Memes: They decide where we go and what we do!

[Asher Kelman]

Leonardo, concerning the conquest of the Americas, you referred to mixing of gene pools

The Spanish and Portuguese put this concept in practice seconds after landing in America.

This is a good thing because it makes us all related and/or potential family making partners.

Then, just like today, the Royal Families of Major states were highly influenced and guided by religious as well as the usual intents of acquiring power and riches.

The 10,000 Morasses in Pakistan funded from Western addiction to oil, is of the same order as the drive to acquire more souls for Jesus. Queen Isabella and the Inquisition (equivalent of the Nazis) were obsessed with spreading salvation to everyone and rooting out other religions. This lead to mass destruction of cultures.

Isabella was infected with Catholic religious certainty no less than extremists today. People could be tortured and slaughtered in good conscience for not accepting the path to "salvation". Interesting that in the torture chambers, there where pictures of the savior, which they covered with a veil so he would not be troubled by the grisly work done in his name!

Things switched when Protestants gained the upper hand as in Northern Island or Boston elsewhere in the 19th and 20th centuries, where Irish Catholics were treated as rats and Catholics in New York had the same designation. Of course there were superficial reasons of riches and jobs to be had, but the power of hatreds was the engine that drove everything and could stir up violence like a flame to a pool or gasoline!

Today, maids and roof laborers in Los Angeles may carry bibles to work and that is the consequence and continued effect of Isabella's power being put behind the Catholic Church. None of the love and respect for Inca and Mayan knowledge and beliefs is able to compete with the Catholic juggernaut that pretty well erased all the power and remnants of any indigenous people's identity and heritage.

It's this drive to spread ideas, infectious ideas, memes (http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1998/vol2/blackmore_s.html), that define a lot of religious, political, social, artistic and cultural movements that help define our societies and give us identity. Unfortunately, the drives are so strong that wholesale destruction of cultures, massacres and genocide are too often the consequence.

I agree with you that:

On the other side we keep making artificial barriers to this fantastic fact with disastrous results like the holocaust and Rwanda genocide to mention just two. That is probably why some readers here could not let the comments introducing the images so easily.

It is said that in the 20th century some 100 million people died that way, most in drives for "racial purity". Lets ask why? We'll go to the concept of the "meme".

Although Dawkins presented the concept of a Meme, as ideas that get copied or mimicked, its exclusive and inclusive boundaries have not been fully agreed on. Susan Blackmore insists on imitation (http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1998/vol2/blackmore_s.html)as the mode of transmission. I believe this is counterproductive. In any case I'm more interested in virulent transmission. Here is a brief description

A meme is an information pattern which is capable of being copied to another individual’s memory, mostly by means of imitation (though other techniques are possible as well) and which is subject to a selection process. source[/U] (]

I'd add to that

"Memes must have substantial consequence in human behavioir. These can be apparently trivial, like fashionable clothes or areas of scientific research or interpretations of "facts" to major population outcomes, like cultural or physical genocide."

[B]So it's now [U]not the our competing biological genes that are battling, rather the infectious memes that dominate our primitive brains.

On the other side we keep making artificial barriers to this fantastic fact with disastrous results like the holocaust and Rwanda genocide to mention just two. That is probably why some readers here could not let the comments introducing the images so easily.

I believe that eye, nose, lip and other distinguishing features allow people to easily identify with or against people that "need" to be destroyed or "converted". The facial features, are both an advantage and a disadvantage depending on whether you are the hunter or the hunted.

However, it's the ideas, true or false, that are fighting today and in most recent history, from the communist revolutions to the religious fervor of Catholics, Baptists, Mormons and Islam spreading their certain knowledge of the absolute holy and required path to heaven. Whether done by giving schools, food, irrigation or the threat of a slit throat, the consequence is the same.

These ideas have genetics too. Survival of the most powerful memes in populations of men that are themselves subject to genetic selection. During the last 80-100 years, with the arrival of clean water, food storage, national borders, welfare programs and medicines, humans survive no matter what!

However, with infectious ideas, that's where the fight is, that's where we are and it's a fight to the death! Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. The fight is not because of misunderstandings but because of infectious imperatives!

Asher

[Georg Baumann]

Some native american cultures, that date back a staggering 12,000 years in deed, "transmitted" their teachings and history in oral ways only. Often this was done by choosing a few selected people who's whole purpose in life was to memorize "stories" and to pass them on to the next generation.

In Bighorn Wyoming, many of you american folks around here will know this, you can find an ancient construction that is known as the medicine wheel an 80' diameter wheel-like pattern made of stones.

Every tribe I have visited, in one way or another has this medicine wheel. Often you see them with 4 colors, black, red, yellow and white, representing the four human nations, black people, red people, yellow and white people.

This construction in Bighorn has not only a spritual meaning to it's builders and their decendants, it served also pretty exact astrological observations, such as the equinox, solstice and star alignments, Rigel rise , Aldebaran rise etc. From the center there are 28 spokes going to the outer rim, each of them pointing in a specific direction, such as Aldebaran etc. The sundance Lodge of the Lakota Nation has also 28 spokes. 28 is very sacred # to many tribes. Simply because of its significance to lunar month, the helicial or dawn rising of Rigel 28 days past the Solstice, and Sirius another 28 past that. This wheel is not the only one existing, more than 100 have been identified in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

During my time with native americans I learned that many have very similiar prophecies, and while they all are different they have very interesting things in common. The appearance of the white man in their Land, and the events that lead to their genocide, many of these things had been known and were part of their prophecies.

I am a very sceptical person probably due to my education and my background, however, I have seen and experienced things that simply can not be explained with ratio, things I thought to be in the realm of a vivid fantasy only, I had to change my view, inevitably.

I would say that Greed is the biggest problem, the most contagious and "air born" meme of all times, and from there others develop of course, down to hate and uttlery senseless destruction of life. We decide where we go and what we do, however, the quality of our decision is another question, but we choose, no one else.

Unfortunately, and history can give evidence on that without doubts, our decisions had been poor and mostly driven by greed. But other concepts are possible, concepts without greed that could enable a flourishing nation that consists of many nations.

But I am afraid we are "too advanced", and too stupid to slow down now and care for better choices that simply considers the generations to come.

The real deciding factor is that we are choosers, and as such we make choices, these are not forced by memes or education , they may be influenced, but we are free to make our decision regardless.

P.S.
I often think, wouldn't it be nice if we just could use a neurotoxine that could get rid of such infectious imperatives? A neutrotoxine that acts in 1/2000s, faster than nerve conduction velocity, well, way too easy I suppose, so we have to stick to the hard way....and make choices.... <smiles>

P.P.S
In our world the "original" is the proliferation of the standardized. Copies are copies of copies.
KOYAANISQATSI, a Film must have seen, with excellent minimal music by Philip Glas: http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php

[leonardobarreto.com]

Asher, That was really good, I wish I could write like that, and of course I totally agree. The first stage of extermination is earmarking the neighbor as belonging to "another race" or people "not like us".

But in the case of the "conquest" of america, --as seen from a mesoamerican like me who was borne in Managua, Nicaragua -- I think that the clash of cultures was a real and bloody event in the history of civilizations, but it is difficult to say that one or the other where the good and bad guy of the movie. I am thinking about a component of the Aztec and Mayan culture that produced concepts of gods with never-ending thirst for human blood. No mater how politically incorrect the Catholics from europe where, the ritual murder that was performed in the temples are a bit more. For example, at the inauguration ceremony of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, thousands of victims had to stand in line waiting, --for a few days-- to ascend to where their harts would be removed from their bodies, and deposited in a huge terra-cotta container in the form of either Tlaloc or Huitzilopochtli, the god of the water and the god of war.

As you say,

"Memes must have substantial consequence in human behavioir. These can be apparently trivial, like fashionable clothes or areas of scientific research or interpretations of "facts" to major population outcomes, like cultural or physical genocide."

Probably the high prists of Tlaloc or Hutzilopochtli knew about the Memes and created this elaborate story about the wold ending the moment that their masters stopped being feed with human harts and blood.

[Georg Baumann]

Hi Leonardo,

This earmarking is one of many phenomenon forms of the same condition, xenophobia.

http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3026&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Funny, this is from 2001:

International Migration,Racism, Discrimination and Xenophobia. A discussion paper prepared by: International Labour Office (ILO),International Organization for Migration (IOM),Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), In consultation with Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

FUTURE TRENDS: IOM predicts that the total number of international migrants will approach 250 million by the year 2050. Such a prediction has to reflect many probable factors. These include the effects of war, famine, drought and epidemics, the increasing economic gap between rich and poor countries and the differential between countries in which population is growing and those where it is decreasing. On the basis of data on fertility rates, UN projections show significant decreases in the populations of many countries in Europe and some in other regions, contrasting with large projected increases in parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas. The threat of rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions, associated with global climate change, may also emerge as major factors behind forced migration. Already international aid agencies, including the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, are warning of the humanitarian impact of the unfettered growth of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels in industrialized nations.

Here the original: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/migrant/download/wcar.pdf

Here a link to European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC): http://eumc.europa.eu/eumc/index.php

[Asher Kelman]

Asher, That was really good, I wish I could write like that, and of course I totally agree. The first stage of extermination is earmarking the neighbor as belonging to "another race" or people "not like us".

But in the case of the "conquest" of america, --as seen from a mesoamerican like me who was borne in Managua, Nicaragua -- I think that the clash of cultures was a real and bloody event in the history of civilizations, but it is difficult to say that one or the other where the good and bad guy of the movie. I am thinking about a component of the Aztec and Mayan culture that produced concepts of gods with never-ending thirst for human blood. No mater how politically incorrect the Catholics from europe where, the ritual murder that was performed in the temples are a bit more. For example, at the inauguration ceremony of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, thousands of victims had to stand in line waiting, --for a few days-- to ascend to where their harts would be removed from their bodies, and deposited in a huge terra-cotta container in the form of either Tlaloc or Huitzilopochtli, the god of the water and the god of war.

As you say,

"Memes must have substantial consequence in human behavioir. These can be apparently trivial, like fashionable clothes or areas of scientific research or interpretations of "facts" to major population outcomes, like cultural or physical genocide."

Probably the high prists of Tlaloc or Hutzilopochtli knew about the Memes and created this elaborate story about the wold ending the moment that their masters stopped being feed with human harts and blood.
Leonardo,

There is, IMHO, no moral equivalent to wholesale massacres of entire populations, burnings at the stake of conversos and others, torture of the average person who tried to have freedom of worship, to the blood letting by the elite ruling class.

The Spanish could have just conquered the priest class but allowed the people to have their culture. No matter what the priests did, they would have wiped them out and raped the women anyway! It is not a matter of political correctness. The Inquisition was throughout the Spanish colonies for 300 years!

Cathedrals in Spain still have the gold! A nation that was advanced as Spain with the moral authority of the Pope, should not have done what they did with impunity.

Essentially, the cultural genocide was one of the most brutal in history! amazingly, they suceeded in having each generation of "Hispanics" treasure the culture of the very people who destroyed their own and robbed them of the gold, defiled their daughters.

Pretty similar to what the Turks did when they conquered the Baltics and produced blue-eyed Kosovo Muslims who have no other memories of their preinvasion heritage.

I dislike intensely people going to Muslim lands and baiting poor people with medicines and food or education so that they can convert them and give them salvation. Amazingly, when the churches has difficulty in the beginning of the 20th century to convert Muslims to Christianity, the didn't just return to the USA, Germany or England! So what did they do? They set their focus on the Armenian Christian populations.

These industrious societis from villages to towns and cities throughout the Ottoman Empire, were prosperous as farmers, fruit, honey, opium butter and opium gorwers, writers, bridge builders, wngineers, musicians, translators, tailors, traders and more. They were hungry for education for there families. The Armeinan Orthodox Church, probably the oldest in Christendom had a rich culture. Each area had their own songs, rhymes, literature and music. The churches had some of the finest architecture and of course, the decorated New Testament "Gospel" reached a superb level of beauty, almost umatched in the Churches of the West.

So the Missionary Churches built massive walled several story schools to "educate" the "backward" Armenians and in doing so inculcated division in the society and the Forts For Christ, towering over the mud huts of poor Turkish Muslims, didn't put the Christians in good light at all!

Then the Western Missionaries educated women and provided a major highway away from older more strict Orthodox attitudes to women. A good thing, yes, but this was for the purrposes of controlling the next generation. When in April 1914 the actions against the defenseless Armenian started again, at first the protestants and Catholics were indeed spared somewhat. Soon after, all Christian were gathered in the huge mass deportations, rapes, burnings of children and drownings. The lucky girls were saved as wives for officers, as servants or as whores. The men were clubbed, drowned and shot to death. The poor people, bereft of food, clothes and shelters wirhered from 100s of thousands to just clumps of scores of pitiful remnants in the scrorched Syrian desert.

The Churches mostly just went home!

Hatred for Armenians was virulent. The coming of the war and the arrival of aggressive missionaries changed an issue to an opportunuty: to exterminate the Armenians while "the lights were out" and Turkey was cut off from Europe, (except Germany who at least facilitated the genocide).

I personallhy wonderwhether or not the missionaries aggressive high profile work in Turkey might have helped tilt the power of the racism to ignite a full scale "final solution of the Armenian Problem". The Germans provided the telegraph which facilitated the phasing of villages to be emptied without blocking up the roads with bodsies. To the Turks, the Armenians were scum, rats and just exploiters of the good muslims. That idea was the infectious heritable hatred which we want to get rid of.

To me, what's wrong with letting people worship or not their own way as long as they are not doing blood letting! Missionary activity, as far as I'm concened is morally repugnant.

What was the moral failing of the established Armenian Orthodox Church that compelled Missionaries to travel all the way over the oceans to make them Protestants, Lutheran or Catholics? In what way does their belief in a "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" as well as the "Virgin Birth" and the "Resurrection" not qualify for being a bona fide Christian?

My father, a religious leader, told me that God was not stupid! His mansion had no exclusive front door! All were welome innocent and unconditionally unless they went against the basics of humanity.

So why not let people deal with their wonder at life and their fear of death in their own way? Why the obsessional drive to capture more souls!!

Asher

[Georg Baumann]

So why not let people deal with their wonder at life and their fear of death in their own way? Why the obsessional drive to capture more souls!!


The insanity of totalitarism.

Look at Scientology and the way they operate, they certainly learned their lessons well from the likes such as Ignatius de Loyola.

[leonardobarreto.com]

I found this while looking for the correct spelling of

"Huitzilopochtli's mother Coatlicue became pregnant when a ball of feathers (the soul of a warrior) fell from the sky and hit her. He later leapt fully formed from his mother's womb and killed his siblings who were, in turn, about to kill Coatlicue for presumably having been promiscuous."

The text forgot to mention that when he came out of his mother womb --fully formed-- did it with an Aztec sword (that was made out of wood and obsidian, a sharp stone).


he was the god of:
War
Fire
Sun
Warriors and Young Men
Supreme God of Tenochtitlan
Protector of the Aztec nation

Why is this relevant? don't know, just shows how religion is something we create so that we can believe in it afterwards.

Or it may show how religions are created specifically to the "needs" of cultures. People of this cultures, then, have to "believe" in them no mater how absurd they may be. For example, someone being born with the sword needed to kill his siblings....

[Edward Bussa]

Can we start talking about meta-memes now? Memes within memes?

Also, the very idea of a meme - is it a meme in and of itself?

[Georg Baumann]

Well, here is my personal take on all this, it sure is an interesting field of research in computer science. Distributed artificial intellgience. You'll find some pretty whacked sounding titles in this discipline. <grins>

Gossip-Based Aggregation of Trust in Decentralized Reputation Systems

Average-Case Tractability of Manipulation in Elections via the Fraction of Manipulators

Simulation is a wonderful thing, how many teraflops do we need to simulate fantasy? What about "second life"? <grins>

Dawkin was a Zoologist and his 1976 book The Selfish Gene started it, but even Dawkin himself expressed concern about memetics becoming an empirical science of culture. It sure is a fascinating idea that summitted in the Double-Helix Model of Bio-psycho-social Behaviour (Spiral Dynamics) which in fact was applied in a wide variety of contexts, including transforming South Africa out of race categories, revitalising local communities and sporting teams, and designing organizational and marketing systems for blue chip corporate firms and top-level government sectors. The system has been applied geopolitically by the Clinton/Bush as well as Blair administrations on a variety of domestic and international issues.

Whole societies have become the petri dish of ideology driven management strategies.

Former physician Aaron Lynch's "Thought Contagion", How Belief Spreads Through Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996) was the kickstart through which memetics began to 'cross-the-chasm' into the scientific mainstream and quickly a new ideology was born that infected the internet, at best it is one of the most popular manifestations of contemporary mysticism.

Personally I think Memes are an interesting idea, but that's about it, and it is not scientifically founded. A theory is only valid if it can be proven wrong, at least theoretically, and this is not the case with memes. Meme and memetics were once terms batted around only by thinkers like Mr. Dawkins, the philosopher Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore, the author of "The Meme Machine." Now the word "meme" is part of many would-be-trendy Web addresses.

The idea that Memes are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life is an untenable claim. It should not be offered as a scientific definition.

Personally, when it comes to aspects of mass psychology, I am much more inclined to the likes such as Ortega Y Gasset.

http://www.4literature.net/Jose_Ortega_y_Gasset/Revolt_of_the_Masses/

The idea of the meme has, itself, become a meme. Spread the word. <hehehehe>

[Asher Kelman]

Georg,

An excellent coverage of the meme infestation! However, pragmatically we can use the concept like spirals of mathematics, to grasp at what is happening to us.

It's observable that large populations get infected with ideas that are not rationally supported, except as flags and face paint to unite tribes and determine friend from foe in fights and territorial wars.

Perfect examples are gang colors, uniforms of soldiers and the team colors of soccer teams or the required dress of some religions. These are designed to be inclusive and exclusive, each to some degree. They give the individual a sense of identity and of not being abandoned and alone.

This behavior translates into science where a belief system can determine the resources devoted. Here, at least, one can prove something is wrong. With Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2, it was the postulate that thus was the causative agent. Funding was for this! Eventually traction on the idea that another DNS virus, related to warts caused the cancer. Gradually funds were shifted and work proved positive until a vaccine was made that prevented the cancer. No we didn't prove that Herpes simplex virus type 2 doesn't cause some of the cervical cancers only that a smaller virus was responsible for a substantial amount of the terrible disease and could be prevented!

So memes, though unscientifically proven by the standards of a test, that would exclude their role, can, like infectious agents be substantiated by effect. We know that when men are given the ideas of religious extremism totalitarianism, communism and so forth, it spreads, like a virus, just like Herpes simplex or smallpox, if the subjects are susceptible! Immunization can occur by education, but not always.

The concept of memes is at least a very practical description of what happens. It is observable and can be studied. To me, it's very important for us to understand the basis for mass spread of non-rational ideas which compel people to be destructive or else to be helpful.

My judgment is that this, the understanding of infectious ideas that become imperatives is a key to our peace and even to our survival. I posit that like nuclear power, the memes can be used for humanty or destruction. Controlling infectious loyalty is important.

The compulsion to destroy is archaic. Dealing with inectious recruitment is key to rising above tribalism. Otherwise we're merely suicidal apes with technology; apes with Palm Pilots! Photography, seeing the commonality of our humanity, is an antidote to this!

Asher

Note:

Four strains of human papillomavirus (HPV). Those strains are called HPV-6, HPV-11, HPV-16, and HPV-18.

HPV-16 and HPV-18 account for about 70% of all cervical cancers. Cervical cancer is cancer of the cervix, which connects the vagina to the uterus.

HPV-6 and HPV-11 account for about 90% of genital warts. Source (http://women.webmd.com/guide/20061201/cervical-cancer-vaccine-questions)

[Georg Baumann]

Otherwise we're merely suicidal apes with technology; apes with Palm Pilots!

I'd sign that.

When this picture was released 11 years ago, for a few days I sincerely hoped this could change the world to a better place, I was convinced that people who see that come to think.... Courtesy of STScI/NASA

http://www4.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/d7e88283dbf90e7735f6148511c9021d5g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=djz4l2zmzmd&thumb=4)

I was wrong.

We are not ready for the truth, we are still trapped in medieval mindsets and not ready to evolve to a species that can handle the truth. Possibly our extinction is inevitable, possibly we manage to do this ourselves, more than likely. Then again, once the global population is reduced to a few hundred millions, may be things change for the better, but I doubt it.

The difference between the cro magnum and us is that we have bullets and palmtops. Yes, we also have arts and science, and this is where I flee into, listening to classic, reading, or just spend a day on the beach.

We torture fellow human beings, we rape, we burn down places, we kill. In the morning we plan mass murder and giove executive orders and in the evening we go to the opera, the palmtop in our pocket, filled with the bloody statistics of our success, at a cost we did not pay, but we will eventually.

I know where you are coming from Asher, and I understand and respect that. See, the difference between you and I is that you would love to rule the world for a few weeks, where I would not give a flying Bull about it. <grins> I became more stoic on these aspects with the years, my time with Lakota probably contributed to that as well, fortunately I might add.

Btw. when you were asking me what I do for a living, I was tempted to say.... "I breath".... <smiles> But I do not know you that well, and it could have been easily mistaken on the phone without looking in the other persons face, so I did not say that, but it best describes my thinking.

Who knows, may be we live long enough to see quantum entanglement findig pratical applications in daily live and quantum computer networks replace what we know today, sure would be interesting to see, but would this be used to stop the vicious cycles of greed and exploitation, nope, in opposite...

[Edward Bussa]

A marvelous image indeed! I think it speaks many things to many people, and nothing to some. That is our lot and our nature. Far from perfect, but surrounded by perfection.

Before finding Georg's post and the picture, I originally wanted to post a comment on memes and music - I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts about music being a meme, or a catalyst for a meme?

Without knowing exactly what this thing called a meme is, I was watching a documentary about the sixties, and it would seem that some memes were being employed during that era - deliberately or not!

Comments?