[TeMPOraL]

I think you've made a good summary. And it leads to some interesting perspectives.

SSC classic, The Toxoplasma of Rage[0], explores this a bit. One fragment that burned into my mind is the few paragraphs reinterpreting the War on Terror as a parasite with multi-stage life cycle (like toxoplasma). To quote a part:

> From the human point of view, jihad and the War on Terror are opposing forces. From the memetic point of view, they’re as complementary as caterpillars and butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something makes them stop.

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[0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...