Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA29706 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 10 Jul 2000 20:43:18 +0100 Message-ID: <001301bfeaaa$df4d7ac0$7615bed4@default> From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745903@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Cons and Facades/memetic engineering Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 22:09:35 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:39 PM
Subject: RE: Cons and Facades/memetic engineering
> Thanks for this.
>
> I think you're very right. What's interesting then is whether there is a
> particular point in time at which a community recognises these animal
> behaviours as inappropriate for that particular kind of community.
If you like, is there a kind of social equivalent of the Adam and Eve story?
Vincent, I think I found an answer on this! You let my brain work overtime!!
This is based on some ideas I have about why, we humans, have such pro-
blems with our sexuality and our expression of emotions.
Vincent, stay with me...it is gonna be not simple to follow...
Freud and Jung said that emotionality and affectivity are the bias for the
human mind. In both their theories sexuality, its concealing and its
repressing
is the major fact.
Freud says that people made memories unconscient because they are all
connected with sexual desires and Jung let everything begin out of the
sexual drift, out of our libido.
In my point of view, we are trapped between the Darwinian-stance (the
collective) and the Lamarckian-stance (individuality). In a community we
have
to act according the Darwinian-stance_that is following rules etc.
Our personal needs, our sexual drift is/ was controlled by those Darwinan-
rules.
That is gone so far that we, now, (socially/ cultural/ political/
religiously...)
are concealing and repressing the sexuality.
Schopenhauer once said [sexuality] " is the notion which provokes directly
a(n) (re)action, by which the notion is chased away ".
And why, now I ask myself, do we chase away images of sexuality and not
images of food, functionality, colour, association, etc?
What did the sexuality do, (the emotion/ the strife/ the need towards to
have children) to be hidden away, to be concealed and to be repressed !?
Vincent, are you still with me !?
Now, we go back to my earlier post about Girards view on the scapegoat-
principle. I said that I don't like very much a biblical stance in stuff
like that,
and that is still very true. Concerning this however, I think the
biblical-stance
about murder, sex etc is from a far more later date.
We have to focus ourselves on the time of the early human-like primates.
I think and I did posted this argument before that our ancestors were quit
viviant aware of the consequences of incest, sodomie, perversities, ' sexual
abuse ', rape etc.
How !? Due to the fact of our most early survival-memes, incest etc jeapar-
dized the survival of man,species and meme.
Don 't forget, sick and disabled animals were left behind by the group or
eaten by lions!!
With less food, no place to hide, no function for that of this tool the
early
human-primates would had survived, there is no question about that !
Not all, I suppose, but quit enough.
But with incest, sodomie etc the species would had collapse easily and fast.
You may have all the food in the world, places to hide, but with no hands to
feed yourself, with no legs to walk towards safety, due to the fact that you
are a disabled person due to the fact of incest, you gonna die !!
I think with that complex idea in mind, sexuality has become troughout
history our (biological) cultural scapegoat.
In memetic sense_the biological analogy of the in the culture inbedded
scape-
goat-principle found its origin in the first meme about that subject.
There before there was nothing by which the early humanoids could compare
such behaviour.
In the understanding that the first sexual act was probably brutal an
vicious, the first birth messy and bloody and probably deathly for mother
and child_
you could suppose that ' sexuality ' was hidden away, concealed and re-
pressed.
If you like you can say the fact as mentioned above is our social equivalent
of the Adam and Eve story !!
It all started with a devious sexual act !
Of course, I could be wrong, but anyway without being modest, I think
it is still a great idea !!
PS_Wes, be welcome, enjoy the ride !!
The answers to your post will follow
Oh, yeah, with a loose meme I mean a meme which has escaped our human
control, like ' the arms race' could be one.
Regards,
Kenneth
(I am, because we are) three now
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