Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980325170454.0079a4a0@pop.netaddress.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 17:04:54 +0100
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Josip Pajk <j.p.pajk@usa.net>
Subject: Re: about 'memetic engineering'
In-Reply-To: <v03102800b13e4e796ad8@[194.109.13.153]>
At 08:18 25.03.98 +0200, Ton wrote:
>So instead of making grand moves forward or backward, we should move ahead
>very very carefully and preferrably not rely on our consciousness alone.
>One big problem is that on the whole we've lost religion (as a coherent
>social fabric), which anthropologically speaking is no small disaster,
>since such things are almost impossible to resore once lost. How does one
>go about "inventing" rituals and myths? The tragedy of modern myth-makers
>is that they end up producing fiction.
>
>Ton Maas
Can someone give me any details or a hint where to find an old writing
(70-ties?) published in the magazine "Roots" by a Ph.D. candidate in
ancient cultures ethnology on the New Jersey Princeton University, named
Tyui, native from a Dayak tribe of Borneo.
In this article (I found some fragments of it in the book published in 1986
by Borna Bebek and Zeljko Malnar "Searching for the Glass City"), Mr. Tyui
is interpreting the Ramayana as a struggle between the new "upper"
monotheistic world of order and the "underground" chaotic ancient world of
totems and magic.
Prince Rama can rescue his wife Sita from the black king Ravana only with
the help of the Dravids, inhabitants of that underground world, or by the
reconciliation with his "irrational" part.
Even further, Mr. Tyui states that we, the new race of the "upper" world
must not completely defeat the old race, because its destroyed energy will
return in a negative form of new bacteria, viruses and other illnesses that
will erode all our carefully "engineered" institutions.
May we confess or not, the chaotic "world" of subconsciousness is
influencing a great part of our behaviours, and regardesly of how we well
manage to control our intentional behaviour there will always arise some
"irrational" behaviours willing to destroy it.
This is what I meant by UNDERSTANDING without CONTROL. There are things
that we do not understand completely, and even if understood in some
extent, it is better to accept them "as they are" than trying to change the
way in which they are evolving and act as Hary Seldon in "Founations".
Josip
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