From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 18 May 2003 - 09:28:00 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> Deciding to drink one's thousandth beer is very different from a spider
> following a hard-wired instinctual program to weave its thousandth web;
> once again, one falls into the trap of implicitly denying conscious self-
> awareness and choice at the very moment one is exercising them.
Taking all possibilities in consideration, no, that ain 't that different.
There is nothing that excludes the possibility that drinking one's 1000
beer is just a hard- wired program than the weaving of a web.
Nothing excludes the possibility that one is hard- wired for drinking
beer, it could be just yet another construction of a meme.
Depending upon the cognitive gestalt different people will perform
differently, (drinking beer, wine, or smoke, drive fast, etc) where
in the same token, spiders will weave webs and lions will hunt wilde-
beasts.
You seem to sweep what is human under a fundamental mistake,
a rug that provides us being on top of nature, where we are NOT !
Where addiction and neuroses are concerned will likely dismiss
the possibility that mandates that those can be essential, encoded
hard -wired within.
If we take Wade's scheme, culture needs all of its performances
to be maintained, therefor drinking beer and making webs are
part of the same venue_ and in the same token, any meme, any
performance needs as many relations as it should and can have
to be memetically useful and continuing.
It is IMO, not important if beer drinking is hard- wired within
or making webs is biased on instinct or not, what seems to be
of importance is the continuance of these performances and
their related memetic constructs.
Consciousness, is IMO of no major importance, the decision
so allegedly made by you, you think, can be just yet another
tool by which memes propagate and continue.
The decision addresses the process of procreation of one
particular cultural effect, drinking beer.
Within the cultural mix it is an agency and an effect of memes
and performances at work_ memes and performances use
our consciousness to do their parasitic dirty- work.
While we think it was our decision to make, we deny the
memes their agency of " being selfish "_consciousness is
just a working model by which memes/ performances evolve,
ride and grant themselves within the mix.
Regards,
Kenneth
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