.
[1] “if I vote in the national elections, it somehow makes difference, maybe because then more people like me are encourage to vote in elections” and “if I obey the law of not serving alcohol to underage people when there is no probably harm to them from it, or stop at the traffic signs at deserted street in midnight, the world somehow becomes a better place because world would be better place if more people followed the laws”.
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