From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri 22 Jul 2005 - 02:51:00 GMT
--- Chris Taylor <christ@ebi.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hiya.
>
> Sorry -- EP still won't wash, and I've been
> partially party to
> most of the recapitulations of the arguments
> supporting it.
>
> A mind is an environment to be exploited. 'Bad'
> things can grow,
> but only 'bad' as judged through our
> almost-impossible-to-shed
> moral goggles.
>
Strangely enough, and it gets really bizarre, but I'm
reading Nietzsche's strained attemps at addressing
morality and this bad/evil versus good thing defintely
comes up during his venomous diatribes against the
slave revolt in morals. Can't say I agree with much of
where he's going. Some of it makes we wince and
shudder. He could have said that Judaism and it's
offshoot Christianity have given us our moral value
system we contend wih today and left it at that. But
no...
>
> What replicates survives, and ideas
> like that
> survive for all sorts of perfectly valid _amoral_
> evolutionary
> reasons that don't require higher order
> functionality, or any
> grand plan to increase survival. Memes are often
> kind to us,
> just as diseases mostly don't kill (even the nasty
> ones evolve
> to become lass nasty over time as they spread
> better). But some
> do really horrid things, just like the disease that
> makes snails
> climb to the top of a plant and waggle around
> waiting to be
> predated to complete the life cycle of the parasite
> within (and
> actually the snails are so bonkers that it puts the
> birds off to
> soem extent -- its usually the young that fall prey
> [calling
> captain IRONY]).
>
I had this parasitized snail scenario in mind at some
point during this thread, but you did much better than
I could at unpacking it. I left it alone. Good job.
>
> Grow up non-white in Leeds (or one of many oter
> places), feel
> put upon, have internal memes (or whatever) that
> exclude lots,
> but favour others. There's nothing 'bad' about the
> weeds that
> grow where there is not climax forest; they are just
> as valid.
>
Yet it's not all bad. One would hope there's a growing
amount of cross-cultural hydrizing going on. The bad
stuff seems to happen when each side wishes to stay
pure and untainted by the other. Experience the other
I say.
>
> There is nothing 'wrong' with wanting to kill maim
> and destroy;
> this is not a malfunction, it is just another set of
> behaviours.
>
Not that I know a whole lot about these Nordic topics
yet, but a more neutral area to veer into would be
Odin's berserkers and the concept of Valhalla and its
Valkyrie virgins serving mead to the warriors awaiting
Ragnarok. Doesn't this at least slightly parallel the
notions of paradise in the heads of some of those
doing dastardly deeds in unnamed places in the Middle
East and elsewhere in the name of a prophet that shall
likewise go unnamed so as to stay deliberately vague?
From what I've read of Norse mythology and related
real world history, there was lots of maimimg and
destroying.
>
> I abhor this murderous idiocy (before anyone jumps
> down my
> throat) but it is not tricky to explain. At least
> that's how it
> feels to me.
>
Not sure we want to go there. I do hope all is well
with everyone in the UK. We have had some
proscriptions about these topics from the powers that
be (ie- the moderator) in the past.
>
> Cheers, Patchy Chris.
>
Patchy? Did you get into some poison ivy?
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
===============================================================
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 : Fri 22 Jul 2005 - 03:07:29 GMT