Marlana: Memetic Cloning and Cultural Heterodyne Strategy.
Well, this is odd.
I found another Risalian. Or rather, someone with an alternate reality that is nearly a clone of Risalia. Almost everything is identical -- the architecture, technology, science, decor. The politics is almost identical -- mine is AnCap, his is Left-Anarchist. The landscapes are slightly different -- mine resembles North America and is more fertile, his resembles Northern Eurasia and is more barren. Since he lives in Sweden and I in the US, these may simply be our regional interpretations. He doesn't have the language or the Smart Dirt, but he said he'd never thought about those things.
We were discussing how this could have arisen. He suggested parallel evolution; I think it is equally possible that the two AU's were 'cloned' off of a single memetic attractor -- a common ancestor as it were.
I've also been speculating a lot recently about gene/meme coevolution, and the concept of the melting-pot as a cultural evolutionary strategy: a memeplex that perpetuates itself by absorbing and aggregating other memes. Ancient Rome would be an obvious example of this. What makes a melting-pot stable, able to soak up "alien" memes without undergoing abrupt basin shifts? Risalia was a stable melting-pot for centuries, even before the Singularity.
Could transmodernity become a stable global melting-pot? Hmm. I don't think melting-pot would be the right term in that case. There will always be multiple competing paradigms (at least there had better be), or at least the possibility of competition arising. Just as in the economic case of a so-called "natural monopoly", if it is even possible for a competitor to enter the field, the monopolist must deal with the risk of such competition, & thus is constrained to keep his price & quality within certain parameters. Similarity, even if there at some point is a genuinely global belief system, it must at least be possible to challenge it, to conceive of an alternative. Without that possibility, there is only tyranny. Postmodern theory says something similar: hegemony does not mean no contenders, but rather not being able to imagine a contender. Yet, any such hegemony is self-contradictory because it is defined by the supposed absence of potential contenders.
I think if I want to write and publish this stuff, I have to do it in two copies: the "vanilla" version which leaves out the metaphysics, and the Occult Transhumanist version which includes the subtle-level mechanics of how these things "work". Most people who read this type of theory, after all, don't believe thoughtforms are real, or that consciousness has an existence which is more than an emergent property of matter. So one must cater to the materialism if one wants a wider audience -- which, in practice, means leaving out most of the really interesting stuff. Ah, what the heck.
More about melting-pots: Connection between melting pot and individualism. They seem to fit together -- individuals not defined by predetermined set of memes. Individualism involves the freedom to pick and choose memes. Now (turning to the occult pole of it) suppose memes are actual entities, thoughtforms, that exist in symbiosis with living humans. Plug-in aspects of identity, which can rearrange and recombine, translate and mutate. Individualism involves flexibility, a decoupling of meme from attractor,.the loosening of attractor bonds. What is happening, vibrationally and biochemically, as memes become more loosely coupled, thus, identity itself more diffuse & less discrete? This is the process of postmodernity, which occurs within advanced capitalism -- the flow of goods & the flow of ideas. It is happening at all levels at once, from brute material forces of production to human genes and biochemicals to the most abstract realms of ideation, the reality system(s) co-evolving
Postmodernism and the melting-pot motif. Are there parallels between postmodernity & ancient Rome, medieval Spain, other melting-pot societies? Hmm. Postmodernism as such is not stable enough to be a melting-pot; it is defined by instability, ephemerality. Transmodernism would consist of a nested heterarchy of multiple melting-pots along with other types of attractors.
Melting-pot (co)generates individualism which in turn induces fragmentation, plurality. Next stage -- remelting into new patterns? Prigoginic leap.
The Melting-Pot: Strength through Flexibility.
I found another Risalian. Or rather, someone with an alternate reality that is nearly a clone of Risalia. Almost everything is identical -- the architecture, technology, science, decor. The politics is almost identical -- mine is AnCap, his is Left-Anarchist. The landscapes are slightly different -- mine resembles North America and is more fertile, his resembles Northern Eurasia and is more barren. Since he lives in Sweden and I in the US, these may simply be our regional interpretations. He doesn't have the language or the Smart Dirt, but he said he'd never thought about those things.
We were discussing how this could have arisen. He suggested parallel evolution; I think it is equally possible that the two AU's were 'cloned' off of a single memetic attractor -- a common ancestor as it were.
I've also been speculating a lot recently about gene/meme coevolution, and the concept of the melting-pot as a cultural evolutionary strategy: a memeplex that perpetuates itself by absorbing and aggregating other memes. Ancient Rome would be an obvious example of this. What makes a melting-pot stable, able to soak up "alien" memes without undergoing abrupt basin shifts? Risalia was a stable melting-pot for centuries, even before the Singularity.
Could transmodernity become a stable global melting-pot? Hmm. I don't think melting-pot would be the right term in that case. There will always be multiple competing paradigms (at least there had better be), or at least the possibility of competition arising. Just as in the economic case of a so-called "natural monopoly", if it is even possible for a competitor to enter the field, the monopolist must deal with the risk of such competition, & thus is constrained to keep his price & quality within certain parameters. Similarity, even if there at some point is a genuinely global belief system, it must at least be possible to challenge it, to conceive of an alternative. Without that possibility, there is only tyranny. Postmodern theory says something similar: hegemony does not mean no contenders, but rather not being able to imagine a contender. Yet, any such hegemony is self-contradictory because it is defined by the supposed absence of potential contenders.
I think if I want to write and publish this stuff, I have to do it in two copies: the "vanilla" version which leaves out the metaphysics, and the Occult Transhumanist version which includes the subtle-level mechanics of how these things "work". Most people who read this type of theory, after all, don't believe thoughtforms are real, or that consciousness has an existence which is more than an emergent property of matter. So one must cater to the materialism if one wants a wider audience -- which, in practice, means leaving out most of the really interesting stuff. Ah, what the heck.
More about melting-pots: Connection between melting pot and individualism. They seem to fit together -- individuals not defined by predetermined set of memes. Individualism involves the freedom to pick and choose memes. Now (turning to the occult pole of it) suppose memes are actual entities, thoughtforms, that exist in symbiosis with living humans. Plug-in aspects of identity, which can rearrange and recombine, translate and mutate. Individualism involves flexibility, a decoupling of meme from attractor,.the loosening of attractor bonds. What is happening, vibrationally and biochemically, as memes become more loosely coupled, thus, identity itself more diffuse & less discrete? This is the process of postmodernity, which occurs within advanced capitalism -- the flow of goods & the flow of ideas. It is happening at all levels at once, from brute material forces of production to human genes and biochemicals to the most abstract realms of ideation, the reality system(s) co-evolving
Postmodernism and the melting-pot motif. Are there parallels between postmodernity & ancient Rome, medieval Spain, other melting-pot societies? Hmm. Postmodernism as such is not stable enough to be a melting-pot; it is defined by instability, ephemerality. Transmodernism would consist of a nested heterarchy of multiple melting-pots along with other types of attractors.
Melting-pot (co)generates individualism which in turn induces fragmentation, plurality. Next stage -- remelting into new patterns? Prigoginic leap.
The Melting-Pot: Strength through Flexibility.