virus: Manipulation lesson 20
David Rosdeitcher (76473.3041@compuserve.com)
28 Feb 97 22:02:14 EST
This is Manipulation 101 Lesson 20--a continuation of the series on
combining rationality with irrationality. I mentioned 6 parts a) Aristotelian
Dogmatism and b) Calvinism c) Social Darwinism and d) Freud and Surrealism
e)Modern theories such as 'Chaos' and 'Gaia' and f) Net groups such as the
Extropians and the Church of Virus
'c', 'd', and 'e' will be covered briefly at the end. This is mostly about
'f'--net groups such as Extropians and CoV. These groups demonstrate a principle
of using irrationality to reject or hide certain information and then act
rationally within the context of that misinformation. It's like making up the
rules of a game in a way that makes it certain that you win, and then playing
fairly within those rules so that anyone who accepts the rules will always lose,
and never catch you cheating.
About a year ago, I was surfing the net and came across the group, the
Extropians.
Just as entropy is the universe getting messier if left alone without conscious
intervention, extropy is the universe being put in order with conscious
intervention. The Extropians are interested in creating order in the universe,
by transcending current limitations with technologies such as nanotechnology,
genetic engineering, etc. to bring about things like biological immortality.
There are several extropian groups, and they are different and I cannot
generalize about these groups or the people in them. But, I had a short incident
with one of these groups that illustrates an example of rejecting certain
knowledge because it doesn't fit an agenda and then acting rationally within
that irrational context.
On an extropian web page, there was a book list for recommended reading.
This list included various books on technologies, and a bunch of novel ideas.
There were also some books on unproven theories like the Gaia Hypothesis--an
idea that the Earth is a living organism in its own right and that us humans are
a part of that larger organism. There was also a notice that one book was
removed from the list because it was found to be "incorrect". This book was
called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by
Julian Jaynes.
Julian Jaynes made a discovery that before 3000 years ago, people had a
different mentality that we do today. Based on writings, archaeological
evidence, and more, Jaynes found that 3000 years ago, human beings made an
evolutionary leap from having an unconscious mentality to a conscious mentality,
which he claims was due to a change in brain organization. Jaynes said that
people operated in a what he called a 'bicameral' (2 chambered) mode--the right
hemisphere of the brain would communicate, using audio-hallucinations to the
left hemisphere, which would take orders, automatically. People acted
automatically, until societies became too complicated, that to survive, a new
mentality was invented--consciousness. In consciousness, (or unicameral mind),
in which the hemispheres of the brain are communicating, people have a sense of
'self' or identity and act independently, and can function using metaphors to
understand and control the environment. This consciousness does not act
automatically, but had remnants of a bicameral state of mind which acted
automatically. As a result, conscious man created religions and authority
figures out of obsolete bicameral tendencies to follow orders.
I was very curious to see why Jaynes' theory was considered incorrect, so I
e-mailed the guy who made the mailing list whose name was Richard Johnson. I
asked Richard what the problem was with Jaynes' theory. He told me, declaring
that it's not his opinion and that it's hearsay, that there were supposedly 2
problems: 1)the mind is more complicated than being left brain / right
brain(which Jaynes already admitted) and 2)unlike Jaynes, who claimed we were
conscious of reality, the extropian head honchos said we aren't really conscious
of reality, since we operate on our own internal maps of reality, not reality
itself. This idea, which suggests that we have these perceptual filters
preventing us from seeing reality, is exactly the same as the ideas promoted at
Church of Virus--that we only invent reality through arbitrary language or
"distinction-memes", and we do not identify reality.
What seemed to be going on here was almost like book-banning. Jaynes' theory
which declares that humans are conscious of reality, also explains much behavior
we see today of people following external authority and engaging in obsolete
religious activity. Furthermore, just as the philosophy of objectivism implies
that all other ideologies are incorrect, Jaynes' theory implies that
non-objectivist ideologies, with their mystical religious tendencies, are part
of a disease in which consciousness is infected with remnants of a preconscious
mentality. Certain extropians decided they want to keep the irrational "we are
not conscious of reality" idea and "conveniently" trashed Jaynes' book. They
were fine about keeping the Gaia hypothesis, an unsupported theory which
suggests man is part of a larger whole in their repetoir, but would not keep the
bicameral mind idea, a solid theory which suggests that we are conscious and
religions are bogus. Apparently, they had an agenda.
The same thing is happening at Church of Virus. A discussion was started at
CoV about whether rational thinking is simply just another meme--arbitrary
mental construct or does it exist apart from memetic structure. I said that you
must assume rational thinking is apart from memetic structure and that it can
determine the degree that memes and mind are related. If rational thinking was
just a meme we are infected with, it would be impossible to trust anything
discovered through rational thinking--it would just be an arbitrary meme and not
necessarily have anything to do with reality. So, the act of figuring out
anything such as memetic structures, implies an acceptance that you can figure
out reality--otherwise known as the 2nd objectivist axiom--consciousness. The
CoV people simply rejected the axiom just like certain extropians rejected
Jaynes' book.
All that is really needed to start a religion, is to invert the axiom of
consciousness, making people feel they don't perceive reality, to create a
tendency for them to turn to higher authority. It doesn't matter how much this
religion discusses technology, science, even aspects of rational thinking. The
inversion of an axiom is all it takes. This activity of confusing people by
mixing rationality with irrationality is used by Richard Brodie and David
MacFadzean on a regular basis and I can prove this with enough quotes to fill up
plenty of space on a hard drive. (If people are interested I will post some
examples)
-David
Rosdeitcher
The following, (also for those interested) is a brief explanation of c, d, and
e which I brought it up before knowing what I wanted to cover. Social
Darwinism, Surrealism, Chaos)
Social Darwinism is using a valid theory of Darwinian natural selection and
applying it to the economic working world by saying that the rich exploit the
poor like the predators exploit their prey. This bogus "world is a jungle" idea
is used to have all sorts of social reform--programs that transfer money and
influence from a working class to a parasite class.
Surrealism, which came out of an interest in the subconscious, sparked by
Freud, is a movement in which random associations are used to create art. Some
artists of this movement were making a good point of rebelling against
established order and freeing up the subconscious for creativity. This idea,
however, was used by Freud, as well as others, as an excuse to manipulate others
by saying that rational thinking is controlled by another power, such as the
memesphere, the id, the collective unconscious, etc. even though, ultimately,
the process of learning to tap into the subconscious mind or establish new
thought patterns, is done consciously. These Surrealistic artists like Ernst,
Chagall, Miro, Dali, etc. spent many years consciously developing their art.
(Yes, Tim--sort of like what you already said, and no, I don't need a new
asshole, you fagot:))
The popular chaos theory is similar to surrealistic ideas mentioned--since
we don't know all variables, and are not omniscient, then we cannot know
anything and all thinking is useless.