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#77: Dec. - Jan. 2010 (Non-Fiction)
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Joe Kelley
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I hope you enjoy the dialogue with these good people of BT.
Lawrence,

I am asking that question so as to find an answer. I have one answer so far, and no reasonable person can prove it wrong, never mind doubt it, since that effort proves it too.

Thanks for the welcome. I took another bite out of the book and I am now at page 417. My reading continues to challenge my thinking, leaving me with questions seeking accurate answers. I don't want to publish an spoilers, but the book is a direct challenge, it says as much in so many words.
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Anyone,

The connection in between people, that medium of exchange, is common, a common denominator, and it is universal.

I may be on a wrong path here, with this change of direction, this inspired new viewpoint, but it seems to me that the connection is employed by each of us in unique ways while the connection employs us the same way each time, and that is what I mean when I see it as being universal.

It connects us; why?
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Lawrence, I am asking that question so as to find an answer.
My study has caused me to conclude, the answer is there is no answer, only belief. The individual, unique, and personal belief of each person who asks the question.

I am unable to comment on your "connection." I guess I'll have to get the book.
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Lawrence,

Thanks for trying.
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Joe Kelley wrote: Previous to those books I did not have a working understanding of the word “meme”, for an example of what I am trying to say about reading in general.

The word “meme” passed my notice like more of the same useless fashionable noise, stuff for people seeking momentary entertainment – perhaps. I may be just babbling. The word “meme” is now a part of my thinking, a building block, a stepping stone, a higher step; I can see more, Seymour Butts.

A meme is a bridge builder, perhaps, a from of connective stuff, like the stuff that prevents all our cells from wandering apart, or like the stuff that keeps a metal paper clip floating on water.

Is a meme illustrated by an example of a meme, like a popular song is an example of a popular song? Is that like universal grammar being the common elements of all grammar, the stuff that causes the examples?
Uh-oh, as a conscientious objector to memes, will Bloom's book convert me? I guess I should be prepared to be changed by the book if I can manage to make room for it. I will say that your posts have been the most effective generator of interest toward a book that I have seen on Booktalk.
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DWill,

Thanks for the positive input, the statement, and the question.

It is not often that I find someone who can read my words that express my interests and then have my interests pass to them, seemingly intact. This is good news to me. I often get responses where I’m told how stupid I am, insane, or speaking a foreign language.

I don’t know how someone can object to memes; perhaps a more specific statement can bring me up to speed?

As to being converted, in reference to memes, I am in the dark. As to being converted or having your current path altered by reading Bloom’s work, that will happen, it seems to me, it is unavoidable, you can avoid reading, but once reading, anything really, I think your path will change either slightly or significantly.

I can tell you honestly, and I think very accurately, that my path has changed significantly since reading The Lucifer Principle and then The Global Brain; two eye opening windows into another way of seeing that which is to be seen.

I really like the analogy of playing 3 way chess and having someone hand me a second queen to place on the board. The perspective offered by Bloom could already be something you see, just not something you see a clearly as possible.

The new book is not easy for me to read, not that it isn’t written well, I think that it is written very well for people who have a specific political viewpoint that I do not share, a viewpoint that I oppose, as far as I can tell. This contentious viewpoint of mine contributes to my difficulty in reading the Genius of the Beast. I read it just fine; perhaps I use the wrong words: the digesting of it is difficult; I really have to bend my viewpoint around to get past my bias. I have to be even more objective than the writer; perhaps.

I won’t be converted to capitalism or memes, those things are what they are, and I am not those things, they are separate from me.

If you have ever read Eric Fromm, you may be in a better position to know my contentions with The Genius of the Beast.

How about this:

If the new book is like a Trojan horse, converting the unwary, just know that the gift is filled with things that may harm you, take the gift, and use it for a bonfire?
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Hail,

I am at my copy of Genius of the Beast, it is digital, it is on a hard drive, and it now occurs to me to write about it, instead of reading it – for some reason this is what I see, to be, what I will do now.

This book addresses more than merely the salvation of a Nation of people, it addresses the path the must be taken in avoidance of a pre-mature end of our species.

That last sentence contains much of my objections to the book, as I’ve read it so far, with its obvious bias. My hope is to read through the book and have my contentions, my objections, seen clearly, laid out bare naked, and solvable, understandable, reasonable, and most importantly, to have these barriers, these contentions, left behind, where the path forward clearly avoids repeating similar road blocks, similar bottle necks, similar arguments, similar unnecessary conflicts, similar wastes of time and energy (power) that suck the life out of living.

Now that is a paragraph that can serve to be more specific concerning my concerns about the book. I’d have to write my own book to be as specific as Howard.

The seriousness of what this book addresses, again, is nothing less than the survival of our species, in my own way of seeing it. The path around our unfortunate end will be taken, or it won’t.

That is an objective viewpoint.
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Joe Kelley wrote: I don’t know how someone can object to memes; perhaps a more specific statement can bring me up to speed?
Tongue just a bit in cheek with the conversion remark, but yes, as a few people here are aware I haven't been able to grasp what memes are supposed to be, have also been openly doubtful. I think it's essential to be absolutely literal when examining this theory to be sure we are not elevating a metaphor to a physical reality. I haven't read any of Bloom's books, but Chris gave me a copy of Global Brain. Using the index, I find this as part of the description: "meme--a habit, a technique, a twist of feeling, a sense of things, which flips easily from brain to brain...Memes could carry their message via the swift intangibles of scent, sight, and sound" (p. 30). I see a concept in that, a way of envisioning language and culture, but if memes are supposed to have physical properties, as genes do, evidence needs to be provided. What instrument has been able to register a meme? Just how do we know they're there?

In your opinion, does Bloom deliver the goods that should remove doubts like mine?
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DWill,

I know of only one irrefutable fact, all other perceptions posed as facts are subject to possible refinement, improvement, adjustment, greater precision, greater accuracy, and this, I suppose, requires doubt.

If the thing in view is the thing that is called a meme, not the sun, then the absolute perfect understanding of it, without doubt, is not within my power.

I have do doubt that I must, absolutely, avoid looking directly at the sun. I believe this to be true. I have no doubt about it, but I am fallible, certainly fallible, I have no doubt about that either, and so one thing tends to contradict the other, leaving doubt about it, tiny doubt, small doubt, miniscule doubt, but doubt none the less. Contradiction is cause for doubt.

I return to the one fact, the absolute one, and leave an open mind to varying degrees on all other things seen.

I did not get the idea that a meme is a thing, an entity, a measurable mass, a particle, a physically measurable object, or perhaps, a “physical reality”.

The observation that can be called a meme, as far as I understand the phenomenon, the process, the statistical occurrence among our species, is akin to things like fashion; like a popular song.

The meme isn’t the song, as far as I understand the observation, the song is a song, sounds, things that cause brain function in a measurable way are songs, while the meme is the connective thing, I suppose, the meme is the way of looking how the song connects all the people who share it, willingly, like moths to a flame.

I may be all wrong about this, I read about memes in Howard’s book, I’ve seen the word used since, the word has gained currency, and the word illustrates a meme, as it connects people. Like euphemism is a word and it is an example of a euphemism. Why not call a lie a lie?

In my opinion Bloom delivers a possible improvement in perception, I don’t think he is in the removing doubt business. I don’t get that business. I don’t think he does either. I can’t speak for him. I think he has a scientific mind, he must know that his is fallible too.
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Joe Kelley wrote:If the thing in view is the thing that is called a meme, not the sun, then the absolute perfect understanding of it, without doubt, is not within my power.
Joe, thanks for your sincere attempt to explain the idea to me. I'm not looking for any kind of perfect, doubt-free understanding. I just need to know, to put it bluntly, whether memes are something I can or cannot safely ignore. I could not safely ignore, in terms of intellectual integrity, evolution or genes or historical geology. Those are facts which, if I was to ignore them, would result in placing myself in a partial fantasy world. So the question I ask myself is whether memes can have anything like that level of verification. If the answer is no, we are not dealing with a scientific principle but with philosophy or belief. That is not to denigrate the whole concept of a meme, just to give it a category.
I did not get the idea that a meme is a thing, an entity, a measurable mass, a particle, a physically measurable object, or perhaps, a “physical reality”. The observation that can be called a meme, as far as I understand the phenomenon, the process, the statistical occurrence among our species, is akin to things like fashion; like a popular song.

The meme isn’t the song, as far as I understand the observation, the song is a song, sounds, things that cause brain function in a measurable way are songs, while the meme is the connective thing, I suppose, the meme is the way of looking how the song connects all the people who share it, willingly, like moths to a flame.
A meme sounds to me, from this poetic description, like an imaginative idea, or in your words, a way of looking. I'm still thinking that either a meme is not science or we must extend the boundary of science to include it. I'm not arguing with you at all unless you are saying that memes are something science has been able to demonstrate the existence of, even tentatively. As a "way of looking," they appear to suit individual purposes, just not mine.
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