ME (supreme) ME
jaan.ranniko@smtpgw.aftrs.edu.au
Mon, 11 Aug 97 16:36:57 0
A suspicious letter drops through the slot in the door.
It has a plastic window through which you read:
Congratulations on your new purchase:
"supreme meme" is "No idea is sacred"
You may already have won MORE!
You wipe your sweaty brow and tear the envelope open...
Here is the fine print:
Whether the idea / notion / concept / label / category / belief /
slogan / vehicle of cultural appropriation of "meme" ...
(delete whatever proves applicable / inapplicable)
...is really built to include paradox.
Because "No idea is sacred" is not a paradox, nor is it true; just as
"No idea is sacred, except the sacred ones." is. The logical
equivalent of the value statement "no idea is sacred" is "No statement
is true." which is a paradox, as is "Nothing is true" as in "Nothing
is true, everything is permitted.". If you accept the logical
equivalent, you accept the paradox. If you stick with last week's
"supreme meme" which is "No idea is sacred" you buy the problems of
defining "sacred", and which dictionary best defines it? And who wrote
that? And who told them? Someone will eventually tell you that god
told them, and then you'll have a schizophrenic on your hands, telling
you this is sacred and that's sacred and now it's time to make war
with the infidel because they say the sacred sandal of OofaBlathaTekk
smells like curry and we know it smells like cheese.
So: reject falsity in a world where nothing is true
or
Establish and enshrine new hierarchies of nonsense (new AND IMPROVED!)
What's yer poison, cowboy?
The qualifying factor that could make "meme" special enough to
also represent paradox is that it is, I believe, a french term
equivalent to "mama".
And while you're at it, why not consider
why the concept of meme was ever invented
in the first place
and in whose name is it propogated
and what exactly is it
that makes it
just
so
special?
"It's the bubbles of nothing that make it really something."
- Aero Bar ad circa 1990
You leave the empty envelope near the phone, at the bottom of the neat
stack of other empty envelopes, scribbled messages for housemates,
other people's lives.