I was concerned that I may have given your post an unfair reading, so I
went back and read it again. Here it is in it's entirety:
On Sat, 26 Oct 1996 07:42:19 -0500 David Leeper <dleeper@sm1.gte.net>
writes:
>barnowl@rain.org wrote:
>
>> Now to say we are not even masters of our own mind is yet
>> another such blow, and understandably engenders hostility.
>
>Wait a minute. I think this is backwards.
>
>In olden days everything was because God wanted it that way, or demons
>tricked us into swaying
>from Gods plan. We were just puppets.
>
>Even at the beginning of this century, psychology described people
>with
>terms like Oedipus
>Complex or Shadow Archtype, which are parts of the body of theory of
>psychology, not part of
>the body of the person being talked about.
>
>Today with genes and memes an individual has, for the first time in
>history, encapsulated
>within himself his own tools of reason and creation.
>
>There's a Calvin Cline commercial with a message similar to your
>posting.
>"Scientests say
>genes make me the way I am, I say I make me the way I am!" I always
>talk
>back to the TV
>saying, "You're genes _are_ you." Not all of you, there's memes too,
>but
>you get the idea.
>
>--
>David Leeper
>Homo Deus
>http://home1.gte.net/dleeper/index.htm
>
>
>
So if you agree with Dan Van Arsdale that many people find memetics to be
a threat to their conceptions of their personal autonomy, to what are you
objecting when you start your reply to his post with "Wait a minute. I
think this is backwards."?
On an unrelated note:
My name is Kevin Michael O'Connor. This is not a secret. I do send all
of my e-mail and publish all of my comics under the name KMO, but I'm not
particularly concerned with concealing my identity. One advantage to
using KMO rather than my full name is that people tend to spell my family
name "O'Conner" rather than "O'Connor." I have yet to see anyone mispell
KMO. When I was publishing C, a comic strip, twice weekly in a
university newspaper under the name KMO, I got a fair amount of hostile
feedback. Those of you who have read the Collected Infection can
probably guess the general nature of the complaints I received. I
noticed that many of the most vehement criticisms were addressed to Kevin
O'Connor. My name was frequently in all caps and punctuated with
multiple explanation marks. I got the impression the authors of these
criticisms felt they gained some advantage over me by discovering and
using my name. I'm not sure what that advantage might be. Can anyone
shed some light on this behavior?
Take care. -KMO