Re: virus: 15 desires behind all human behavior

B. Lane Robertson (metaphy@hotmail.com)
Tue, 23 Jun 1998 02:10:43 PDT


Lena asked for clarification:

I agree that a group can get together and agree on what is important. I
also think that what is important is best represented by an individual
rather than a group (though the group can act LIKE an individual, which
is good too-- but a group which acts like an individual, imho, will act
without any competition; since, for an individual to have aspects of
himself which competes with other aspects is self-destructive... it
causes confusion and this would seem to decrease his chances for
survival).

I think the post which prompted my response spoke about reducing all
things to a few representative examples (paraphrased). I was agreeing
with that post (and disagreeing with the other response to that post
which said that reductionism doesn't represent "human" contingencies...
which it was stated were well entrenched in modern society). By "human
contingencies", I assume is meant social contract and compromise as a
method of determining what is important (that people can agree that
justice involves capitol punishment, for example, and that this becomes
so regardless of a natural "law" of "karma", perhaps... or a moral
imperative).

If this agreement doesn't "reduce" (eventually) to an individual
representation (and I think it does not), then it is-- imho-- a
*systems* view; that is, it is a process which operates according to
competition and differences rather than cooperation... and it is prone
to "friction" (in the example: WHO determines who is punished, why they
are punished, by whom... factions arise which compete for this power).
Another way of saying this is that such a humanistic view is pluralistic
(perhaps even "polytheistic", which seems to imply that all things
CANNOT reduce to a unity).

So much for my reduction. Reconstructing this view from the perspective
of the most absurd, imho, (and thus this is a reductio absurdum
argument, I guess); the polytheistic view of "a many headed beast which
rises to the surface on the waters of many nations" is both indicated by
my absurd position and defined by the reduction as "a systems view which
operates according to social agreement-- pagan-- and which must fall
(both according to religious accounts of this beast and as illustrated
through the comparison of this mythological "beast" and the friction
implied by a competing human, or social, system).

I take the example to a further extreme by implying that there IS a
unity (the reduction, THIS reduction-- perhaps), which-- in comparison--
is less chaotic (less self-destructive or confusing). The implied
position (I suggest) will survive the downfall of the mythological beast
regardless of the system's perspective-- and possibly IN SPITE of it.

That is, my understanding of the "pagan" perspective is that it operates
precisely because it seeks to destroy the unity of "self" and must fall
as an evolutionary result of the "intent" of the memetic unit to
replicate AS a unit. With this, I re-affirm my position that memetics
can better be studied using a reductive perspective than a humanistic
one.

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