[Fwd: Re: virus:Other Reality]

Ken Pantheists (kenpan@axionet.com)
Thu, 09 May 1996 16:05:42 +0000


Wow!!

Has this thread bcome convoluted or what?:)

(But then, who am I to throw stones?)

Tom Loeber wrote:
>

> The cosmological model I have adopted can be represented as a torus, time
> being the vertical axis and space the other dimensions.

Ignoramus Alert!!! I have *no* idea what a torus is. Could you please explain that?

>..... How well we share is the key to attaining immortality as an ever more
> subjectively observable phenomenon. Currently, sharing is a low priority
> that has been only sparingly incorporated into the social structure.

I am unaware of any sharing that can occur outside of a social structure. As soon as
you ave two people, you have a social structure.

> ...Interested in the social engineering implications of the torus model?

Sure, lay it on.

> ...I don't like the term "Virus" for the handle or meme for this religion that
> is being expostulated. Consistency is lost. "Virus" means one thing in
> most science. Why postulate a new religion that requires a new definition
> in contradiction with known science?...

I don't perceive any contradiction. Does anybody else? A virus infects a host and is
transmitted by a host. Viruses in computers were called that because they behave like
organic viruses.

Do we want a religion that adheres to
> and adds to present science? I would reccommend that the name be something
> like "Life" or "Life-ism." This would require some explanation as some
> little known religious concepts incorporate the word "life" or "living" in
> their handle.

I think we are losing sense of what memes *are* in this thread. (Like, I'm one to
talk. I still have to read the books.) But my first take on memes were that they were
not just linguistic ideas, but concepts. That is an idea that, when studied, gives a
clue to the environment it came from. Like what Vicki called the "background".

Analysis of a theatre event has, in recent decades, come to include the "mis en
scene" of the play. That is, not just the text, but the production values, the style
of the costumes, set, and consideration of the audience on a given night. eg. Hamlet
performed by working class irish for a working class audience is a completely
different meme complex than a Hamlet done in Stratford.

Memes are ideas, but they are also a kind of barium that throws the ideals of a
culture into sharp profile. They give us a way of apprehending the context.