> On Tue, 24 Sep 1996 02:15:12 +0000 Ken Pantheists <kenpan@axionet.com>
> writes:
>
> >Perhaps you are referring to my defense of religion (all religion)
> >when
> >people all but call it the product ignorance and imagination. I have
> >only said that it works as a social and cultural organizer as well.
> >
> >If there wasn't a need for memes like that, how do you explain the
> >behaviour of gazillions of people who organize their lives around
> >*some*
> >kind of spiritual focus---
>
> The religious memes definitely need the people. It doesn't follow that
> the people need the memes. The utility of religious memes to their hosts
> is an open question. I know some people in our little community are of
> the opinion that people would be far better off if they could free
> themselves from complexes of religious memes. Wade seems to be the more
> committed to this position, but I share it to some degree.
>
> How would I explain the behavior of gazillions of people who organize
> their lives around *some* kind of spiritual focus? From a memetic
> perspective. Memes have "discovered" that they can exploit the
> meme-sustaining capacity of brains more effectively when they attach
> themselves to memes that appeal to the human need for completeness and
> security.
>
> -KMO
Probably the 'gazillions' of people are not that sensitive to the below,
but there must be a few that are....
=====
Directly appealing to the human need to function in a secular job is an
impressive hook, as well.
If I find that how effectively I evince 'spirituality/religiosity'
directly correlates to how accurate and how much of my work that I
complete, with a high correlation coefficient, I'm going to be VERY
'spiritual/religious' in a fashion empirically consistent with my work!
Notice that all of my feedback data, above, is at least partially objective.
The 'copy the leader' memetic propagation technique will do the rest,
even if the religious memes are HARMFUL to the more normal population.
=====
I would much rather ditch the 'spirituality/religiosity' hack term, but I
can't think of a single word that means the content I want.
'Spirituality' alone is extremely passive, while 'religiosity' is,
by definition both conventionally and in my frame, POWERLESS. It is
necessary to avoid the aversive traits of both words. Ideas?
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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