You may or may not have read Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" (or better yet Keith Stanovich's "Robot's Rebellion"), but it's safe to assume you've stumbled on something like this.

The idea is that just like individual genes are subject to evolutionary pressures so are small pieces of culture - memes. And similar to "gene complexes" in biology, there is such a thing as a "memeplex" - a group of ideas that survive and develop much better together then individually.

Our world is full of them - every discipline is essentially a memeplex, since most of the pieces of knowledge work much better within the framework of that discipline. However, just as gene's fitness is not always perfectly correlated with benefits for it's "host", there is no rule that says the success of a memeplex always means it is good for it's "vehicles" - us.

Take superstition. Each belief is a meme (breaking mirrors is bad luck) - but each one by itself is easily forgotten and... well... kinda stupid. Put them together and suddenly the concepts of bad luck, good luck, lucky charm etc sustain and feed each other. Same with alternative medicine, energy healing etc. Of course, take this further and you'll also find religion as an obvious example.

This is relevant I think to us, as both TRP and feminism are memeplexes.

  • The popularity of an idea/ideology does not come from its truth, but from how good it is at spreading, entrenching and eliminating competing ideas.

  • It is quite possible Blue Pill is not even an evolutionary strategy, but simply a stupid accident of history. A runaway myth, or maybe a political tool that long outlived its creators.

  • It also means TRP's growing popularity will not help it from being wrong, in part or in whole. Checking or rechecking ideas will, and especially relying on ways of thinking that have proven to work well - like peer reviewed studies.

  • There is reason to move things away from a personal level. We are all just carriers here, vehicles in a fight of ideas. We do have free will, but it is not us fighting, and more importantly it is not other people we are fighting with.