At 11:08 PM -0400 07/12/2000, William T Goodall wrote:
>Fnurff Fnurff, he said 'erect'.
Well, I am just uptight enough to find it amusing. Sorry for my sense of
humour. :)
>There are many odd memes floating about American culture. Memes succeed
>because they aren't a handicap or give an advantage in context irrespective
>of how daft they might appear in an objective view. The 'frontier' meme in
>American culture makes people feel better about having been kicked out of
>the Old World[1], the 'self help' meme saves on social welfare taxes, the
>'religion' meme reduces stress by cutting off some of the thornier 'why'
>questions and so on.
What I find so funny is that, when people are so down on cultural
relativism and deconstruction and other things PoMo, they can use the
scientific-sounding version of it, ie. discussing ideas and values in terms
of "memes", and suddenly it's okay. :) If all ideas are memes, isn't that
just another way of arguing relativism, albeit perhaps relativism
enlightened by a sense of the possibility of universal biological
predisposition for attention to certain issues (such as mating, killing of
other humans, authority, and so on)?
Here are several challenges to your claims: the frontier meme wasn't *only*
linked to being kicked out, William. It's ironic that you would say that,
but then you're a descendant of Brits who stayed home, right? Lots of
people got kicked out, yes, but there was also a massive amount of
voluntary outward expansion. Well, as voluntary as anything is, which is
contingent on there perhaps being more fortunes to seek elsewhere than
here, and so on. Would you say that the Westward expansion across north
America is a case of settlers being "kicked out" of the Eastern side of
North America? That said, there is a highly romanticized, adventuresome
sense to it that seems to have been heightened in literature and film after
the fact, and some of it was probably around at the time. How much it
actually worked to mitigate feelings of anxiety, fear, resentment, and
uncertainty I can't say, except to suggest it wouldn't do much for me if I
were huddled in a sod house with only a tiny fire to keep me warm. Someone
wrote something about adventures along the lines of the following: that
"They're always very exciting as long as it isn't *you* sitting in the
woods, wet and cold and hungry and shivering." Daily crap probably erodes
the adventure/frontier romanticism away pretty damn quick.
The self-help meme probably does cut down on social welfare taxes and
involvement, but I think it's also tied to a whole bunch of stuff like the
increased sense of individualization and individual authority that started
to surface in the later Middle Ages and exploded when the Bible became
widely available in print in the vernacular: suddenly, you could be your
own interpreter on the Word of God. FFWD that to after the collapse of the
theocracy and through a period of some weird psychological theories and a
popular sense of alienation from the medical/mental-health establishment,
and oompah, you get self-help. Not all of which, by the way, is all bad.
When I was screwy in the head for a while (shut up!!!! :) ) about 5% of the
self-help stuff I encountered actually made a little sense and helped me
when I tried it. It probably helped for reasons other than what was
assumed, but it helped nonetheless (just as the sacrament of reconciliation
seems for some Catholics to be useful and helpful).
Finally, if you think religion makes things easier, try living as an
ordained priest for a little while. I think the thing that most takes the
edge off the thornier "why" questions is dismissing them out of hand, far
more than involving yourself in a worldview that is difficult to
understand, self-contradictory, difficult to assimilate permanently and
effectively, and requiring noteworthy amounts of commitment and time. Oh,
you mean the people who never question it? Who are they? Most religious
folk I know have experienced doubt, and those who haven't don't seem to be
often faced by the big existential crises all that much anyway.
>> But how would you know? It's supposed to be an indistinguishable fake (at
>> the right temperature). Oh no . . . this brings us back to old Uncle Turing
>> and "is-consciousness-emulatable?" debates. Aaaaaaugh!!!!!!
>> Gord
>
>Emulating consciousness would be redundant. Or maybe a category mistake.
>Simpler to just do it directly. Like what would 'emulating arithmetic' mean?
Ha. I like that. But then the question is, if consciousness is "done
directly", what's necessary to do so? Do we need a biological structure, or
can we emulate such a structure efficiently enough in a computer to
actually create the physical system which gives rise to consciousness. That
was part of the debate, right?
>[1] Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, gives a good explanation of how
>people never moved anywhere unless they got kicked out by someone else or
>had a natural catastrophe. Unless you believe that Eskimos left sunny Africa
>to live in snow huts and eat seal blubber as a lifestyle statement.
God no... who would do that? No more than us North Americans consume
burgers and hot dogs as a lifestyle statement or expression of free will
unfettered by the larger processes of history that surround us. *evil grin*
But . . . um, what about the people who chased those other people out?
Isn't there *some* degree of expansionism taken into account? Uh, global
colonization? Did he skip the last hunk of world history, perchance? Or
does he classify the Industrial Revolution and colonizing of America as a
natural catastrophe? Hmmm. I ask this fully aware of my not having read the
book yet, curious as I am, and thinking he probably DID discuss this,
though perhaps as an anomaly.
Gord
