Welcome to the list
David Pape wrote:
Richard, I disagree with your claim that sometimes we human beings can
"think for ourselves" and that sometimes "we are sheep". In saying that
you
yourself can appraise and reject memes connected with advertising or
"moral
decadence" but that others can't, you take a narrow view of memes'
influence
on your decisions.
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Richard never actually wrote that. He wrote;
>I would like to believe that we can think for ourselves. And yet, the
>statistics show us that as a group we are sheep. Although from my point
>of view I see myself taking in information, sorting through it, and
>making my own choices, when we have a thousand of us or a million or
>five billion, we behave predictably as a result of the advertisers'
>influence.
What I see Richard as pointing out is that even though we (I'm fairly
sure he
includes himself in there) see ourselves as being selective and
discriminating about the information we receive, in truth we are not.
And our behaviour changes when the forum changes from a couple of people
to one billion.
Things like brand loyalty are documentable behaviours in this century.
I know you already know this, but this has totally to do with the media
and it's portrayal of the fictional Joneses.
If I buy store brand cola I have to serve it to guests with an apology "
I have cola-- but it's not Coke, it's the store
brand".
So I'm buying Coke for the christmas traffic.
Richard is pointing to the behaviour of the media. It gives us the
ILLUSION of choice with taste
tests and cola wars-- but in the end we fold like paper. Look at the
choices we've really given ourselves-- TWO. Out of the whole world of
things to drink we identify ourselves as The Real Thing or the Pepsi
Generation.
Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa...................
you wrote:
If you believe in non-manipulation of thought, how do you justify
marketing
your own ideas in your website and newsletter? Aren't you trying to make
me
think like you? Aren't your memes trying to attack your readers'
belief-spaces, just like Coke's? I think the only stance for the true
memeticist is to be non-prescritive, to play down their emotional
reaction
to particular memes, and to admit that s/he is nothing more than memes
and
ideas, which will try and gain neural resource from other memes/ideas.
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I don't think many people here believe in the non manipulation of
thought. What, I think, we do believe in is that one can develop the
skills to have a stronger "hand" in manipulating their own thoughts.
Forgive me if I am being harsh with your point of view. But your true
memeticist is a bit of an isolationist. When one educates, there is a
memetic infection, certainly, but the goal of education is to teach
people to teach themselves-- to make them aware of their potential. How
can someone do that if they are second guessing themselves-- hoping that
they aren't infecting people?
Certainly people can be non prescriptive and still educate.
Regards
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Ken Pantheists
http://www.lucifer.com/~kenpan
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