Document A — The Nature Of Belief

1. Summary

The personal journal of a Memetic Engineering researcher who asks whether his inherited beliefs were ever his own.

2. Text

Personal journal of a Memetic Engineering researcher.

"All my life, I believed in the religion of my parents. I inherited their convictions, their fears, their tastes, and their understanding of the world. I called these things my own.

But were they ever mine?

I have spent years studying how ideas reproduce, compete, and survive. I once believed that men carried ideas. Now I wonder whether ideas merely use men to carry themselves.

If my beliefs are inherited, if my desires are conditioned, if even the person I believe myself to be is a collection of ideas, then what remains of me when those ideas are removed?

Am I the thinker, or merely the place where thoughts occur?"

3. Context

The writer belongs to D6's Memetic Engineering Department, which developed from research into cultural transmission, information theory, cognition, propaganda, and behavioral influence. The journal turns the department's study of how ideas reproduce, compete, and survive on the writer's own convictions.

The D6 story presents Documents A to M as narrative reference drafts intended to preserve the philosophical discussions, scientific disputes, and discoveries encountered throughout D6.

See: Phenomena › Memetics

See: Places › D6

4. Gameplay

The D6 documents may be distributed among personal quarters, scientific offices, restricted archives, computer terminals, and the deeper containment installations.