A very thought provoking post. This brings to mind the old story that
goes around the scifi fanways about a bet between Heinlein and Hubbard
as to who could found a more powerful religion with one book. Heinlein
went off and wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land" and started the sexual
revolution, while Hubbard dusted off the old Dianetics meme and founded
the Scientologists. Heinlein, who could have had a more powerful impact
on our society, rejected the role of guru, so far as to have "water
grokkers" camping on his front lawn arrested, while old L Ron reveled in
the worship of adoring nuts...
Campbell, seeing all this, was exasperated.....
I like your concept of dieties being virulent complex memeplexes. The
major disadvantage we have with developing similar systems is TIME. If
history is essentially over within 30-50 years, we have little hope of
starting anything big in that time. However, by acting as the prophets
and apostles of extropian memes, recording how it was that the human
SIngularity came about, we will serve as the authors of whatever texts
will become the sacred histories in the transhuman tomorrow. Thus we can
act now in devising memes that will be useful tools for the minimization
of entropy and maximization of extropy for individuals to refer to for
self actualization in a transhuman society, much as the Psalms or other
parts of the old books have been referred to in scholarly and legal
works throughout the enlightenment.
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael Lorrey --------------------------------------------------------- President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ --------------------------------------------------------- Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Certified Genius.