From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 09 Sep 2003 - 02:11:53 GMT
Date sent: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 11:45:53 +1000
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Jeremy Bradley <jeremyb@nor.com.au>
Subject: RE: I find it sad yet hilarious...
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Snippppp...................
> >To commit mass murder by using human bombs to blow up concentrations
> >of
> clueless and unarmed civilians merely
> >pursuing their citizen lives in planes or ships or buses or
> >skyscrapers or stadiums or shopping malls is wrong, no matter who
> >swears that their god says it is all right. And it is wrong for
> >scientific inquiry to be forbidden and for evidence supporting
> >doctrinally upsetting positions to be suppressed because of some
> >dogmatic pronouncement that a self- styled prophet, of whatever
> >religion, claims was communicated to him centuries ago. Unless we
> >acknowledge these existential rights and wrongs, we may end up
> >endorsing the ascendancy of totalitarian dogmatisms that would
> >forclose all freedom of thought, action, conscience, doubt and
> >inquiry, not just (but including) memetics.
> >>
>
> I agree with this Joe. Where we disagree is that I see no basic
> difference between State and non-State terror. Murder, for God or
> State, by human bomb or one dropped from a war-plane, is contrary to
> my memetic understanding of appropriate behaviour. The killing of
> thousands of people and the subsequent physical and cultural invasion
> of a Nation in order to save them from physical and cultural
> subjugation is ludicrous unless you have been infected by the 'Might
> is Right' meme. Religious memes are no more valid than recently
> evolved econo/political or cultural memes, and vice-versa. Jeremy
>
When you keep collateral civilian casualties down to less than
three thousand, and dethrone a dictator who was responsible for the
deaths of more than that number of his own citizens in a single poison
gas attack (Halabja), and more than two million human beings over all,
and who would have continued the torture, rape and murder ad
nauseum, as would his sons, it is an eminently utilitarian choice
(actually, the minimax solution, which is the total of the greatest good
and the least evil for the greatest number). And memes can indeed be
judged by their content, and the results which would ensue
concommitant upon their adoption or imposition. Those that advocate
the annihilation of personal individual freedoms (of thought and action)
are objectively inferior, existentially speaking, to those which promote
the perpetuation of such freedoms. For this reason, although they may
not be as hooking in such instances (see Hoffer's THE TRUE
BELIEVER and Fromm's ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM), memes that
ambrace personal diversity and free inquiry are ethically and
existentially superior (for those who must live within their purview) to
memes that endeavor to eliminate same.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Jeremy Bradley
> 3200 Oxley Hwy Hartys Plains 2446
> Phone:02 65856652 or 02 65856134
> E-mail: jeremyb@nor.com.au
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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