From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat 26 Mar 2005 - 23:59:25 GMT
--- Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com> wrote:
> At 02:14 PM 25/03/05 -0800, you wrote:
> >Somebody named Keith Henson wrote an article
> called
> >"Memetics: the science of information viruses"
> which
> >appeared in the Winter 1987 edition of _Whole Earth
> >Review_.
>
> http://www.nancho.net/memes/infoviru.html
>
> It was a reprint (though considerably edited
> version) of the Analog
> article. I wrote a related article which never saw
> paper publication about
> the same time. I just posted parts of it in a
> transplanted thread.
>
> >During the course of his article Henson looks
> >at the "Nazi meme complex". I've been sort of
> >interested in what gave rise to Naziism in pre-WWII
> >Germany, but have only scratched the surface in my
> >readings on Ernst Haeckel's monism, the volkishness
> >that captivated many including Jung, the Wotan
> >archetype Jung commented upon which points to
> >underpinnings in Nordic mythology, and as an effect
> of
> >that movement Nobel winning ethologist Konrad
> Lorenz's
> >questionable association with the brown shirts and
> >writings on racial hygiene. Some antecedents,
> >including Nietzsche's writings on ubermenschen and
> >will to power as transmitted by his sister to the
> >Reich could be considered "sub-memes" (sensu
> Henson).
> >Yet this topic is way beyond my knowledge base.
> >
> >Henson says: "As a replicating information pattern
> >that has gone through a great deal of evolutionary
> >honing, it [Nazi meme] still infects susceptible
> >people today."
> >
> >After that tragic school shooting in Minnesota,
> people
> >have been wondering what led to that event. See:
> >
> >http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5310301.html
> >
> >There's lots of threads apparent here and the FBI
> is
> >trying to get to the bottom of it as far as motive.
> >It's hard to distinguish cause from effect, just as
> >with Columbine. The kid had some ersonal tragedies
> to
> >contend with wrt his mom and dad. He apparently has
> >been on anti-depressants which have been alleged to
> >have negative side effects. There's a movie called
> >"Elephant" which has come into the picture which
> might
> >have some content that converges with the events at
> >the school. The kid was sort of gothish. I'm not
> sure
> >goth can be blamed. That could be more of an effect
> >than a cause as kids with issues might be drawn
> into a
> >subculture like goth. Hey, I personally like bands
> >like "The Cure" and "Nine Inch Nails" and I'm not
> >wearing black hair or fingernails and such. Even
> >people whom adpot that lifestyle are probably,
> ceteris
> >parabis, not much different than anyone else.
> >
> >One thread that has caught my attention was a Nazi
> >undercurrent to the ideational baggage this kid
> >carried around. Recent news stories about his blogs
> >and such have addressed this. Yet, is a fascination
> >for Naziism and Hitler a cause or an effect here?
> >
> >With school shootings hitting the headlines from
> time
> >to time and artists like Marilyn Manson taking flak
> >along with voilent video games, I think it's
> important
> >when speculating about what led to these events to
> >separate cause and effect.
> >
> >So what Keith said looks like it's supported by the
> >facts in this case. A susceptible person may have
> been
> >taken in by Naziism. But Did this fascination with
> >Hitler and National Socialism contribute
> significantly
> >to the events at the school or was this fascination
> a
> >collateral effect just like a tendency towards Goth
> >may have been?
>
> Like you say, it's a hard call. When one or two
> kids go off their nuts and
> shoot up a school, especially when they kill
> themselves, it is hard to say
> exactly what influences were involved. They were
> memetic of course. As a
> prediction, the news from this event is fairly
> likely to set off another. :-(
>
Taking a cue from recent news revelations I rented the
movie "Elephant" last night. The scene where the two
kids who shoot up the school plan it out beforehand is
chilling. I didn't pay enough attention during the
Columbine aftermath, because of school stuff at the
time, but recently realized that Hitler's birthday
coincided with that one. In the movie "Elephant" the
two kids are watching a documentary about the rise of
Hitler before they receive a package of weapons via
delivery. Supposedly the kid who shot up the school at
Red Lake fast forwarded to the planning part for some
friends and he too was interested in Nazism, like the
kids in the movie and like the kids responsible for
Columbine. I still wonder about the complexities of
the situation and cause versus effect, but it looks
like a pattern of sorts.
There's been speculation about antidepressants and
their alleged side effects.
Some news coverage has pointed out the impoverished
conditions at the reservation, but how does this
compare with Littleton, Colorado? Were similar
conditions at play there?
I wonder what the outcome will be after this tragedy.
It seems the Schiavo case has eclipsed it, but when
will the fingerpointing start? Congressional hearings
on Goth? Music? Movie depicting school violence? Video
games? Antidepressants? Etc...
Maybe Vince Campbell could lend a hand with his media
analysis expertise.
>
> The paragraph below where you quoted has a more
> definite example of the
> Nazi meme spreading in more recent setting though it
> did not result in gunfire.
>
> "A fascinating footnote to the horrors of the
> German experience with
> Nazism happened in 1969 when Ron Jones, a teacher in
> Palo Alto, exposed a
> high school history class to an intensive, five-day
> experience with the
> ideas that made up the Nazi meme. The experience of
> that week was
> originally published as "Take as Directed" in the
> CoEvolution Quarterly (CQ
> #9, p.152), and a few years ago was made into a TV
> movie, The Wave. Over
> four days, Jones introduced and drilled his students
> in concepts of
> Strength through Discipline, Community, Action, and
> Pride. (The fifth day
> was devoted to showing them how easily they had
> started to slip into the
> abyss.) The enthusiasm which most of the class
> adopted the memes and spread
> them to their friends, swelling a 40 student class
> to 200 in five days,
> made it one of the most frightening events the
> teacher had ever
> experienced. Given the track record of the Nazi
> meme, the mini-social
> movement his experiment set off is no more
> surprising in retrospect than
> the medical effects would have been if the teacher
> had sprayed smallpox
> virus on the class."
>
> If you want to read Ron Jones' excellent
> story:
> http://www.toddstrasser.com/html/thewave2.htm
>
Thanks. Kinda shocking like the prison experiment. How
do the ethical considerations of such an experiment
play out I wonder. Could something like this pass an
ethics review board these days?
>
> An example of a meme that infects at a particular
> age is Ayn Rand's
> Objectivism. It typically gets 13 year old boys
> (plus or minus a
> few). Sometimes it wears off in a decade or two.
>
Maybe it starts with _Anthem_, which isn't too bad a
book to contrast with Skinner's _Walden Two_. I
wouldn't lump Objectivism with Nazism, but it has been
influential. Look at our Federal Reserve Chairman ;-)
>
> Why are young males particularly susceptible to this
> and related (?)
> memes? No idea. But the place to look would be
> evolutionary psychology
> and the hunter gatherer tribe.
>
Or humanities.philosophy.objectivism ;-)
Like a certain someobdy else, she was a scifi/fantasy
type of writer who unloaded a package of influential
ideas upon the public and created a movement. Negative
or positive is in the eyes of the beholder as far as
she's concerned.
Her appeal to rational egoism might tap into some
inherent tendency towards selfishness or play to
self-esteem (cough, cough Nathaniel Branden).
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
===============================================================
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 archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun 27 Mar 2005 - 00:16:28 GMT