From: Arcadia (arcadia@lynchburg.net)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 19:37:16 MDT
Hello.
I am new to the list, but not new to the ideas being discussed. My own
interest might have begun in ninth grade biology, learning the way a literal
virus works, and I began to think of viri not just as pathogens, but as
mutagens - nature's way of stiring the pot and shaking the table.
I am a revolutionary and heretic by temperment, a warped kind of structural
functionalist by intellectual compulsion. I'm a fan of ontological anarchy,
Hakim Bey, Robert Anton Wilson, but hopefully these influences have had some
time to ground and mellow, and so I'm not so shrill with the rhetoric
anymore.
I'm convinced that the way some of us are interesed in manipulating memes is
pretty much identical to some forms of "magick." After all, there are forms
of magick that are entirely about manipulating perception, as is almost any
form of art. To me, art, magick, and meme theory/practice are pretty much
interchangable, and some of the 'tools' from one 'box' work well in other
'boxes.'
I'm curious about what the goals should be. If we had control of all the
tools we needed to rewrite the cultural 'programming' for at least some of
the planet, with a strong chance that if our New Program was resonant
enough, as it were, it might spread to become the new dominant cultural
'game' ... What should the new 'game' be? To me, this is the really
profound question. To answer it, we have first got to get outside our own
cultural 'game,' just to begin to think what the options are...
'Resonance' is an important concept in this business. A cultural virus, or
memetic monkey wrench, has got to resonate with something else, some other
energy that people are already generating on their own. It has got to be
close to something that they already think, and they should feel good when
they think it. This is why telling them 'the truth' doesn't work: it's not
like anyhting they already think. They are pretty well impervious to it,
since thinking too much on real issues calls too much of their own lifestyle
into question. So the trick is to play off the big energy flows that are
already there.
So anyway, this is the sort of stuff I've been pondering and studying (some)
for a long time.
I'm 35, male, live in a shack on a mountain in Virginia. Really. I can't
help it if I'm a charicature.
Matt
http://www.geocities.com/snap_d/arckat/
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