Any cultural cluster such as a church, a Boy Scout Tropp, a ROtary Club, a garden club or a police division has inherent in it the risk of toxic memes. Forming a group multiplies the risk factor because the vectors of transmission are reinforced, and also because the individual immunity is compromised by the mechanism of distributed responsibility. Sitting in the heart of a "We are" clump it is much easier to accept ideas because someone among the "others" has vetted them. The inclination to elect authorities, and then to follow them, illustrates this weakness. The responsibility of "I am" to choose rightly in the marketplace of ideas gets watered down by the happy anodyne of agreement and the displacement of ownership.

This is why organized religion, essentially, is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction in premises. Nothing taps deeper into the boundless well of individual being andindividual responsibility than a brush with the Infinite, but writing it down and forming a group around it is almost self-defeating.