Memes
___________________________________________________________

"Over 200 Billion red blood cells a day die in the interests of keeping you alive. Do you anguish over their demise? Like those red corpuscles, you and I are cells in a social superorganism whose maintenance and growth sometimes requires our pain or elimination, suppresses our individuality, and restricts our freedom. Why, then, is it of any value to us?

Because the superorganism nourishes every cell within it, allowing a robustness none of its individual components could achieve on its own."

-Howard Bloom, "The Lucifer Principle"
____________________________________________________________

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (1) proposed a revolutionary idea in the , final chapter of his famous 1976 book on evolution entitled "The Selfish Gene". Dawkins proposed that thoughts and ideas form patterns that can reproduce from mind to mind by using imitatation as a means of replication. Dawkins called these patterns "memes" and put forward the idea that, like genes, patterns of thought compete for survival.

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation." (2)

As Dawkins himself admits, there is no way to reduce memes to a comprehensive, cause and effect system, or even reduce a meme to some single unit. Rather, whatever number of constituent elements are needed to form the meme, are the meme. There is no set rule regarding how many elements need to be included to create a "meme", rather the only rule seems to be that the meme have "copying fidelity".

"So far I have talked of memes as though it was obvious what a single unit-meme consisted of. But of course that is far from obvious. I have said a tune is one meme, but what about a symphony: how many memes is that ? Is each movement one meme, each recognizable phrase of melody, each bar, each chord, or what?

"The `gene' was defined, not in a rigid all-or-none way, but as a unit of convenience, a length of chromosome with just sufficient copying-fidelity to serve as a viable unit of natural selection. If a single phrase of Beethoven's ninth symphony is sufficiently distinctive and memorable to be abstracted from the context of the whole symphony... then to that extent it deserves to be called one meme."

Dawkins first example of a meme is "a tune". Okay, but if one were playing "Name that Tune", could one identify, let's say, The Beatle's "Let it Be" by the first note alone? Could you identify "Let it Be" by recognizing McCartney's opening strike at the piano key? Many could. What if you were playing "Name that Tune" at a party at a friend's house, with the host sitting at the piano, playing the opening note? Many would still recognize it. In that case, that singular note can be considered a "meme"; it has successfully spread from McCartney's mind to the mind of at least some listeners; it has "copying fidelity".

This begs an important question though: what if Paul McCartney had never written "Let it Be", or what if The Beatles had never recorded the song? What would become of that opening note? What would happen when you heard the opening note struck on a piano then? Well, then it's just a note. You'd have no larger context to give it reference. Without the larger meme of the song "Let it Be", the meme of the opening note is just dead on arrival; pretty note--so what?

This presents a paradox. The opening note of "Let it Be" fits the definition of a meme. However, this meme, this singular note, can not exist without the larger meme, the song "Let it Be" itself existing. Of course, though, this note, in and of itself, always exists with individual integrity. As soon as someone hits that key on the piano, there it is. It hasn't gone anywhere; it has definition, it just doesn't have the definition of a meme anymore if "Let it Be" doesn't exist.

This seems to suggest that memes are emergent patterns; they can not be reduced to their constituent elements. The constituent elements, though, still have definition and independent survivability. "Let it Be" can not exist without the notes of music that the song consists of. In this way, the opening note suddenly seems much more durable than we initially believed. As long as there are pianos, that note survives, accessible at a finger push. "Let it Be" has to go through the tough business of being created by someone to be anything at all. "Let it Be" has no survivability until it is created, then it is off and running, forming its own powerful meme and promoting that lonely piano note into the realm of replicable thought; the note itself becomes a meme.

What about the other end of the spectrum? What about the really big memes like religions and political systems. Dawkins calls religion a "memeplex" implying that it is comprised of so many replicable images, songs, rituals, customs, prayers, symbols, etc that a religion seems like a memetic hurricane swirling across history and society, replicable down to the smallest details for generations. Again, the emergent properties of the memetic phenomena shine through. No one can reduce, say, catholicism to what I conjure up when the word is mentioned or what you conjure up. Still, we both recognize what we're talking about, in a general sense.

You are more than a collection of DNA. "Let it Be" is more than a collection of notes. Yet, both you and "Let it Be" drive these components forward to being a participatory part of something larger than themselves. In this way, individual memes participate in "memeplexes".

Ideological systems can be tricky though, because they may not hang a sign out front openly announcing what memeplex they represent. The proponents of the ideology are oblivious of the fact that they represent a memeplex; they are just acting in a self-interested manner. If one accepts Dawkin's theory, then memes will prosper in a manner that is similar to natural selection; "survival of the memes".

If this holds true, then memes can develop the ability of "memetic camouflage" and appear to have the characteristics of the predominant societal memeplex, blending into the environment, and perhaps, developing the additional adaptation of taking on the characteristics of the enemy's enemy, in a manner similar to the processes of natural selection.





It becomes difficult to precisely pin down current political circumstances into paradigms that we are familiar with. This is because these past political paradigms are not slots waiting to be filled with the arbitrary labels we assign to the political circumstances of the modern world. This a human illusion of control; probably the same psychological force that makes people pray for their team to win a baseball game they are watching alone on TV while 15 million other people are watching the same game elsewhere.

Humans create memes, but memes don't care about us or what we call them. The owl doesn't know about camouflage and camouflage doesn't know about owls. Yet, without the constituent elements, like owls, camouflage as a phenomena can't exist. For millions upon millions of years, owls have behaved completely independently and autonomously, but larger forces of nature have imposed the protective measure of camouflage upon them. Nature's has not only done that, but it has networked outward to make a butterfly look like an owl. What interest do owls have in these insects? None. Owls treat butterflys as environmental static; they don't care about them at all. They're oblivious to them. They're not in the owl's food chain. The enemies of the insect, though, are in the owl's food chain.

The memetic forces are an extension of the natural forces that have existed for 15 billion years and since humans evolved here on Earth, it seems correct to assume that human society is also a natural system. We are not used to thinking of ourselves that way. For example, while searching for the pictures above I had to change the search term from "camouflage" to "natural camouflage". "Camouflage" will give you page after page of military-style clothing. "Natural camouflage" will give you pictures of all kinds of animals. There's a presumption in this; it implies that humans don't think of themselves as "natural", but as some type of "other anomaly" above and beyond and not subject to the natural forces that brought every single thing on this planet into existence.

I believe that this only seems true. What is really true is that humans are just a very advanced extension of the same natural forces. So advanced, in fact, that we have brought nature to an entirely new level of "survival of the memes" instead of "survival of the genes". No other species on the planet has wiped out half a billion of its own kind in one century for the survival of ideas, or memes, or abstractions that they acknowledge as entities.




Look at the inscription on the picture above. I would say that this is a dangerous inscription of the meme I call Neo-Communism.It displays the rabid, passionate underbelly of the forces we are up against. Funny thing, but if I cut off the front of that inscription and leave the latter part starting with "I want to buy myself a gasmask..." I have to confess that, in weaker moments, I often feel exactly the same way.

There is no difference between the figure in this photo and myself except that he wants to destroy my "likemind" and I want to destroy his "likemind". This can't be done without destroying each other, and I'd like to think that no one really wants that. We're just paths of least resistance for the same meme. The picture is inspiring and threatening to me at the same time. Evolved and effective propaganda. If I were 15 years old today, they'd probably have me.

Something better in me, though, something I'm trying to pay close attention to, rejects these "gas mask" notions. Perhaps my personal purpose in writing this series of posts is to identify and destroy this impulse by acknowledging what it really is.

Gas masks make me think of World War I. It's the same old thing, the same old meme. It's Evil.

"Likemind"?

Do you create your thoughts or do your thoughts create you?

I am coming to believe the latter.
____________________________________________________________

1. Richard Dawkins is a controversial figure and it's my hope that those reading this will make some distinctions that Dawkins himself fails to make. Dawkins really is an inspired thinker and, unfortuanately, I think this has cost him somewhat in terms of other aspects, like personality. I think this is most notable Dawkins' apparent belief that questions of metaphysics can simply be chucked in the trash in the face of science. He also contradicts himself by the very introduction of his idea of memes, a purely theoretical construct without any tangible physical reality other than being intellectually cohesive, than assails people for believing in God for similar reasons. I could go on about this for a great while, but I'll stop there.

2. Dawkins' introduction of the idea of Memes was presented quite simply, in about ten pages of typed text, in the final chapter of his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene". People haven't stopped talking about it since. The final chapter of "The Selfish Gene" is available here.

http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html

Additional Notes

-Dawkins himself does not discuss the idea of "memetic camouflage". A simple Google search of the term will reveal others' discussions of the idea.

-Howard Bloom wrote a book called "The Lucifer Principle" devoted to the idea that Memes, serving their own self-interest, destroy millions of human lives. Bloom traces this path throughout history, from ancient times until the present. Bloom doesn't ever address the idea that these memes are a property of emergence, or directly address destructive memes as a product of coercive collectivism, which I hope to address.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YctWRSbQessC&dq=the+lu...-book-with-thumbnail

-"Let it Be"

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZYqAeIdYk

This message has been edited. Last edited by: WinstonSmith,

Bravo, Winston! You're getting a standing ovation here.

I believe you have described the phenomenon behind the anti-smoking crusade (as well as countless other crusades) from an empirical point of view more succinctly and precisely than I have ever seen done. I'll be the first to admit, my own approach to this (meta)subject is less empirical and more "woo-woo" than yours, but no matter. Looks like we've headed off in opposite directions and come to exactly the same place.

Ouroboros is one heck of a symbol, isn't it?

Lest I've given the wrong impression, I don't believe in the "supernatural" myself. It's all natural. But I do believe in the occult, which, despite the word's airy-fairy connotations, only means "hidden." Here, you have put your finger right on the spot where science and spiritualism are coming together (much to the chagrin of debunkers and religious wonks alike). The lizard is swallowing its tail. Beautiful!

I haven't looked in on Speakeasyforum much in recent years, not only because discussions here seem to come down to endless bitching and unresolved arguments, but because smokers lost this battle years ago, when New York folded. The battle is over, but we're still going to win the war.

Winston, you've already identified the reason that freedom-lovers of every stripe are going to win it (and I hope I'm not stealing your thunder by prematurely blurting out the same conclusion you're systematically working toward). As you pointed out, "evil" patterns have emerged time and time again throughout recorded history. That observation is correct as far as it goes, but one additional fact stands out: they are inherently dysfunctional. They are not survivable.

Evil hates evil. The very same axis that spawned the disgusting Nanny State juggernaut will inevitably tear itself apart.

I don't intend all that as a recommendation to give up the fight. I mean it as encouragement to not give up hope, because in the long haul, the Orwellian pattern now in full emergence doesn't have any.

Thanks for the kind words, Robert.

I don't know that everyone reading your reply will understand your reference to "the occult" but having entitled this series of posts "Evil" I am inevitably going to have to discuss why humans recognize and epitomize "evil" as a concept and a force in an upcoming post in this series. That's because I'm coming to believe that evil, as a force of its own, does in fact exist, but it doesn't come as comfortably packaged as a man with horns on his head. Far from.

In these Evil Posts, I am really running full-speed and roughshod over ideas that books have been devoted to. I'm trying to give the essential ideas and write what can be considered a readable post of reasonable length in a way that I hope everyone can understand.

My hope in writing them was to take a heuristic approach, and meet challenges. I'm grateful for the praise I receive for them, but so far the only question I get is "What is the conclusion? How do we stop all of this?" This is, of course, a legitimate and understandable question and my answer is quite dissatisying. My answer is that the answer arises, creates itself spontaneoulsy from the challenges and questions. The answer isn't some individual thing to be found, like suddenly finding the answer to the world's problems on an easter egg hunt. The answer lies in having a larger discussion of the essential, ideological problems and suddenly finding ourselves on a new level of discussing these problems.

So, the "Evil" posts are my effort to look at the problem from the top down, rather than the bottom up. It really is very important that we continue to look at this problem in terms of everyday injustice.

At the same time, I hope that we all recognize at this point that coming to boards like this one to say "Toledo Banned Smoking! Aren't you outraged, too?" is more an exercise in self-healing than it is a productive exercise in conquering anything. At the same time, this current trend can not and should not stop; I'm just contending that it won't amount to an overall solution. We have to start expanding these discussions. Rapidly.

I do agree with you that the pendulum will swing, and that the collectivist trend will once again reverse itself. My greater concern is that, in our particular time and place, we seem to be riding the downward momentum of the pendulum's swing. It's correct to say that such systems have failed in the past, but they also left scores of millions of dead bodies in their wake.

I've said before that tobacco or cigarettes have little or nothing to do with the real problems we are up against. Rather, they are just the path of least resistance in our current context. If one does so for purely personal reasons, I don't think it matters if one quits smoking.

This begs the question "So, if you quit smoking, would you still be here?" I have to give an honest answer, I don't think that most would, but I think that I would. I think that anti-smoking really the silent threshold, the elephant in the room regarding a whole score of phenomena that we've seen since.

As you've pointed out, the smoking issue turned the corner once smoking was banned in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg, at the time, found himself facing the lowest approval ratings of any mayor in the history of New York City, probably as a direct result, though the media sold it as a reaction to his proposed commuter tax at the time. The NYC ban also happened within a year of 9/11. This serves to further confuse the issue of "the elephant in the room".

What I most notice is the change in cinema. Hollywood is suffering because it now seems to exclusively make films for the lowest common denominator. Very few serious, adult oriented films come out these days. When they do, you'll notice that they tend to have something in common; they either take place in the past, or a fictional present where anti-smoking doesn't exist. Otherwise, they're films with a clear modern, leftwing political message.

(I watched Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" the other night. From the beginning, the movie appears to take place in the seventies, and the characters smoke indoors. Suddenly, a cell phone emerges, immediately placing the film in a modern context. Within five minutes of seeing charcters visibly smoking in a bar, but after the cellphone, a character in the bar announces that she is "going outside for a smoke". It seemed clear to me that this was a writing glitch that occurred while the film was being made.)

Prior to anti-smoking, I wouldn't have factored in whether a character smoked or not. If they did, fine. If they didn't, fine. Now, though, the non-smoking seems so obvious and noticeable to both smokers and non-smokers, despite the fact that nothing may have changed regarding the films themselves.

For instance, if you saw "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, released about 12 years ago, can you tell me if there was smoking in that film? No one cared at the time.

(To answer the question, Tommy Lee Jones is briefly shown smoking a cigar on a riverbank. I think that the son of the woman Harrison Ford rents an apartment from is also smoking, but I might be wrong.)

America's founding crop is tobacco. Anti-smoking caused a real shift for at least 60 million people very quickly. You can appear to get away with that, but it's just plain dumb to pretend that no one has noticed and that is hasn't had any effect.

We now live in a kind of false reality. For a few years now, the world has seemed fake to me. I don't watch TV anymore, when I used to watch it quite a bit. It wasn't really a decision. I rarely watch movies, too. I'm a cinephile and used to speed to the video store after work on Tuesdays to get my hands on the latest release that I wanted to see. This wasn't a decision either. When I speak to people that I don't very well, or hold a door for a stranger, I regard it as going through obligatory motions where I used to regard it as common courtesy for like people. Now I know, though, that 70% of them believe wholeheartedly in stark, raving madness.

I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every day and run four miles a day and never think of one thing in relation to the other.

I'm rambling. We live in a fake world and anti-smoking, despite its lack of press, has alot to do with it.

WinstonSmith: "I don't know that everyone reading your reply will understand your reference to 'the occult'..."

I made that reference in response to your assertion, early on in this series of posts, that what you were about to discuss was not in any sense "supernatural." I agree, and repeat, there is no such thing as the supernatural; it's all natural, but it's the height of hubris to believe human science has everything figured out. In that sense, there is such a thing as the occult, which is only a label for the terrain that lies just beyond the cutting edge of science.

You are clearly gazing out upon that terrain now.

Great job!

Winston and Robert,

The fear of everything...is that the herd mentality we now live in?
I believe it so.

The Evil, the occult (the unknown), the inability to live even one day without fear of:
pain, retribution, death, no love, loss of any loved one, etc.

I believe anyone who has lost a loved one (parent especially) to death, and did not learn as they were growing up that death is a part of life, will always live in fear of everything.

Those that have not lost a loved one, but live in fear of losing a loved one, will always live in fear of everything.
The "fight or flight" part of us, in my opinion, has now only become the "flight" only-as the world is dumbing down ever farther, forgetting/wiping out, those ancient survival skills passed on from centuries of humans.

Winston-have you visited the site I had posted a while back? If not, please PM me for the web address. You and Allen (of that site) could collaborate and rock the world with your "little grey cells"...

The Evil will always fight the endowed right of choice for humans...for humans to decide for themselves. That takes hard work on the humans part. Hard work and follow thru on that choice...well, as you have written, most will follow the path of least resistance. The ease of it. Ahh physics, geology, math, nature, growth, birth and death-the glory of it!

http://physics.nyu.edu/~as2/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html\

Here is an interesting, albeit, past article I found on American Thinker.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/phony_science.html

"November 02, 2007
Phony science
Jerome J. Schmitt
James Lewis’s brilliant essay today reminded me of physicist Alan Sokol’s fantastically successful send-up of “Deconstructionism” which occurred over ten years ago. Dr. Sokol persuaded the intellectually prominent editors of the academic journal entitled Social Text to publish his “science” essay "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Unbeknownst to them, it was a total parody of their thought processes, which he subsequently revealed here: "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies"

There is no better way for AT readers to familiarize themselves with the bankrupt intellects of today’s left, especially with regard to their understanding of science, than to review this “hoax”."

It was an explanation of a "test" false 'science' article published in a journal.

From inside Oldstudent's link:
http://physics.nyu.edu/~as2/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html

In the end, I resorted to parody for a simple pragmatic reason. The targets of my critique have by now become a self-perpetuating academic subculture that typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside. In such a situation, a more direct demonstration of the subculture's intellectual standards was required. But how can one show that the emperor has no clothes? Satire is by far the best weapon; and the blow that can't be brushed off is the one that's self-inflicted. I offered the Social Text editors an opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual rigor. Did they meet the test? I don't think so.

I truly believe satire is the way to shock people up -

The Public has been 'Droned out of thought' - why think when we have the gov't and MSM to do it for us. "Don't worry, we'll tell you what to worry about, stay tuned and we'll tell you how we will deal with it and what we think you should do to stop the fear of this new worry we just fed you"

We need more people to 'Laugh' in the face of 'Evil' - if they are naked, they loose the power and people will regain their power.

I heard this quote on a TV show a few years ago, and it always stuck with me:

'If you always Do
What you always Did
You will always Get
What you always Got'

It works both ways

quote:

Originally posted by Robert A Cook:
WinstonSmith: "I don't know that everyone reading your reply will understand your reference to 'the occult'..."

I made that reference in response to your assertion, early on in this series of posts, that what you were about to discuss was not in any sense "supernatural." I agree, and repeat, there is no such thing as the supernatural; it's all natural, but it's the height of hubris to believe human science has everything figured out. In that sense, there is such a thing as the occult, which is only a label for the terrain that lies just beyond the cutting edge of science.

You are clearly gazing out upon that terrain now.

Yes, my intention was to point out that I don't have a detailed knowledge of "the occult" and I suspect that others don't as well.

I agree wholeheartedly and was doing a rather poor job of trying to add to your point, which is essentially my own. Despite the fact that what we know seems to be quite great by comparison with history, what we don't know is still much more vast.

We seem to make many mistakes in this regard, but here are two that seem at the forefront today: 1) The nihiliss among us acknowledge humans as being superior in some way, as being somehow the responsibility carriers who walk around on the nature that created them like it is some kind of glass floor, all the while the same people who hold these views seem to be in denial about any such thing. They decry and marginalize all spirtualism. Meanwhile, the spiritualism they despise seems to have been born of the same beliefs as their own.

2) We are entrapped by reductionism, but only because reductionism is extremely effective. We seek to reduce every phenomena to the parts that created it. Meanwhile, we now realize that the phenomena remains consistent while the parts don't. To approach the universe in a purely nihilistic or purely existential way is to say "everything is just ground level cause and effect and there is nothing else". I swear, reductionism can explain everything into nothing despite the evidence before your eyes. If a college professor were compelled to do so, s/he could make a 100% sound case that your car is just a simple interaction of parts, and leave you ignoring the fact that it can propel you down the highway at 100 MPH.

In short, just because something has parts, because something can be reduced, doesn't mean that it is less valid, or that it can be simply explained out of existence. Just because the phenomena of Love can be reduced to neurons firing and hormones secreting, it doesn't mean that Love doesn't exist. Just because your sense of "Self" can be reduced to a great deal of dynamic phenomena taking place underneath, it doesn't mean that our sense of "Self" is some kind of illusion. The natural universe works empirically; things must have parts, but it doesn't mean that all they are is parts.

The "Evil" force that I'm going to pursue further in this series of posts would like to have us believe this. If pure reductionism was the constant force and impetus for all creation, no molecule would have ever bothered binding with another according to this view. It would have just died. It's a view that says "Hell, H2O is just two hydrogen molecules bonding with an oxygen molecule, so why bother. Pack your bags and go home."

Bullshit.

There has to be a force. There is a space in between the notes that makes the music. Nature never operates this way, so why do so many humans, nature's most sophisticated known product, insist that it is so?

In part, it is due to language. Specifically, the word "just". Anything can be "just" anything you want to minimalize it to. The most beautiful song you ever heard is "just" a collection of notes from various instruments. Human beings are "just" a highly evolved form of animal.

Well, it "just" doesn't work that way. Natural complexity is emergent and it creates dynamic forces that work themselves into static platforms that act to create further dynamic forces. There are millions upon millions of years of the purest, from the source, ultimate forces acting to create you and what is you, and the attachments and attractions that you intuitively and intimately feel.

We're not some accident waiting to be screwed around with by trivial externalities. We're the cutting edge, the best that all of creation has to offer, flowing through our very minds, blood and bones and coursing and networking out to those around us. All of us consist of the same atoms that were created 15 billion years ago in The Big Bang.

If one wants to be a pure reductionist, then one has to acknowledge the fact that they were created when the universe came into existence.

In a sense, I'm quite the humanist. I refuse to believe that humans are inherently bad or that individual human attractions are in someway aberrant, or detrimental by definition. It doesn't make sense that nature would create something that it abhors, nonetheless give it such power and such a capacity for feelings of transcendence, and the means to create such feelings.

Evil is what is anti-human.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: WinstonSmith,

WinstonSmith: "...just because something has parts, because something can be reduced, doesn't mean that it is less valid, or that it can be simply explained out of existence. Just because the phenomena of Love can be reduced to neurons firing and hormones secreting, it doesn't mean that Love doesn't exist. Just because your sense of 'Self' can be reduced to a great deal of dynamic phenomena taking place underneath, it doesn't mean that our sense of 'Self' is some kind of illusion. The natural universe works empirically; things must have parts, but it doesn't mean that all they are is parts...."

Dang, Winston, we are so much in agreement regarding this that it's a little spooky (or would be, if I was an empiricist, which I am not). I have used exactly the same analogies myself, and arrived at them (so it seemed) independently of everything else.

In my own case, the realization could be termed a "revelation," or something of a quasi-spiritual nature. Some might even call it "paranormal," although as I have said, I believe only in the "normal." It's just that "normal" is weirder than most have been led to believe.

You seem to have come to this material through diligent research and a great deal of finely-focused thought. I didn't, although in recent years, certain hypotheses and discoveries (the mathematics of chaos; the implications of the "membrane" model of Grand Unified Field Theory; Rupert Sheldrake's "Morphic Resonance"; "Spooky Action at a Distance"; etc.) have led me to believe that the information is valid.

The fact that you and I have arrived at the same conclusions--even using the same analogies almost word-for-word--through vastly different means is also very suggestive. At least, I think so. In a sense, the structure of the physical universe and the phenomenon we call "mind" seem to be entangled in ways that go beyond our current science. The universe (multiverse?) actually appears to function as an unthinkably enormous MIND. I suppose "God" is as good a word for it as any, although I don't see "It" as being anthropomorphic in any sense. I kind of prefer the term "Tao" myself, only because it doesn't carry any preconceived notions or other cultural baggage for me. But it doesn't really make any difference. Those are just words.

I have noticed that the Clockwork Men--empiricists--attack these ideas wherever they show up. Methinks they dost protest too much. Whether this is another manifestation of immaterial networks that function beyond our present understanding, or something that includes the real-world component of a conspiracy to keep the knowledge out of the hands of the Great Unwashed, I am not certain. I don't see a need for "conspiracy" in order for the dichotomy to exist. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if such a real-world component truly does exist. As the Magicians say, "As Above, So Below."

But I do see some evidence of a real-world conspiracy, not the least among it being the meme of ridiculing the very idea of conspiracy. ("Conspiracy Theory? ho-ho-ho!") Of course conspiracies exist. We live in a veritable ocean of them, and if the idea is silly, then perhaps the Powers-That-Be need to start dismantling all laws against "conspiracy" to do this, that, or the other.

Think Congress is going to do that? Nah.

Whooooooosh!!

That was the sound of most of this going right over my head.

But don't stop! I want to see where this will end (if there is an ending...and I hope there is...with us beating the antis into the ground.)

No, I think that's largely Winston's point, Tnsmoker. He jumped ahead to the (rather unsatisfying) answer where he wrote:

quote:

...the answer arises, creates itself spontaneously from the challenges and questions. The answer isn't some individual thing to be found, like suddenly finding the answer to the world's problems on an easter egg hunt. The answer lies in having a larger discussion of the essential, ideological problems and suddenly finding ourselves on a new level of discussing these problems.

As for "beating the antis into the ground," it might seem sort of emotionally satisfying, but it won't work. In fact, letting go of that anger is probably the most effective thing we can do.

Friedrich Nietzsche had as good an explanation for why that is as any I have ever heard:

"He who goes to fight monsters should take care not to become a monster himself; for as you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you."

Yes, I believe that it would be much more constructive to concentrate more on being a bit more expansive regarding these ideas, thereby attracting others, rather than wondering how we're going to make an effective protest. I wrote a long post on FORCES regarding this and I don't know that anyone read it. In short, by concentrating our efforts on being "against" something, we're kind of consuming ourselves. I think the focus should be getting down to the business of knowing what "we" are. We don't even have a proper name for the set of ideas we represent on this board, but we all seem to know exactlty what we're talking about and what context we all share. What is that? That would be a good first step; thinking about that for awhile.

quote:

Originally posted by Robert A Cook:
As for "beating the antis into the ground," it might seem sort of emotionally satisfying, but it won't work.

Not just "seem sort of" emotionally satisfying, but it would be thoroughly, completely, really, and most sincerely satisfying. I would cackle with glee as we crush them beneath our collective heel.

quote:

Originally posted by Robert A Cook:
In fact, letting go of that anger is probably the most effective thing we can do.

Um, ok, but I don't think sitting around holding hands, singing Kumbaya (however it's spelled), and sending good and peaceful thoughts out into the cosmos is gonna cut it either.

We might as well just sit back, do nothing, and wait for the tide to turn as it did at the turn of the last century--prohibition then repeal of prohibition.

May not be what you meant, but that's what I'm getting. Sorry if I sound harsh. If I've got it wrong, please explain. In layman's terms. Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by Robert A Cook:
Friedrich Nietzsche had as good an explanation for why that is as any I have ever heard:

"He who goes to fight monsters should take care not to become a monster himself; for as you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you."

Can we at least push the antis into the abyss??? Please???

If that means I become a monster, so be it.

quote:

Originally posted by WinstonSmith:
That would be a good first step; thinking about that for awhile.

Isn't that the problem now? We've all sat around thinking about it, thinking "It's not gonna happen here!". Meanwhile, Tennessee--A TOBACCO STATE--has a statewide smoking ban. More lax than in many other places, but still! I can no longer eat at my favorite restaurants! I have yet to even find a restaurant in my area that is for 21+ so it can allow smoking!

I'm all for philosophical discussions to find the root of the problem, if possible. Discussions are good. But when "thinking" becomes the call instead of "action", I don't agree.


Re-reading what you wrote that I quoted above: You say thinking about it is "a good first step". So I guess I went off the deep end a little. Sorry about that.

What to call ourselves--I'm all for "pro-smoking". From mostly Nightlight's research, I'm all for anybody who wants to to take it up and to be allowed to smoke anywhere, just as it used to be. But "pro-smoking" turns off some people, as if being pro smoking means we're going out with packs of smokes in our trench coats, trying to lure everyone to smoke. So "pro-freedom" works. As many have pointed out: this is just another liberty taken away just because.

Sorry, I've rambled enough!

I don't know if we should tag ourselves as pro-smokers rights or pro-liberty or freedom.

Possibly the better route is to be ANTI - heck, it works for them.

Anti-Socialist
Anti-Big Government
Anti-NeoCommunist
Anti-Environwacko

It worked for Reagan, and whatever you guys may think of Rush Limbaugh, it works for him too.

And in both their cases, they make Fun of the Socialist-lites, the environmental-wackos and the Communists.

One can make a case against Socialism, write a serious 300 page book that no one will read, beat yourself silly that no one understands - BUT - say one joke and you have people thinking, understanding, agreeing and telling the joke to others.
http://www.geocities.com/troys_tales/jokes.html

Actually, it's always best to come at this stuff from a positive angle (hence the well-known opposite sides of the coin "pro-choice" and "pro-life"), but I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know. "Anti" is pure poison unless you're going up against something people have been indoctrinated into thinking of as pure evil, (like Communism or drugs, for instance) which takes a lot of time and money. In the case of smoking, they've been working on us since the early 'sixties. Smokers probably missed their best shot when they didn't oppose banning cigarette ads in the early 'seventies, under a banner of pro-free-speech. Oh, well. Spilled milk.

Even when going up against something that's been thoroughly demonized, "anti" is an inadvisable label. You'll notice the antis don't tend to use it. They prefer labels like "BreatheEasy." They try to couch their movement in terms of "pro-fresh-air" and "for-the-children."

Returning to the issue of abortion for a moment, the pro-reproductive-rights people made a brilliant move when they co-opted the term "pro-choice." It works for us too, but it's already been taken.

If you think about it, Reagan rarely resorted to negativity. Personally I never liked him, but he was generally successful in projecting a sunny, lovable demeanor, and was only "anti" on things like... well, Communism, drugs, and abortion. Generally speaking, those three words all have an EXTREMELY negative emotional impact. Double negatives (when you're absolutely certain you're dealing with a negative) add up to a net positive, but are still not as strong as double-positives like pro-choice or pro-life.

Pro-smoking is no good. It sets us up to be called perverts who want to get kids hooked. It's almost as bad as pro-sodomy.

Incidentally, I work in advertising.

One agency I freelance for just got through doing a campaign for a pro-smokers'-rights organization. They did it pro bono. I was proud of them for that. Their ads are very effective, but I don't want to put the slogans up here. Their campaign is completed, but it hasn't been launched yet, and telegraphing those punches on a public board anyone can read would be a bad idea, for obvious reasons. I don't think my client would appreciate it either.

I'd be happy to discuss this further, but only privately, with people I trust. There is a reason ad campaigns are often kept secret until they are launched.

I apologize for the double post, but I should go on record as saying that I probably don't fit in with the majority on this board. At least, it doesn't seem that way. I'm one of those rare animals, a left-of-center libertarian, and something like "Anti-Environwacko" would REALLY turn me off. I care deeply about the environment. I simply don't see government (the U.S. federal government, anyway) as a trustworthy ally. It's too sold-out to special interests.

Apparently I'm way outside the box. To use a list of "pro" labels for the sake of brevity (regardless of the negative impact of some of the things I'm "pro" about), I am pro-gun, pro-private-property, pro-drugs, pro-smoking, pro-abortion, pro-free-speech, pro-gay-rights, pro-environment, pro-privacy... I could go on, but what it comes down to is, I'm pro-mind-your-own-business. Peaceful people should be left alone.

You'll notice I said "peaceful," not "law-abiding," because lots of peaceful people are technically criminals. We tobacco users are headed there ourselves.

I don't really even have a philosophical problem with things like nationalized health care. In theory, it's a neat idea. In practice, given the cracked U.S. system, it would simply be mismanaged, used as another means of control, and designed to be wasteful and inefficient.

I'm also pro-health. Who wouldn't be? But we've been herded into