Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA18917 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 31 Jul 2000 11:43:34 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745967@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Memes and sexuality Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 11:41:23 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
It's interesting that on reading the claims of this X1, my first response
was 'surely not' as well, a kind of gut reaction. Hunting kids with
crossbows, in this day and age.. hmm
Benedict Anderson famously called nations 'imagined communities', created
symbolically (or perhaps now we would say memetically), and such incidents
or claims as these totally conflict with most people's sense of what that
community is imagined to be like.
The result can be massive as people's necessary user illusion about their
nation is blown apart- Belgium by the Dutroux case, the UK by the murder of
Jamie Bulger.
In the USA, incidents like these happen almost daily- socially significant
ones that is, not specifically child murder (although that is high in the
US). From OJ to Rodney King, from Waco to the Oklahoma bomb, from Jonbenet
Ramsey to Elian Gonzalez etc. etc. What we see there is mix of increasing
fundamentalism of all kinds (growth of movements like the Christian
coalition, mormons, amish, nation of islam, militias, executions etc.),
increasingly empty conservatism in the mainstream (Bore or Gush, excuse me,
Gore or Bush), and increasing cynicism amongst everyone else (lower and
lower voter turnouts in presidential elections for example). When people
ask what's going on in America, we could say, don't blame them, they're just
memetically challenged.
Sorry, more ramblings here than incisive observations.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Kenneth Van Oost
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 9:26 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Memes and sexuality
>
>
> Hello Vincent, how are you today !?
> I am glad to be back !!
> Here is the post...about those famous X1 witness cases. Short, of course
> !!
>
>
> > That's very interesting.
> >
> > It seems to me that this is an area where public perceptions of risk
> play
> a
> > part as well. For example, currently in Britain, a young girl has been
> > murdered by an as yet unknown assailant, and has generated massive media
> > coverage. One tabloid sunday newspaper, prompted by this terrible
> crime,
> > yesterday printed photographs, and named the towns of residence, of 50
> > convicted sex offenders who are on the sex offenders register (the UK
> > version of Megan's Law in the US)- even though, so far, there's no
> evidence
> > that a previously convicted offender committed the crime.
>
> << Belgium newspapers did recall the issue !! They won 't go that far,
> they
> say !!
>
> > In fact, I'm not sure of the actual figure, but the vast majority of
> child
> > abuse incidents, and child murders, are perpetrated by relatives, or by
> > people known to the victim. The odds of a stranger taking someone's
> child
> > and killing them are literally millions to one against.
>
> << You may count in also first degree murder !!
>
> > It seems that there is always a knee-jerk response to crimes that
> capture
> a
> > nation's attention- one is to change some aspect of law (superficially
> on
> > occasion, or fundamentally on others), the other is to go into a kind of
> > mass delusion where the incident is dismissed as a one-off, the
> perpetrator
> > is defined as pure evil, and the event is not seen as indicative of any
> > underground aspect of that nation.
>
> << They ' tried ' such things here in Belgium. All the good intentions
> are
> failing, due to the opposite processes of justice, politics,...that due to
> a
> strange mixture of ' liking the power ' and incapability, due to the fact
> that
> (almost) all of the judges and magistrates are/ were political appointent.
>
> > Sometimes, paradoxically perhaps, both
> > things happen, as in the case of the Dunblane shootings a few years ago
> (a
> > gunman killed 15 children and their teacher, and then killed himself)
> where
> > handgun ownership was banned, whilst at the same time the gunman was
> > portrayed as a figure of pure evil.
>
> << IMHO, the Dunblane murders are based on the scapegoat- principle.
> It was Thomas Hamilton forbidden to come near the children due to some
> speculations about his sexual preference. At the time of the murders noone
> knew about mans preferences, it was only after the murders they found
> pictures
> and movies of nude children.
> In a sense he is now somewhere where he wanted to be most, and that is
> ' for always with ' his ' children ' !! That fact is often seen as not
> important in cases like this, but it is of a major signifiance for
> explaining the reason why...
>
> But, now to our story about X1...
> Point made by me, it is all the mind. It is the double nature of the user.
> We ask for correct nude pictures into advertising, we do have problems
> with filmposters like The people versus Larry Flint, remerber he was
> hanging on a cross like Jesus Christ with the American flag covering his
> noble parts..., but we don 't stay indifferent for the images of the
> stereo-
> typical, barely dressed Lolita, and we do demand a ban for porno, sex,
> violence and adds for the sex- industry in general.
>
> In general, IMHO, most problems start within the combination children
> versus sex. With sex, as we established we do have problems. Children
> we want to protect.
> I don 't know what makes the combination sex/ children so an explosive
> cocktail, but the notion we want to protect the children against it, is to
> simple.
> Violence, drugs, unemployent, etc...are IMHO equally worse and or
> dangerous. So what makes our clock tick if we talk about children and
> sex !?
>
> The secret files of Neufchâteau
>
> X1, the most known of the Nine, known to exist, name Regina Louf,
> major player in the files, knew mush about, (almost in detail) other cases
> of diseappered and or murdered girls/ boys.
> Became a symbol for the search into the thruth, but was brought into
> discredit after she began to ' invent things '_as police and politicians
> told the public.
> But what she did tell the public was so unbelieveble, that many people
> thought that what she told could only be made up by a grazy woman.
>
> During confrontations with the police X1 talks about snuff movies, baby-
> murders and even hunting parties where naked children ran through a park
> chased by man with crossbows...
> X1 talks about the reason why_an addiction to power, power over pain,
> life and death...
> She talks about businessman, known or less known politicians, magistrates,
> doctors...
> She survived she said because of her high survival instinct. The stories
> she
> told were so horrible that we, the public, could not imagine that
> something
> like this even could exist in Belgium.
> The best protection which authors of such crimes have is the enormous
> contrast between reality and the mental grasp of the people overhearing
> them...
>
> And IMHO, I think that is true, with less then zero arguments you can
> convince people that such things don 't exist, but on the other hand
> trying
> convincing them that such perversities do exist, well that is the game of
> the
> mind...
> X1 said, if we do survive such things we are all phantasts, it is better
> not
> to survive at all...
>
> But why are such things happening in the first place !?
> The Belgium people says, those things were bound to happen_the history
> of political scandals, unsolved murders (the bende van Nijvel, 29 dead,
> no suspects, no reasons, nothing...) social disorder and the lack of a
> good working justice department are the main reasons, but once again
> that is to simple !!
> Why then !?
>
> Well I think the history of Belgium is playing a major part in this. The
> country was over long periods of time occuppied by strange forces,
> (Dutch, German, Spanien and French,...).
> We never had, in a sense, the chance to be ourselves, we are still to
> my point of view all hyper- individualists_the dualistic position towards
> politics shows that, we expect politics take care of things, but at the
> other hand we don 't want it in our homes.
> Forced by catholicism and its as far as to -days impact we are still
> ' hiding ' , ' concealing ' ourselves (see the history about this )_we
> are afraid that someone will see that or this. The process is still
> running
> around as well as in our genes as in our mind.
>
> The problem as I see it, is so vast that we indeed can ask ourselves the
> question if ' believing stuff like the horrible things told by X1 '
> can't
> cross some emotional barrier.
> That is_ back in our history there were so many horrible things committed
> that we suspended neural bridges in our mind, we could not believe
> no more...!!
>
> In memetic sense, it is a boundery which our memes do not cross_we are
> lacking some fundamental insight to take acceptance of child- and tod-
> dlerabuse, childmurder and -rape to a higher intellectual standard to
> regu-
> late it. Our memetic history has none examples on which we today can
> replicate info about such matters...in a way, our mind is blind...telling
> stories like those of X1 would have giving us the info we needed but it
> was so horrible that IMHO older memeplexes, like survival, came into
> play and hindered those info from entering...Still now, we are all in the
> dark...
>
> So, members, illuminate us...
>
> Many regards,
>
> Kenneth
>
> ( I am, because we are)
>
>
> ===============================================================
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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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