Karl Popper advocated memetic caution in the strongest possible
terms: “The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to
extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us.”
Resistance to violent and destructive courses of action has formed a
common meme that can guide human cultural and cognitive evolution away
from disastrous paths — for instance the U.S. and USSR stockpiled but
did not use nuclear weapons in the Cold War period. Some cultures can
consider ignorance a virtue — in particular, ignorance of certain
temptations that the culture believes would prove disastrous if pursued
by many individuals.
The Internet, perhaps the ultimate meme-vector, seems to host both
sides of this debate. Opposition to use of the Internet can stem from
any number of memes: from ethics to intent to ability to resist hacking
or pornography.
The Principia Cybernetica project maintains a lexicon of memetics
concepts, comprising a list of different types of memes. It also refers
to an essay by Jaron Lanier, The ideology of cybernetic totalist
intellectuals, which very strongly criticises “meme totalists” who
assert memes over bodies.
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