Re: Dennett article on post-modernism

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sun 16 Mar 2003 - 22:58:33 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Dennett article on post-modernism"

    At 02:01 PM 16/03/03 -0800, Grant wrote:
    >Keith Henson
    >
    >"PS. It seems very likely that advancing neuroscience will figure out
    >the chemical basis of capture-bonding, that is the mechanisms for complete
    >social reorientation to a new group in a few days. At that point, a
    >person could be subjected to drug/hormone treatments that bonded them to a
    >new group with a different meme driven goals and returned to the society
    >they lived in before it was known they had been captured and turned this way.
    >I.e., the age of chemical mind control may be at hand. (Shades of
    >Heinlein's _The Puppet Masters_!) "
    >
    >There is a long history of men going out and capturing women and bringing
    >them back to the tribe as wives. The middle East is rife with such
    >stories and I have read about it in Tokugawa Japan and some parts of
    >China. The movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" was partly based on such
    >a premise.
    >The idea for that certainly didn't come from modern literary
    >tradition. The American Indians also did such things. I don't know
    >exactly how far back in human history the idea goes, but the stories seem
    >to be a worldwide phenomena.

    Homer's stories at the dawn of western litterature were based on capturing a woman. My bet is that it goes back millions of years because there are analogous male chimpanzee behaviors. If it goes back that far, people, women especially, would have evolved mechanisms to adjust their internal mental state to being captured. Their genes stood a decent chance of prospering if they were able to adapt and the line of genes for those who could not usually ended. Talk about selection pressure!

    It is a remarkably simple model.

    Keith Henson

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