From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 10 Nov 2002 - 10:57:31 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
> I was just trying to point out the fact that we were talking about
different
> things. You were talking about not having a particular culture to call
your
> own and I was talking about a person who had no culture at all -- no
> language memes, no tool-making memes, no way to communicate with other
> people at all. If you knew how to make fire that's a meme unless you
found
> a way to do it without being taught by someone. Without the memes of
> society you would have to invent everything you did from finding a way to
> eat to getting in out of the heat and cold. If you didn't know how or why
> to cook your meat, you would have to eat it raw. These are the advantages
> that culture has given us. Now, instead of worrying about what to do with
> the dead animal we found, we worry about whether we should eat French,
> Italian, or Chinese food tonight.
Grant,
Like I said in a post last night, that can be the explanation of why Rusland
of
today is in such a mess !
In Russia in the time of Stalin, the idea of collectiviness was absolute,
draw to its extreme ends. In order to be ' Russian ', the people their
motivation was to serve the collective, of course, Stalin has given them
no choise but that is not the real issue here.
The issue is the fact that the Russian people their individuality, in all
aspects and at all levels of society/ culture was wiped clean.
In a sense there was not one single Russian left, there stood one
giant working mass.
In my mind, this notion fixed itself in the mind, and why not in the
genes of any single Russian-if not, you can see here how strong a
pathomeme actually can be.
Years went by, and finally the Wall fell. Can you imagine what
that must have caused in the minds of the ordinary Russian !?
Now they had to support themselves, find a job, a home etc !
But they couldn 't and still they can 't, because still historical
paradigms are working throught, psychological representations
of what it means to be an individual are gone, and not only that,
also the historical heritage about individuality.
The legacy of growing their own crops was wiped out and re-
placed by Lykosism_ still a major way of thinking in the
scientific community of today....
Or to say, in Wade's scheme, the base of communalities still
exists, each of them tries to construct a newbie but there is
no top. The only similar behavior that we can spot is the one
of fear, instability, the lack of having individuality and identity.
Moreover, with the collapse of the USSR, the Russian people
lost their nationality, their socio- cultural/ philosophical identity too.
In today's Russia, people have to re- invent what working is, what
it is to be fired, what efficiency and productivity is. Now they begin
to realise how radical processes of productivity can be, how tech-
nological innovations, profiteering and the free market undermines
terms of employment.
Gorbatsjov saw it coming, tried to counteract the a(e)ffects with
his glasnost and perestrojka but failed, not because they weren 't
good ideas, but because the Russians hadn 't the mental ability
to comprehend what was going on.
For years to come, maybe for a few generations, atleast when
noone will try to re- eastablish communism or a kind of Kingdom
the effects will be counted for_ immigrations, high rates of crimi-
nality, suicide, drinking problems, civil wars etc.
IMO, there lies a high ground for practical memetics, we can
at least if we try set up a philosophical, political, scientific,finan-
cial, economical, social discourse in order to clear the Russian
people their mind.
But, here in Europe, so far noone has tried to answer the silent
scream for help.
That too is due to memetical prejudices....
Regards,
Kenneth
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