Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id JAA23035 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 28 May 2000 09:44:17 +0100 Message-ID: <000901bfc884$79db0ba0$e607bed4@default> From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <20000526070957.79596.qmail@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Suicide - not Cui Bono but who puts up with it Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 11:08:47 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul marsden <paulsmarsden@hotmail.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 9:09 AM
Subject: Suicide - not Cui Bono but who puts up with it
> >Because he's next going to ask you how drunk driving, chain smoking, and
> >suicide benefit the individual.
> >Wrong again. I only want to know how it benefits YOU! :)
>
> One way that I think is useful to look at this is NOT as a question of
> benefiting individuals, groups of even theoretical clusters of information
> on genes (there is no direct feedback from behaviour to genes) - its how
> evolutionary processes TOLERATE over evolutionary time such traits
>
> For example in the case of suicide it follows from Hamilton's Rule that
> negative selection pressures would only act upon traits that had a
> detrimental effect on inclusive fitness. Put differently,
self-preservation
> is only adaptive in cases where there is some residual capacity to promote
> inclusive fitness. This means that selection would tolerate underlying
> suicide-enabling structures that were contingent upon being cued in
> circumstances where there was a positive or neutral effect on inclusive
> fitness. Specifically, deCatanzaro, myself and others (e.g. Buss 1999,
> Wright 1996) have suggested that suicide is coherent with selection under
> one or more of several specific circumstances.
<< I would like to add,
Holland ( '97) and Belgium ( '98) were hit by a wave of family drama's.
In my opinion the decision to kill their children (murder) and (the attempt)
to commit suicide afterwards, is a case between the individual and the
collective where he or she lives in.
Suicide is here an option_the quality of the survival with/ for the children
is of a serious nature, killing them is far more better for the children.
And should it testify of a bad taste that I should state that those parents
who had suicide attempts (to that end wanted to fail in their attempt in
committing suicide) in order to (after their recovery) start again with a
family_and with children !?
Pure speculative, it should mean that the mechanism of the suicide-meme
should embrace the violence, the hate, the pain, the unemployment, the
relationproblems, the depressions,... in order to speed up those things
(to bring out more of them in the open)_in order to propagate themselves.
In other words, driven by eccentric circumstances and driven by instinc-
tive biological dispositions, the individual searches the for him most fa-
vourable condition(s) for survival.
Driven by eccentric circumstances and forced by their own algoritm,
memetic-structures of survival are searching the most suitable directions
to self-preservation:- co-adapted memeplexes turn out to be influenced
by knowledge which is advantageous to the algoritm (or its structure)
of the memeplex_new memes are then placed to (ab)use and to trans-
mit the knowledge.
Now of course, there are always two sides on each coin we turn, so I
would like to point out the fact that speeding up any process also can
mean that we take up the guidelines mush faster.
Faster means here at a " younger age ".
Like computers, the more computers we have, the faster our children
learn to handle them, (due to the fact of something like morphic reso-
nace).
It is suggested that we then can explain the great number of suicide
and suicide attempt under children of 11/ 12/ 13/ 14 years old !!
In this concept a social mutation, (loneyness, unemployment,...) codes
for a neurological/ psychological (then memetical) reaction, which_once
fully developped into an evolutional/ cultural trait_surfaces as the ex-
planation for the social change, which in its turn is moved closely to
the genetical reproduction pattern of the organism.
This means:- unemployment/.... of the parents can lead to serious neu-
rological/ psychological distress by the (unborn) offspring, which in its
turn can lead to suicide or suicide attempts at a very young age !
(In that respect, Lamarckian evolution is mush, mush faster than we would
ever believe.)
Regards,
Kenneth
(I am, because we are)
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