this is my first post, tho I've been reading Virus a while.
THANK YOU to everyone; you are making this a wonderful and fascinating
mind space.
Allow me to spread a meme or two...
For those of you who've 'met' NLP you'll understand what I mean when I
say that it fits (beautifully) with the concept of memes. Through it I
have been exposed to a HEAP of USEFUL memes that allow me to live a more
full life. For those of you who haven't... well... as you become more
and more curious about what I'm talking about you may start to think
"hey... this could be REALLY interesting" and go forth and look on the
web. Its one of those things that as you learn about it you wonder how
you could have missed it. Its big. It works. It makes sense.
One NLP meme is the USEFUL* meme. USEFUL is a filter; hosts of the
'useful' meme analyse things with the question "is this useful" rather
than "is this true". This is very useful when looking at your own
beliefs... for example, the belief "I can learn this" is more USEFUL
than the belief "I can't learn this".
You can use the USEFUL meme to analyse memes you are exposed to. If they
are not useful, you can reject them. If they seem useful, you can try
them for a while.
Experiment with the USEFUL meme on these memes / beliefs... say them to
yourself, imagine living with them, and find out...
"I control my own destiny"
(as you believe you are responsible for your own 'state' you will act to
improve it. This is useful)
"I always have choices"
(as you believe you have choices you will look for them and find them..
you also have a choice about what memes you want to take on. This is
useful)
"I am flexible"
(as you can adapt your beliefs and behaviour to whatever is useful)
"There is no such thing as failure... its only feedback"
(this is a very useful belief if you have just been dumped by your
significant other. what you learn has greater future value than what you
lost)
I pay attention to living
(as you use all the information available to you, you can make better
choices. this is VERY useful!.... beacuse you pay attention, you will
live well!)
I am insatiably CURIOUS!
(as you explore everything you can, you add knowledge, choices and
mental bandwidth.. you also have FUN!)
Obviously all these memes tie in together very usefully.
YOU choose what is useful... what's important to you ?
I currently use this as a definition for the 'value' of the life I live
: (this is currently useful for me, I'll change it if I find something
more useful. Its a working model)
VALUE of LIFE LIVED = happiness x enlightenment x density x time
happiness is fairly obvious..
enlightenment is the breadth, complexity, bandwidth etc of your mind.
density is how much you pack in to each unit of time,
and
time is how long you do it for.
I choose memes and beliefs that I believe will be USEFUL in maximising
the "VALUE OF LIFE LIVED" function.
This is why I do not wish to be a suburban cow (or to borrow Sabren's
expression) a Mall Person.
* there has been a certain amount of discussion here about 'what is
truth'... I'd always been fairly strictly rational, ie, valued truth
above all until I contracted the USEFUL meme.
The USEFUL meme is more useful (sorry!) than the truth above all meme.
It also saves a lot of philosphical arguing about what is truth.
(although truth is still VERY important to me)
I enjoyed that! hope it was useful to you!
see y'all
Rhubarb
(steve_fleming@hotmail.com)
(stevef@labyrinth.net.au)
(www.labyrinth.net.au/~stevef)
p.s.. you all write such fascinating and thought provoking stuff that if
I had the time to respond to it I'd still be tapping away when the next
virus came out. May you all have a GROOVY day. You can smile now.
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