From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 21:16:07 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vincent Campbell" <VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk>
> Are people so trapped in the western individualistic ideological mindset
> that any challenge to that must be interpreted as a negative thing?
Vincent, glad to have you back,
To the above, I don 't think people are trapped in the individualistic
mindset, more the opposite, they don 't know what to do with their
individualistic traits and habits. History is one made out of collecti-
viness and aspects of groupsbounding and crowds.
The view I got on this is inspired by Goulds Full House- idea, that is
that evolution could go only way and that is up.
So, the start was individualistic ( like the Big Bang was in its beginning
a ' singularity ' / like one- celluar beings could only evolve into multiple
celluar organisms) and thus collectiviness/ groups and crowds were
the second stage of an evolutionary process.
Nature is in its beginning static ( individualistic), the dynamic of evo-
lution ( the tendency of everything to " improve " itself ) defines
groupselection_ it is not a natural trait !
> If free will is merely an illusion of brain chemistry, then it always has
> been, and we won't have '"lost" it, and the development of modern society
> will of occurred despite us not having free will. If we can achieve a
> society where, at least in principle, things like freedom, tolerance,
> equality etc. etc. have emerged without free will then what do we need it
> for exactly?
In the case as desribed as above, free will would be a leftover of our
individualistic origin_ something like an inbedded instinct of
individuality.
In the beginning there was only power and adaptation, instinctive
repsonses of fleeing or stay put. Free will was/ is a certain ability to
stay alive and to procreate. Humans do possess the inbedded ten-
dency for egocentrism_ before everything we have consideration with
ourselves. Free will is a kind of representation of that tendency.
> It reminds me of the negativity of some meme writers wanting to
de-programme
> themselves of what they think are all the harmful memes (but not the ones
> they "know" are OK- like Buddhist memes for a couple of meme writers at
> least).
That is the future of humankind, to free itself from everything what holds
its back and down.
The ' Self- building by memes ' scheme of Lawry and me is such an attempt.
Regards,
Kenneth
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