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From: Philip Jonkers
> Ted:
> > And what would you be like without you? There's got to be a subject of
> > awareness that perceives these varying degrees of reality and illusion.
> > Otherwise our thoughts and memes couldn't exist.
>
> Strip away the memes consituting our being (i.e. self-plex, ego)
> and all that remains is a human that survives on instinctual drives.
The set of self-images at the core of our minds cannot constitute our being,
since someone has to imagine the self-plex. There's no image without an
imaginer. As we know from studies of feral children, it's only in the act
of this imagining that the human self comes into being.
> > The conflict arises because, inevitably, some of our memified notions
will
> > be pathological. Ideas can't distinguish between right and wrong. Any
> > idea, no matter how ridiculous, can become self-replicating. Though
quite
> > powerful, "L. Ron is God" doesn't contribute to the good of the social
body.
> > It's a freelance meme, much like a carcinogenic cell. When an
alternative
> > social body begins to form around a carcinogenic meme, the result is
cult,
> > not culture.
>
> You have a point here, but two things. Isn't the phenomenon of the cult
part
> of culture. I'm aware of the superfluidity and redundancy of cults, but I
would
> consider it a subset of culture. The distinction between cult and culture
to me
> is not of a seperable kind but rather of embedding kind (cult in culture).
Agreed.
> If you consider memes to be cultural elements that involve only
unintentional
> replication, how would you explain the spreading of cult-memes? Cult-
> preaching (spreading the `cult-gospel') seems very intentional to me;
> Jehova's witnesses knocking on doors know very well what and why they are
> doing. If not, they wouldn't be able to get near their objective of
persuasion.
> Their intentional basis is pathological of course.
What begins as intention ossifies into habit. If it's interpersonal, it's
memetic. If it's pathological, it's cult. As Lawrence says, a Venn diagram
would be helpful here.
Ted
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