>> Don't sweat it, Josh, I understood what you meant the first time. I also
agree. In terms of how Cov presents itself to the public, it certainly
isn't practising what it preaches. If it wants to infect as many people
with its ideas as possible, it's going to have to consider some "memetic
engineering".
Dan <<
I think CoV is not yet at the stage to agressively infect society at large.
In my view, the message is still evolving. That (I think perhaps as a free-
floating collective intention) is the purpose of this list. Agressive
infection requires a highly refined message. CoV is the incubator for that
message.
Memetics is as much about filtering as it is about infecting. In an
environment where information is not just freely available, but overwhelming
people need ways to decide what not to read even more than they need ways to
decide what to read. Furthermore, in an almost completely free environment
like the internet, for a constructive discussion to take place it helps to
encourage some people to exclude themselves. Otherwise disrupters would waste
valuable bandwidth. Daniel Dennet discusses this filtering function of memes
in his essay, <A HREF="http://www.tufts.edu/as/cogstud/papers/memeimag.htm">
Memes and the Exploitation of Imagination</A> <---direct link.
The domain name "lucifer.com" accomplishes that goal. People who are repelled
or turned off by the word "lucifer", are probably the kind of people that
would only disrupt the kind discussions that occur on this list. These
discussions may or may not eventually lead to the development of a truly
refined message for CoV, but without this filtering mechanism these
discussions would probably not happen in the first place.
BTW, have you noticed the number of people who have inadvertantly found
themselves subscribed to this list? No doubt through the actions of a devious
third party. Have you noticed how desparately they want off the list and keep
EMailing the list to be removed? That is the filtering mechanism at work.
What religious Christian wants tons of EMail that has "Lucifer" written all
over it? Especially if any other Christian friends and family may
inadvertantly see that they are recieving messages from "Lucifer"? I suggest
that we help them remove themselves from the list as soon as possible. For
their sakes and for the integrity of the list discussions.
-Jake