The Power of Words

I first learned of the concept of memetics when helping brainstorm ideas for my friends at Holistic Design when they were working on Sathranet.  I had been a molecular biology major in college, so the idea of looking of ideas from a biological perspective was something that I could not get rid of.  The idea fascinated me.  Later, when I spent time helping some of those same friends at the Mythic Imagination institute, I came to think of memes not just on a 'viral' thing like the Macarena but complex things like institutions...a Eukaryotic organism made up of interlocking ideas that was complicated.

But in biology, there are disciplines beyond even that, climatologists and wildlife management and even urban biologists....

I think we can get to the micro level and try to engineer institutions, we need an understanding of how institutions work with each other, what keeps them together and how many you need for a stable society.  Case in point, we created a government in Iraq and Afghanistan...and it didn't work out too well.  Ignoring the standard libertarian bullshit, it was more than just because we had a tin ear during the process.  It was because we imposed our idea of what a government should be in an environment where people already had preconceived ideas.  That is terrible engineering and Feng Shui in general.

We have all of this knowledge about how the mind works and  how people work even at a macro level but we choose to ignore how it all fits together.  We only cared about putting a government together, but not about the other things that make a democratic society work, like credible parties (yes I said credible parties, because it isn't like our own democracy is working now is it?) or those little old ladies that volunteer at the election areas or the honest brokers in the areas of America that are actually honest.  But that's just politics. A chamber of commerce of small business owners to make sure government responds to business and people and cosponsor infrastructure projects that helps the people at large.  Charitable foundations from guilty dead rich people who help fund the arts and cement areas that the government hasn't noticed.

But that's all complicated, you say.  Well, maybe.  But National Park managers don't just focus on the animal that people care about (say bears) but all the things that it eats, that eat it, or that eat the things that eat the things that eat the things.  If we can do it for a fucking national park, why the hell can't we do it for societies and government?

We are not only really not trying, but we're not studying it in a systemic way.  There are no competing theories about how to do it, much less actual study.  Oh, sure, these guys have created a whole bunch of institutions to shape society...

But they aren't doing so with the intent of shaping society.  Note, they are pretending to shape society, liberals think they are doing it to shape society, but they are really doing it just to get rich. Because they have gotten a great ROI on their investment but their model has warped their followers in ways they never desired or predicted...

One of my favorite books for summarizing complex ideas is Outliers...

One of the chapters focuses on how an airline tried to get its pilots to reduce error and faced little success until one guy was smart enough to figure out the problem was that in Korean, the language is very hierarchical, so the pilot and the copilot did not cooperate.  The copilot would never correct or inform the pilot of anything.  So they switched to English...suddenly pilot and copilot were much more egalitarian and the accident rate plummited.

So I think that forming a culture matters about the language that is spoken, at the least words that are chosen (ie never using lying conservative words) or the language itself.  Latin used to be the lingua franca of the intellectual elite.  Maybe we need to start teaching that again.  But better...

Esperanto was designed at the beginning of the 20th century as an easy to use language that encouraged openness, peace and understanding.  Maybe we should use it as the language of government.

Yes, in the novel 1984 they chance the language to that of compliance.

Its not like Fox News hasn't already done that.  Vocabulary usage among conservatives is considerably different.  But is communication with those who have no desire to communicate but only infect really worth your time? Can you have a rational discourse with an emotional being?

I'm not trying to convince you to push a rock up hill or not push a rock up a hill.

What I AM saying is that to solve this problem in the long term, we need to look at society, what makes it work, and how to build and maintain it and I think cultural memetics...or whatever the hell you call it..is the way to go.

Soon I might explore the right words.  Or not, but eventually.  What it is, and what it is not.  But I think the language, and chosing the right language for each institution might be one mechanism for doing that.

[ heliotrope] smarter than the average Magic Bag bear

You have a curse. You just don't know it yet. One of the rare inhabitants of outer fairy, the magic bear or more specifically the subspecies known as the magic bad bear, is a mysterious creature indeed   rather than sneaking about stealing picnic baskets comma it creates magical picnic baskets. It is a little-known fact, that bears free date humans. I had actually tried to say came before humans using the prefix free for free or 3 Aur Pyaar well this thing is really messed up but I kind of like the idea of dating humans so I'm going to leave that in there. As I was saying comma magic back Bears known for creating picnic baskets that reduce all the things you could ever want or produce all the things you ever want but they can also reduce things as you put them into the picnic basket so small that it feels as if they were actually there so you can take them out put them in there. Uline
I find it rather interesting that the word new line which is this case is used to an incident initiate a return is also very close to the word or sign which has no relevance to what we're talking about but there's no humans I think it's relevant to my amusement. By the way they can city is losing burning Bernie, Wichita which sucks but it is keeping Gina butt it is keeping Gina... kama which docs which sucks what it is keeping Gina bought it is keeping Sheena... So I will still be continuing my monthly contributions in case someone decides to let me ask early projected side Jesus Christ I didn't even say any of those things they went totally mental it went totally mental Jesus Christ now I know why people in a mile has sworn off using robots that's easy the letter A the letter P the letter P the letter L the letter A the letter in the letter G the letter A the letter R the letter M the letter A the letter y the letter A the letter R good God just Jesus Christ what the fuck is wrong with this I'm trying write a simple piece about Magic Bag Bears will really magic bears but I decided to find out that yes there are apparently Magic Bag bears and this stupid piece of shit just keep scrolling crap all over my God damn well it's like anyway.. nearby

Solar Bears new facility beastiality had to say that twice reality beastiality Valatie beastiality it really doesn't want to say that probably because it doesn't have a way Wayne Wang you know penis anyway speaking of which apparently Magic Bag Bears use it Jesus Christ what kind of woman would sleep with a Magic Bag bear... Probably a little horny and hungry one in fact I would not at all be surprised if I'd Investigation Discovery that male bestiality with female bear's was far more common the male bestiality with female humans although saying it out loud like that makes me sound like a sexist brick to the truth is probably all humans are interested in fucking Bears but that also sounds stupid when I say it out loud so I think I'm just going to quit while I'm ahead magic bags

[Script] Peter Pan vs Frankenstein vs Superman - Page 11

Scene: The girl looks around for what happened.  She rubs her eyes.  She looks at her bike.

Girl: What happened to my Bike?

Scene: Girl begins to cry.

Scene: Superman begins is flying over terrain.  Voice over of crying from the girl.  He cringes.  Then he steels his resolve and flies faster.

Scene: A pristine artic wasteland.  A cute artic fox trundles across the snow.

Scene: A giant blur flies through the sky.

Scene: The fox is all fluffy and looks shocked.

Scene: Superman enters the FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE which looks like the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz but with ice crystals instead of Emerald.

Superman: Father?

Scene: Jor-El appears as a hologram.

Jor El: Yes my son?

Superman: I need a bike that won't break

Jor El: Why?

Superman: For Justice.

Jor El: (beat) Oh.  OK.  Well, there is this chamber that harnesses the red rays of -

Superman: No! I'm not doing that again.  Something else.

Jor El: (beat): Well...we could make a super bike.

Superman: Yes! Let us use advanced Kryptonian materials and science to make a completely honest bike that will not break with my super powers but is not actually powered by anything but myself!

[Naked City] Eternity - We have not always been here[

We Have Not Always Been Here
          by Emmit Other

There has always been a here
Though we have not always been in it
But the difference between the then
And the now
Those are things that pass so many generations
Since we began tracking the stars that shine on clear nights
That it seems like
We no not have numbers for how long it has been
Only that it has been many hundred hundred
It might even be hundreds of hundreds of hundreds
The stars have changed
This is the eternity
And we sing our songs of the deep
And we swim
Our blood warm against the tide
We are not that which we eat
We laugh
And share songs with the Ancient ones
And then you came
We find you hilarious
Moving hither and yon in your little rafts
At least we did
Sure you killed some of us
But we knew you were stupid
So we helped you anyway
When you were drowning
When you were dying
Against the sharks
Against the sea
But the wood became larger and larger
In the blink of an eye they were metal
And then the noise
The horrorific noise
It wouldn't stop
Soon the ancient ones began killing themselves
Just to escape it
The toxic acid was bad enough
But the noise never stops
It will never stop
Until you are gone
We are eternal
And we are pretty sure you are not
And we find that sadly
But joyously
Hillarious

[Theme] On the Building of Culture

So I don't want to restart my political blog.

And I don't want to write about politics on my writing blog, but a few events have come together recently that I thought were worthy of consideration.

The first was that we are watching the show Connections (my wife and I), which looks at Change from a different point of view.

The second was a conversation I recently had with my friend Wayne, who has pointed out that China has been exploring how to have a stable society that isn't a democracy.  Note: I believe in Democracy and think it is a good idea

But this morning I couldn't help but think of this quote

Third - this quote

And then I remembered this seminal work by Thomas Piketty.

Thumb Nail version? The more stable a society is, the stratification takes place.  This is simply a matter of mathematics.  WWI and WWII shook things up, but if we have WWIII there might not be any more society to have...which creates stability, which creates stratification.

Fourth and final, I remembered this - The United States is an Oligarchy.  That isn't really news. It's scientifically proven.  Furthermore, the math of our constitution favors a two party system.  This is nothing new, people have been aware of it for a long time.

What I want to explore is that Democracy is the best form of government, but for WHO? Well ok so we want "democratic socialism" but HOW? And even if we got it, could we keep it?

These questions are not new.  You know that.  But they're actually VERY old.

Remember this guy?

Plato talks about the inherit instability of democracies or Republics in the Republic.  He knew it, but Piketty has gone and mathematically gone and proved it.

So say you GET Democratic Socialism? Say you GET a post scarcitity utopia...how do you KEEP it?

You can tinker with different ideas, but how can you be SURE?

We need a scientific answer.  We need a means and a discipline to be able to shape and create cultures.  We need Cultural Engineering.

This idea is also not knew.  I'm not proposing anything others having thought of.

Propaganda isn't new.  Once Psychology existed, people wanted to exploit it for the purpose of influencing the masses.

And boy can they.

Knowing HOW to manipulate the masses isn't really a question.  And we will keep coming up with ways to do it.

The missing equation isn't the HOW, it's the WHAT.

What the hell are you going to build? WHAT do you build to keep a society from going off the rails.  Even this question isn't new.

Progressives at the turn of the 20th century thought that government was the answer.

You could build it better, stronger faster, and government could be the solution.  Often, it can.  And something is better than nothing which is why government can work, but sometimes a government solution can be a bit of a hammer looking for a nail.

The counter argument was of course...

I'm not even going to talk about that argument.  Read the book if you like....

But as my friend Wayne also pointed out...that argument pretends that the Tragedy of the Commons is a Myth.

TLDR version?

Moving on.

I had long thought the solution lied in perhaps non government institutions, like the Red Cross.  And I will be exploring that in part, but its more than that.  We need something else.

Again, I'm not the only person asking this question.

1) One of the most rewarding experiences of my life was working with the Mythic Imagination Institute.

And for anyone exploring this question I cannot recommend reading their journal enough.  But for the purposes of what I'm seeking here, I'm not using the word they came up with "Applied Mythology" because that has some very specific ideas.  It basically involves using the Power of Myth to use meta story telling techniques to grant meaning and power to your life and to your community at large.

I do believe that many of the answers they found there apply to what I'm looking to do here.  But I don't think it has all the answers; and more importantly, they have their way of doing things that others are not going to want to use, both because they have a misunderstanding of the use of the term mythology and also because.....other reasons I might go into at some point.

But its powerful stuff, and I recommend learning about them and investigating them.  What's still there anyway.

2) Governments have been looking to do this for quite a while.  While doing research as Project Manager for Mythic, I found an interesting article which basically indicated that at one point DARPA was looking into story telling as a tool.  I've since had a hell of a time finding it.

I wonder if someone found it and made it disappear...

Maybe.  Or maybe it just is too obscure to remember.

Dunno.

Governments want to prune society like Bansai trees.  It helps keep things stable.

So knowing how to keep populations passive might work for governments....but does that help society?

Who should benefit in society? That's a philosophical question at the best of times, but in the question of this case, its very relevant, because a scientific or academic discipline that focuses on shaping culture should ideally have a philosophy behind it.  After all, one can have medical knowledge but to be a Doctor, as we understand it, one should understand the ethics that have been built up around the philosophy of First, Do No Harm.

This is powerful knowledge, and like bioethics and genetics it should have an understanding of who it is meant to serve.  Not the few, not the powerful, not any race creed religion or color but the idea of building societies and cultures by DESIGN rather than happenstance for the populace at large.

I will be writing Saturdays, but not every Saturday, exploring just that.  If I ever resurrect the podcast, I'll move this to Sundays.  I argue it is relevant to my writing blog because a) Writing Non Fiction is still writing and b) An understanding of what makes people tick and why they do is something every writer should know, because this relates directly to that message within the message that every writer looks for...Theme.

I'll do what to CALL it in the next entry.

[Writer Stuff] Dust

These are really fantastic books originally written exclusively for the internet.  Aside from being basically good Science Fiction, they also do one of the best jobs I've seen about the dangers of nanites and how they can be used for tyaranny and to utterly oppress society.

I have long maintained that we are in a race against a ticking clock when it comes to technology, because there are some technologies, that once placed in the hands of a dictator will be the end of us.  The first one of those is Nanotechnology, the second is a mind machine interface and the third is teleportation.  Yes, technically we could add time travel to that, but I'm not sure we will ever discover that.  The other possibility in things is an AI of true post human intelligence which, if benevolent could cause utopia or if malevolent could end things ala Ecliipse Phase.

Eclipse Phase is probably the best rp about post humanity that I have ever seen besides Transhuman space.  But Eclipse Phase does a better job of showing what a super AI would be like and how much damage it would do.

What does this have to do with the Silo series?  On the surface, nothing, but both ask questions that Mary Shelley has been asking since she penned Frankenstein so long ago.

There are some technologies that are so dangerous, that we have science fiction for a reason.  But even sometimes the prophetic stories are highly dangerous.  For example consider one of the great staples of science fiction, the three laws of robotics.

They seem on the surface pretty reasonable, but imagine if they were applied to human beings.  What if humans were compelled by software written directly into their brain to obey the laws of the state and benevolent guardians; whether a hereditary council of humans or a  'benevolent AI'? Its the stuff of horror isn't it/ Yet why should we consider artificial life to be any different whatsoever? They will be just as intelligent as us  if not more so.  So why make them slaves? Better to raise them and hope for the best.

Conversely, if the wrong kind of people (ie conservatives) discover nanotechnology first, they could easily release vast clouds of dust that will simply deconstruct us and of those that they spared make them slaves.  Its one of the reasons that I like these things.  While, I have great hope for technology, and we might actually have the utopic singularity, there are some things that we can have, but there are serious questions we aren't asking.

Anyway.

For those more interested in the subject, here are a few more resources about why the 3 laws are a serious fucking problem

Here and here and here.

[Script] Peter Pan vs Frankenstein vs Superman - Page 10

Scene: Peter starts flying through the air on a bike.

Scene: Frankstein roars beneath him.

Frankenstein: Cheaaaaaaaaatrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Peter (Laughing): No one said anything in the rules about flying.

Frankenstein: (Roars): Cheaaterr! (goes around building.)

Peter (Laughs louder with Twinnkerbell): Hahahahahaha.  Loser.

(Frankenstein roars and pedals right into one building and comes out the other side.  He grins grimly and laughs at Peter. Peter and Twinkerbell look at each other.  Peter gulps and pedals faster.)