The image of transhumanism (Memetic Toolkit)

Natasha Vita More (natasha@natasha.cc)
Sun, 05 Jul 1998 17:04:47 -0500

At 01:35 AM 7/5/98 +0200, Anders wrote:

>I want the ability to explain clearly and
>rationally...

I've come up with my own memetic toolkit while fine-tuning my own skills in discussing transhuman ideas, whether it is a one-on-one or public. My own toolkit is a first-hand, from scratch, and a blueprint that continues to help me in spreading and engineering transhuman memes.

Natasha's Memetic Toolkit:

  1. Listen
  2. Discern Cost Benefit Analysis
  3. Educate, Debate or Alienate
  4. Employ Critical Thinking
  5. Locate Common Ground of Interest
  6. Present Historical Parallels
  7. Practice Patience
  8. Ignite Curiosity
  9. Show Sense of Humor
  10. Engineer a Meme

FAQ:

  1. Listen: Understand the context of the people I am communicating with and their level of progress and rate of personal growth. People will let me know, one way or the other, within the first few minutes who they are.
  2. Cost Benefit: Discern if the time and energy is a productive and successful exchange. Is it worth my time and effort to communicate with this person(s)? (9 out of 10 it is.)
  3. Educate, Debate or Alienate: What strategy do I employ? Am I in this to teach, argue or to rave about my own views? How do I best want to communicate.
  4. Critical Thinking and logically while monitoring information, getting feedback, using error correction and accurate replay, and collision avoidance.
  5. Common Ground: If people recognize something in common with me (skiing, videomaking, gardening, psychology), then I do not appear to be so alien in my transhuman views.
  6. Historical Parallels: people seem to be more receptive to new or challenging ideas if they are given concrete examples of events in history have some bearing on what we are discussing.
  7. Patience: people develop at different rates, and this has value. It is a readiness and openness in someone's psychology that welcomes change. Whether an early-bird or eleventh-hour, this process sometimes depends on their psychological barometer.
  8. Ignite Curiosity: "Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species." Desmond Morris; "I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity." Eleanor Roosevelt.
  9. Humor!: keeps tensions down, helps people relax, and there nothing so welcoming as a smile.
  10. Meme engineering: My favorite moment is when I actively ignite or impart a positive or vivid impression of my extropian ideas and transhuman culture

Natasha Vita More [fka Nancie Clark]: www.natasha.cc Transhumanist Art Centre - Home of Extropic Art: www.extropic-art.com **NEW** Transhuman Culture InfoMark: www.transhuman.org PRESS RELEASE: "We are transhumans ..." Meme Orbits Saturn in 2004!

"The best defense is an aesthetic offense."