JOURNAL: Parasitic Competition and Social Conflict

Newly discovered mechanisms of parasitic behavior, particularly competition between parasites, have value as models for understanding social conflict in a fractured post-ideological age.  Parasitic competition within a specific host generally increases the fitness of the parasites involved in the competition.  In short, this competitive process leads to accelerated improvement, such as higher densities of infection and more virulent/deadly strains (which could make it seem more like coopetition than competition).

Here's three examples of parasitic competition.  All three methods use an indirect approach that leverages control of environmental variables to limit competitors: 

• Exploitation.  The ability of the parasite to control host behavior.  For example, the control of host hormones (sex, metabolism, etc.) to accelerate their own fitness at the expense of competition.  
• Apparent.  The ability of a parasite to attract a predator that is lethal to its competition (typically, an immunological response).
• Interference.   The release of toxins into the host to kill competitive species.  

All three mechanisms of competition can be seen in recent examples of social conflict.  

Comments

[Anonymous Author]

And interestingly the most effective parasites are the mutualistic ones, which find a way to sink into their host societies and become integrated with them:

http://www.tremblethedevil.com/my_weblog/propaganda-by-deed.html

...why the most effective terrorists will also be at least somewhat native to a society, not outsiders coming in.

[g48]

This is interesting.

First take:

The relationship of competing parasites to each other, and to their host, could be said to have much in common with the relationships of any competing species within an ecosystem, to each other and to the ecosystem at-large.

The various memetic or ideological "species" of humans who compete within the Earth's ecosystems, do not have an explicit goal of crashing the planet any more than two species of plague-bearing fleas have an explicit goal of killing the animal on which they reside. In each case, the contending species views the host as nothing more than its food/resource supply, and can't conceptualize itself as being capable of killing off the host.

Specific example: pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies each view humans as "food." At present they are fighting over the food source: big pharma wants to provide medicine though at high cost, big insurance wants to deny medicine at any cost. Of the two, big pharma is one we can live with, as it provides real benefits to its host population; compared to big insurance which is merely a middleman with an excessive appetite.

I'll be giving the subject of parasitic competition more thought.

[Peter Kaiser]

What exactly is a "post-ideological age"??

Is this just another new age term for what to cover for a lack of a basic social interactions?

ideology by any other name is still an ideology....or Eric Dean’s comment about the nature of the “new” military history, in fact defines the larger field of the study of conflict more appropriately: “Where Clausewitz saw war as the continuation of politics by other means, Civil War historians have, in the past several decades, tended to view the Civil War as a continuation of society by other means, or, if you will, the continuation of social discourse by other means.”**

** ‘The Awful Shock and Rage of Battle’: Rethinking the Meaning and Consequences of Combat in the American Civil War. Eric Dean, Jr., War in History; Apr2001, Vol. 8 Issue 2, p. 150.

[JR]

Peter? Not sure what you mean here. It means what it says. LOL, new age. Absolutely hilarious.

GENERAL NOTE: Not necessarily applicable to this post. One thing that I find a continuous source of amusement are people, usually academics with useless PhDs (usually in academia or the government), that deride the idea that anything is new.