Memetic Memories
DNA is genetic memory, encoded biologically, as nucleotides. Symbols are memetic memory, encoded as language.
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History is a form of memetic memory, just as aesthetics are a form of genetic memory. In both cases the prevailing power try to impose their own conclusions and tastes upon the majority, imposing their own judgements and the principles that guide these judgements. Once a historical interpretation, and the contexts involved in translating, is accepted as ‘fact’, then all that remains is to teach the mind how these facts are justified and how they ought to be made sense of.
The making sense of the fact, once the facts and the terms by which they are determined and evaluated are established, is what Modern education (edumucation [sic]) is all about.
To a mind that has been given a historical context with no competing alternatives this explanation of the historical facts is the one and only way of understanding them – when understanding is determined by the already established contexts; along with their emotional, instinctive and idealistic baggage. To such a mind the follow-up of filling in the gaps comes as a welcoming relief as it is unable to connect with the past on its own; also unable to make sense of the past outside these established contexts.
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When the mind has been thoroughly indoctrinated into ‘proper’ interpretations of historical events, then not only the events but also how one ought to (re)act to them is part of the interpretation.
This enforces an acceptance or a reaction that denies the event altogether, in the effort to escape the prescribed, proper (re)action to the narrative.
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Genes relating to environment, establish cooperative groups which demand a hierarchy structure. The hierarchy structure, over time, settles upon particular traits, becoming shared ideals. This is what develops into a meme, collected and formalized as culture. From culture civilizations emerge, like one builds structures upon a specific type of foundation. Only some types of structure can be build ion the same foundational configuration; only certain civilizations can emerge from a specific culture. This is what it means for memes to be gene specific.
The meme is particular to the environment and how a particular segment of a population, a species, adjusted its behaviour, over time, because it was successful in maintaining the cooperative unity and its survival. This is why memes are gene specific and perform poorly when transferred to a genetic population with a different past – different genetic memories, DNA: spirit.
The final outcome of an entire past cannot harmonize with a different past if it is transplanted – just as a transplanted organ can be rejected by the body.
This is why Muslims can never adapt to western Democracies. They can self-repress and pretend, but the political system, with its specific ideals, is not part of their genetic past. They are forever alienated from its principles.
This is also why Hellenism cannot be adopted by a people who evolved in a different part of the world, and have different historical memories embedded in their DNA; such as Asiatic, and African bloodlines. They may learn to discipline themselves to the basic tenets, they may imitate the prescribed behaviours, as if copying a ritual, but they can never be part of its spirit. They may adjust the meme to their genetic pasts, but the fit will always be a poor one, because it did not evolve over large spans of time/space, due to the interplay between a tribe and a specific environment.
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Chaos (
randomness) – Mother of Life and Consciousness
Past manifests as presence, and the present contributes to the past. History may repeat itself but not perfectly – no copy is ever absolutely the same with another. Recycling of the determining past is averted due to the effects of chaos, slightly modifying the manifestation of past as presence. Past is never repeated perfectly. This necessitates life and consciousness as a way of adjusting, in reaction to these slight modifications. This adjustment is called free-will.
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The gene carries a code. The code represents the collection of all past experiences which will be passed-on as raw data. How this data unfolds and is applied is also part of the code’s instructions, its stored memory. The meme is not different in this aspect, but is an externalization of memory, in the form of semiotics.
With the meme language (
math being a language) is the raw data, and the instructions directing memory to apply itself – to unfold.
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‘To the victor go the spoils [sic]’, and it is he who decides what to emphasize and what to downplay, who ‘determines,’ as it were, the self-consciousness, the sense of self (
identity), of generations to come. All those who shall be enrolled in his educational system will receive his narration of what occurred, and why it did so. And no his-story is complete which does not include, along with the dates and the events, an analysis: recitation of the meanings and the lessons learned.
Like with all statistical work, the collection of the data is one aspect of the message conveyed; the other, more important aspect is interpreting, and teaching, the children what the data implies, and how to apply the same method of analysis, based on the same motives and the same underlying principles and value standards, evoking the same reactions, such as emotions and behaviours.
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Memory is a way of holding a unity together in fluid space/time. The fluctuating circumstances make identification with self – creation of self – a matter of connecting the immediate abstractions with previous ones, by finding relationships and similarities. This similarity, or pattern perception, becomes fundamental, as it is upon this recognition where a mind can connect and build a relationship with the past.
The identification of self with all manifestations of the past becomes troublesome unless there is a continuity of (inter)connectivity, using memory. The brain can trace back itself, in its multiple manifestations, by connecting the intermediate stages in a chain of causality, even if the present state has little in common with a state in the distant past.
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With any re-turn of the old – remembrance of what has been selectively forgotten, and buried – the 'bringing up to speed', can cause whiplash; a sense of drunken vertigo.
Old symbols replaced and upgraded with current semiotics, repeating the has-been, as if it were a yet-to-be. Ancient artefacts are often given a modern application – a painted vase that once held wine (
liquid fire) or olives (
condensed sunlight), are placed on a symbolic pedestal, in luxurious high-rise apartments, carrying the owner’s ego, and used, in secret, as a trash-bin by vulgar guests wanting to make a disparaging statement against it.
If we can be so innovative with an ancient tangible tool, such as an ancient vase - or a convincing copy of one – then think about how much more creative we can be with ancient ideas, and the words representing them.
The vase, once used to hold a useful material, in the real world, has become an idea, residing in the hearts & minds of those, empty of substance, now, connecting it with an abstraction in their head, and with no other utility other than as a display of their modernized vanities.
Professors wanting to update ancient ideals have made of them idols, replacing the ones they professed to shatter.
What has been accelerated to bring it up-to-speed with the current, has been given over to unworthy ‘students’, using it as decorative symbols of an implied mystical embodiment they want to impress their peers with – a centre-piece in the foyer of their mental castle/villa where they reign supreme as master of their domain, inviting guests only to taunt them with symbols of wealth and privilege.
Talented archaeologists of the mind have found and pieced together the broken and buried remains of what was once both beautiful and useful, giving it to those who now use it only to imply their own beauty and usefulness.
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Can a human pass on genetic codes to a chimp? Species diversification prevents such an exchange and when it is possible, such as between lion and tiger (l
iger), and/or ass and horse (
mule) – where this diversification is still young and undeveloped – the outcome is predictably sterile, unfit; a genetic dead-end. Can one human pass-on a memetic code to all other humans?
Mental diversification prevents such an exchange, and when it is possible, such as between a superior & inferior mind, the outcome is sterile, unfit, a memetic dead-end. The recipient simply repeats the codes, parrots them verbatim, without fully understanding, making it impossible for him to pass-on the qualities the codes represent; unable to embody them.
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The connection of the present, the more immediate looking back, with the more distant, on the edge of perceptual horizons ‘looking back’, is what tradition is all about.
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The narrative is prescribed, though not enforced directly. The individual is placed in a dilemma where his/her well-being, his/her entire fate, is dependent on choosing ‘correctly.’ Pascal’s Wager applied in socio-economics.
Once the prescribed narrative is accepted, even if subconsciously and half-heartedly, the identity of the individual is as good as settled. In time the mind forgets there was a dilemma at all. Memory has erased all the negative parts, as it always does, and the world, as it is defined, could not have been any other way.
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The centrality of memory in the construction of identity makes history a very important part of population control, and manipulation. In times where education tumbles towards selected focus (specialization), among populations with no personal connection to their own past, the reinvention of ‘past’ becomes an easy problem to resolve. The new narrative tries to diminish the dominance of a particular people, or it tries to induce self-hating shame among their offspring, attacking the target from the inside-out.
This ‘feminine,’ insidious, tactic is now part of the overall culture of victimhood. An example of the immanent New World redefinition of the past is the spreading of Afro-centric historical narratives, which are now convincing millions that the ancient Egyptians were Nubian peoples, or sub-Saharan Negroes, that came up the Nile to establish that glorious civilization.
Moses is returning from exile, it seems, to avenge himself against those who drove him out; against those who rejected him, and his kind, preventing them from being integrated into the dominant race’s bloodlines. His descendants are using a similar tactic. This time the Egyptians are the Anglo-Saxons that have yet to drive them away, forcing them into a new ‘exodus’.
The virus has taken root, and is producing a feverish pitch, before the final end. In the meantime we must endure the decline.
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As if often the case, when historical narratives attempt to corrupt historical events, the individuals either submit or react passionately, rejecting both.
In the effort to erase a forced mixing many reject the very idea of common ancestry. This is an example of how the absurd can only produce an equal and opposite absurdity.
In an effort to reject the narratives that preach uniformity, some minds indulge in an absolute rejection of reason.
For example, in a desperate effort to reject imposed uniformity, many reject the historical validity of a common ancestor, though they cannot rationalize how two species, evolving separately could then meet and mix genetically – as there is no precedent supporting it, whereas there is precedent supporting the gradual division of a shared ancestry into different species.