At 10:17 PM 3/7/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Three levels of freedom are relevant to
>this article:
>
>1. The freedom philosophy level;
>
>2. The practical living-free level;
>
>3. The complete peme-free level.
>
>(Other freedom levels are beyond the
>scope of this article.)
Your articles are memetic... and they're certainly political... but
somehow you seem to think that you're clearing away pemes rather than
replacing them with your own.
Your meme, which happens to be political, has several traits which make it
fairly adaptable. It appeals to other deep memes, notably freedom (in this
case, from pemes), self-ownership, and levels of development. It
circumvents serious criticism with Peme Rule 12: "Any human who attempts
to question, attack, or expose any deep peme shall be ignored, ridiculed,
or vilified by other humans." It emphasizes the malicious nature of pemes,
thus harnessing the very deep meme of self-preservation.
Consider this: if you were to erase all political memes from your mind
tomorrow, you would have no political opinion, because you would have no
ideas about politics. No freedom thoughts, no authoritarian thoughts, no
thoughts at all about government and/or its value to society (if any).
That's what it means to have no memes: you have no ideas.
Freedom is a peme, too, ya know. It's especially adaptable because its
meaning is so ambiguous, yet it seems to appeal to everyone. We get
freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom from choice, peme-freedom,
meme-freedom, free-markets, economic freedom (a term sadly appropriated by
communists), degrees of freedom, and free energy... all from the same word.
So I put it to you again: you're selling a meme, and it's political. I
conclude that you're selling me a peme. You're not crazy... or even wrong,
per se. But you aren't eliminating pemes... you're just replacing them
with deeper ones which aren't open to criticism.
(If you now go on to tell me that I operate at peme freedom level 1, you
will have missed the point of this post.)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.5.3
iQEVAwUBNQO16fJQm6Y3yAfNAQEcLgf+MBoLWvyGu1Mm+mUMnu+T1WiMXP0ItEao
HltXuXpYQxYEB9LUX0XuNWMUJQVSxNddbXm1QMLzwao+V/J1fFEetjFc4mmUosyN
xBVFn7YMKyicUoyq54W4mYFrwioAY56GLqpJvEDqEMtn7bSKNmoCg73b54BEaFSU
CeD2LrcqG3EMtV7yNAlv43MRmzkbl2llrpXRIctUfTqAeI1736/FdQGMBX55TwZ9
oFLETYKVorjPPobOjSFQ6PWe06knKEf/eXjfcte313emg/zHWIbiwReteNYqkJTf
T2hY/NQyS+hT8Hrp8vLKzNQQJRy2neC6Wwbalas9mPuAG86G46HOlA==
=mW4V
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-TAKE MY ADVICE-
-I NEVER USE IT ANYWAY-