On 01/21/2014 11:42 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > Some constituents of a fascist society can be scattered, but some > members, esp. the leaders or those guilty of `war crimes' get hunted > down. Cells form the organisms be compared to, so it is not surprising > that they are more easily discarded.
Good point. Are there some cells, in the same cancer, that are more (or less) metastatic than other cells in that same cancer? Although it seems reasonable that some cells will be more likely to dislodge from the tissue and traipse around, it's not clear to me that we've fully validated the distinction between metastatic and non-metastatic cancer cells. Anyway, if so, then we could credibly map mobile cancer cells to leaders, gurus, prophets, virile breeders, etc. within totalitarian systems. But that still doesn't mean that physically breaking up a tumor consisting of all non-metastatic cells, and scattering those cells across the body would _not_ cause all sorts of new tumors wherever these non-metastatic cells landed. I.e. perhaps the only thing keeping non-metastatic cancer cells from being metastatic is their lack of mobility, a problem solved by the scattering intervention. This might be quite distinct from scattering the non-leader members of a totalitarian system. By definition of totalitarianism, I would posit that the non-leaders are not really capable of starting their own budding totalitarian states. I'd be more likely to accept an analogy between a more organic -ism (e.g. Al-Qaeda) and cancer. The key property is the autonomy, the colony forming ability, of the constituents. -- ⇒⇐ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
