Puppet Masters

From: oobii@cpd.Tandem.COM (oobii@cpd.tandem.com(Tim McFadden))
Subject: Re: Puppet Masters - wow it's a good meme
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 18:47:09 GMT


 H1) Is receptivity to certain sorts of control a meme?

This is apparently true.  Humans are selected for producing survival of
tribes , and control and sacrafice of the individual are really useful for
this.

I just read "puppet masters", Heinlein, 1951, again after about 35 years and
it
holds up remarkably well. If you ignore the period commie fear and sexism, the
practical details of fighting a slug which atttaches itself to the base of the
brain
are worked out very well, Yow to I want to see the movie and be more paranoid.

The basic premise of the book supports (H1)  - if a control meme were not
there,
the slugs would have a much harder time - they would probably have to take
over 
much more of the brain in much greater detail, which is science fiction about
science fiction.

Eric Fromm wrote extensively about conformist and control -receptive behavior,
cf., "Fear of Freedom" (hope  I got the title right.) 

It almost needless to say that much of the operation of the control meme is 
unconscious.

Consider Gautama's model  (of 2500 years ago) for the delusion of
consciousness - 
consciousness is produced by the cooperation of simpler 
( but somewhat automatous ) agents, each itself being unconscious. 
This model is also used by Marvin Minsky in his "Society of Mind".  With this
model,
 most memes may be unconscious and far more simple that a "personality",  
 including the "survival of the tribe" and "control" memes.  

To echo Fromm then, facist societies are all too easy to form because they
feed off
of some very important memes. In this sense, our current semi-democracy is
sort
of a wonderful vacation from these well wired in, meme driven facist ones. 
We must constantly be on guard against the ,now fully concsious, manipulators
of
these memes, those in control of our mass media. Take control of your screens.

Is there an enlightenment meme? So many people spend years trying to free
their
body-minds from outside programming, from conceptions.

Let the mind flower bloom in eternal spring.

Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Puppet Masters.  Sometimes they really pull my strings.
Date: 19 Oct 1994 00:18:02 -0600


  Hi folks.  I'm here to flog the movie again--Puppet Masters.
  It comes out October 21th, at theaters both near you, and 
  those which are remote from your geographical location.  

     The movie leader looks pretty good.  Good special FX. 
  Looks like Total Recall a bit.  

     The ad ends with a powerful meme:


                    WHATEVER YOU DO,

                      TRUST NOONE.

Date: 21 Oct 1994 14:29:35 GMT
From: dreamer@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Andrew Trapp)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Advertising (was Re: Puppet Masters.)

anon1fd0@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Name withheld by request) writes:
>  Hi folks.  I'm here to flog the movie again--Puppet Masters.
>  It comes out October 21th, at theaters both near you, and 
>  those which are remote from your geographical location.  
>     The movie leader looks pretty good.  Good special FX. 
>  Looks like Total Recall a bit.  
>     The ad ends with a powerful meme:
>
>                    WHATEVER YOU DO,
>                      TRUST NO ONE.

The first time I saw that ad was during an episode of the X-Files.  Any
fan of that show will relate to that meme--it is a common one, and was
the approximate last words of a "Deepthroat" character.  I was wondering
if that commercial had been tailor-made for this show..

Which brings me to my next point:  advertising.  I never really noticed
it before, but if you want to be an expert in memetics, go into adver-
tising!  All the best ads (which pretty much excludes most local ones...)
employ various hooks, manipulating our emotions and even reasoning at
least at a minimal level in order to get us to buy the product.  The
advertising profession (and also, the propagandists of Soviet & Nazi
past) utilize various memetic tools to spread their memes--although
advertisers are generally more benign than propagandists.  :-)  It might
be interesting to examine advertising as a study in memetics.
--
Andrew Trapp                            dreamer@uiuc.edu

Video games are delightful because there is something about a television
that fights back which is so perfectly appropriate to our society.
  -- P.J. O'Rourke

From: lieberma@ruth.cs.rpi.edu (Adam Lieberman)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: Advertising (was Re: Puppet Masters.)
Date: 25 Oct 1994 04:01:13 GMT

Andrew Trapp (dreamer@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) wrote:
> ...
>advertisers are generally more benign than propagandists.  :-) ...

     That's just propaganda propagated by the advertisers.
---
If you post a meaningful response to my article,|  Adam Lieberman
please mail me a copy, as I may not always be   |  lieberma@cs.rpi.edu
able to keep up with the news.

From: nv91-asa@black05.nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: Advertising (was Re: Puppet Masters.)
Date: 25 Oct 1994 17:00:14 GMT


Adam Lieberman wrote:
>
>> ...
>>advertisers are generally more benign than propagandists.  :-) ...
>
>     That's just propaganda propagated by the advertisers.

And thats just paranoia seeded by the Illuminati.

In fact, paranoia and conspiracy-theories are very efficient
memes, since they are self-proving and urge people to spread
them. The Illuminatus Trilogy contained a counter meme, 
"conspiracy for conspiracy's sake", which competes by 
saturating the paranoia-receptors with mixed conspiracies,
increasing the tolerance. 
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@hemul.nada.kth.se   http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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