From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 10 Nov 2002 - 15:44:01 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
>
Yes, I saw the same thing happen in Japan after WWII. They went from a
country where everything came down from the Emperor to a country run by
foreigners trying to force them in to a pradigm of "democracy" and
individualism. Everything they believed in crashed around them and the only
people who knew how to cope with the new world were the criminals who
organized the black market and prostitution rings. It must have been a lot
like that in Russia with the fall of Communism.
Grant
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