Part 5 Death 35 to 41: The Meme

5) Death (Murder)

[You shall not kill.]

{You shall not kill.}

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Murder is the grand taboo.  The Meme simultaneously promises eternal salvation post-death and forbids murder during life.  This mystifies death to appear not as a destination, but as a portal.  How can the living be motivated to service the Meme if such an amusement park doorway is ajar through suicide? 

Would it not be advantageous for the heroic soldier to be shot, fireman burnt, mother to die in birth, pedestrian to step in front of the bus, boy to drown, girl blown to marrow from the drone, or cancer to spread its tumors?  Should not the immaculate death unrequested to circumvent the anti-suicide meme be viewed as a blessing?  Yet humans wail in horror at the loss of loved ones despite abiding by the Decalogue.  The gap of uncertainty that prompts faith floods with horror under deluges of death.

The fifth commandment says you shall not kill.  Human life is elevated to a premium, a work of god above that of the animals and plants.  The Meme is tantamount in this dissemination to approval to kill the ram, fish, and fowl, but not other humans; unless god commands the killing or god does the killing.

The god-meme shall smite thy enemies into pillars of salt!  The exceptions to the fifth commandment are wielded by those who have permission to kill as an act of valor, protection, and Good compared to those who kill as an act of sin, assault, and Evil. The Meme presents an invisible judge sorting the events and a non-invisible version of authority in various governments and judiciaries to capitalize on the results. 

This leads to humans under the Meme having a completely unrealistic view of death.  Humans are killers.  We are omnivores.  We kill because our cerebral cortex puts us at the top of our food chain.  In an alternative environment we may be the food of another organism.  Humanity could be wiped out or farmed by aliens with superior technology a la Native Americans to European gunfire, should such aliens exist, are capable, and choose to conquer Earth.  The Meme shields us from focusing on the unpredictability, darkness, and disturbing choices that result from this reality. 

We eat death to sustain life.  Whether through a salad or muscle tissue, the life of organisms is traded in a barter of consumption, digestion, and fecal matter to fertilize the next iteration.  We are cells evolved based on the interfaces of how the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients interact with the bacterium and proteins engineering our genetic transport mechanisms. 

We are interconnected so that in stark reality death is not chaos, but a necessary stock market of fuel exchange.  When we dodge death, we risk overpopulation through manipulating the environments of ruminant mammals from natural predators like wolves or from infesting the planet and drawing our resources scarce for the betterment of a section of humanity and the detriment of the whole. 

Humans created the Meme to protect ourselves from ourselves.  At the apex of the Earth’s food chain, humans are the dominant predator of humans.  The Meme is the insurance policy to prevent the human-wolves from devouring the human-sheep.  The analogies and interworking of the Meme would probably be found in a similar capacity on any confined environment of the dominant planetary predator with a cerebral cortex capable of manufacturing such a generation to generation evolutionary survival mechanism in the mind.

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Humans must accept our killer status.  War machines are mirrors.  One can see the Meme’s views on tanks, bombs, and rifles versus ricin, sarin gas, or a nuclear warhead to see the true point of war.  Weapons of mass destruction are more intimate to our internal.  Bullets are a more realistic and omnipresent potential executioner’s device and bring about less panic.  There is more order to a gun than a nuclear bomb.  The bomb threatens the Meme with a much higher level of chaos, because it presents the specter of death ubiquitously across populations.  

When a human is shot in the forehead or slashed through the gullet, the individual is dead and the specificity of death is encapsulated.  When a shooter struts into an elementary school or lobby and sprays flesh, the Meme is frazzled into cross-continent communication.  If the same number of humans, say eight, were gunned down in separate instances than in the same audience of a Colorado Batman-movie-premier the Meme utilizes a divergent interpretation.  Connecticut kindergarteners write Christmas lists in crayon staring up at a gunman.  Gaza third-grader sees her home razed with a flack-jacketed Israeli standing watch.  The Meme casts one into civility and the other into mental illness. 

We fear the unpredictability of being hunted or dying through an impersonal untargeted random act.  We obsess over murder motive for such reasons.  We desire explanations for death, when so often none other than kill or be kill, I wanted to kill, or I was afraid applies.  A single human putting a bomb on a subway train or airport lobby defies the Meme’s order to the extreme.  

God must command the bomber through such vile manipulations as jihad or the person must be an anti-Meme infidel.  The person must have no fear of perdition to do so, for most followers of the Meme would weigh an eternity in hell for such effrontery to the fifth commandment.  

Humans ponder what kind of sick and demented person could do such a thing.  We quickly grasp at specifying any lone-gunman’s age, race, gender, religion, middle-name to avoid spill-over hatred, and if possible face.  The septicity of a lone-wolf or the leader of an amorphous group brings back the sensation of calm to the Meme.  If the Meme has a surface level poster-child and a default internal explanation of anti-Meme or crazy then most people inside the Meme will go about living the Meme.  

When such quick drying epoxy is not applied, then we get into organized conflicts, the department of homeland security, CIA surveillance and more thickly-layered numbing agents to persuade the public that the threat is truly under control.  The actual security from new burgeoning threats from similar rogue parties does not have to be substantially reduced.  It is the perception, the external, not the reality or internal that is critical to the Meme. 

However if rather than exploding inside a commercial luggage compartment, the bomb drops out of the air from a tax-funded aircraft through state-sanctioned killing, which was not explicitly intended to kill all of those people, but only a certain individual or some of them, then such a bomber and the taxpayers funding him are relieved of culpability.  In this benevolence we find patriotism and our self-interest indemnifying our concern for some life under the fifth commandment.

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We give ourselves permission to act as god inside the Meme (to kill righteously).  Outside the Meme we indulge our id in our true animal kill-or-be-killed reality.  We are living both inside humanity.  We often process these types of events through the Meme consciously and through the anti-Meme subconsciously.

We get to violate the first commandment through the idea of determining the greater evil.  The greater evil has rationalized violating the fifth commandment for causes the violator deems just.  However his rationale is in error, therefore we must interdict.  We must kill or be killed.  

However in the Meme we are not animals.  No, we are police officers.  We are soldiers.  We are heads of households with rights to bear arms defending our homesteads.  We are within our rights to become temporary killers and still observe the Sabbath.  The Meme gives us discretion to preserve the greater good of our life and our children’s lives.  

The concept of our genes and biological wealth sit in the backdrop, but are perpetually in the foreground.  We refuse to entertain death or extinction.  Acceptance of such is so heinous a contemplation that we are granted this dexterity to kill and still feel righteous and holy.  

Vengeance is born from such logic.  The god who provided the Decalogue is a vengeful being; so we are by example to be vengeful when threatened.  Otherwise we will be taken advantage.  Killers will not stop killing if we do not communicate that killing is wrong by killing the killers.  This cycle of blindness populates the armies of the globe in droves.  To unweave this tapestry one must accept his or her potential extinction in the absolute.  Acknowledging extinction is anti-Meme. 

One must not only be willing to accept death, but the death of all humans.  Extinction is not desired, but it is sadly possible.  The anti-Meme seeks to avoid extinction by acknowledging such.  Every member of family could die on some level of pursuing the principles of the anti-Meme.  The volition of others could result in nothingness or living forms of perdition.  The Meme does not goad extinction, our choices do.  

These are for the most part theoretical battles.  One can be as Gandhi or Martin Luther King.  These are strong examples of the anti-meme to commandment five.  For the fifth commandment must be read with an except for, you shall not kill, except for when you have to kill to perpetuate the Meme.  The Crusades, Jihad and each war humanity has ever known has had some form of this exception.  Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” is a commentary to this strand of the Meme. 

The sanctified killing is not vanquishing a person or a personalized entity.  The except for rationalized killing is killing anarchy.  The Meme puts us here for a purpose whether that is to conquer a country from natives, a civil war, or a world war with uncounted dead. 

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Evolution and extinction volley in the balance behind these forced misconceptions.  We have done so much work as a species in beguiling ourselves from the stark terms of our peak atop the food chain of our planet.  Environmentalism watches human-exceptionalism from across the savannah.  Why should humans worry about preserving a world made for humans when the god-meme ensures our habitat?

The Meme promises god will take care of us.  God serves as the ultimate bailout in a psychological backstop.  Human extinction is therefore postponed as remote under the Meme.  Humans may consciously acknowledge some measures of science and even the not-truly expected interface of a deity to save the species when environmental instability is pushed to an anthropogenic brink.  However subconsciously, the Meme is providing the false reassurance that tips the Meme-follower’s conscious thoughts towards inaction or rejection of such environmentalism as crack-pot science. 

The Meme crafts mythologies around the end of days, but these are centered around god’s vengeance to segregate the living based on faith in a reinforcement of god’s encouragement of the killing exception under the fifth commandment.  If human extinction were to occur through a threshold of melted ice caps due to elevated planetary temperatures due to carbon and methane or a solar flare, these events would have to be placed in the same basket as a seven-year old dying of cancer under a theist’s internal explanation to the inaction of a deity. 

How can faith in the Meme be retained?  How can the Meme’s ownership of the economy of death continue?  One might also consider a subconscious desire for carbon-based non-viability for humans on Earth not as an accelerant to a non-desired biological extinction, but to a desired apocalypse that reunites Meme-followers for their faith’s reward.  The Meme’s acceleration of human extinction, if viewed this way, would appear perversely intentional.

39

The Meme is responsible for all burial rituals outside of basic biological hygiene.  Certainly the segregation of rotting tissue in organic matter that a human has no plans on cooking and consuming is required to prevent the spread of bacterium and disease.  However the spiritual conations of death acting as the doorway rather than the wall are perversions by the Meme to capitalize on early-human misunderstandings of microscopic organisms and organic decay. 

All manner of reverence to the skeleton, skin, and expired vehicle of a human is a pageantry that does not do honor to the individual, but to the mental devotion to the Meme the continuing humans employ.  A group of anti-Meme humans could gather, tell stories to remember a deceased human with no illusions of an afterlife after doing due diligence to dispose of the body in a biologically healthy manner for the living.  The Meme brings up the subjects of souls and prayers for the deceased as if the sentiments had pertinence to the dead.  Self-satisfaction for the completion of rituals applies a manufactured order to death.  Various obtuse burial pageants are conducted across the planet to coddle the Meme.

The concept of afterlives, god, spiritual beings and the symbol of souls are crucial to the Meme.  The Meme has cancelled death.  Death no longer equals death, but a passageway to another form of existence.  Why; because our psychological insecurity demands the pleasure, justice, and perpetuation such a non-death represents. 

Mummies and the inefficiencies of land use for cemeteries with the often ridiculousness of funerals are all pro-Meme.  Cremation for the most part is anti-Meme.  It accomplishes the scientific necessity of disposing of the body with negligible remainder to burden the planet. 

The ultimate anti-Meme post-death practice would probably be something like Buddhist monks having their bodies fed to vultures absent the spirituality, but focusing on the biology.  One can imagine a vulture farm as an alternate type of funeral home for the anti-Meme.  Loved ones could simply lay the body naked in field and watch the vultures and other carrion peck away the human muscle and blood until nothing remained but a skeleton for jackals.  This has happened however unintentionally on this planet. 

Such a business would probably be outlawed.  If ever suggested the media outlets would be a-buzz and document the proposed outrage of the brash assault to the Meme.  Is this not giving back to the Earth, an inexpensive alternative, and a testament to the will of the deceased’s acceptance of death?  Would this not be less resource intensive and consuming?

The Meme makes death more about serious ritual.  Death is solemn, somber and less of a celebration of life.  Pro-Meme followers certainly will have joyous moments in death rituals, but most often the serious portion of the festivities must be well documented and paramount to those of a more mirthful tint as to pay homage to the Meme.  Laughing at death diverts the Meme’s intended focus of life.  If the totality of life is viewed as finite versus the specter of hell then the order of the Meme is threatened. 

If the burial is bungled and perdition becomes into play, if not done properly, then the Meme has a powerful tool in death rituals.  Death is already the highest fear next to damnation the Meme can wield.  Therefore it is of utmost importance to codify the process by making humans see cemeteries, keep cognizant of death, speak of death often in religious services that have nothing to do with funerals, and when death does occur the Meme orchestrates the process by asserting authority throughout.  

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The Meme imposes sensitivity to criticism.  This prompts intense defense mechanisms shrouding: country, public policy, prophet, god, behavior linked to this insecurity which encapsulates death.  Humans can’t speak ill of troops carrying out the hands of war, priest, mothers, fathers, parents, holy books, Jesus, Mohammed, and ultimately rituals.  In funerals the dead suddenly become revered, yet spoken ill of as just a flawed human the week before.  Post death the organism is now associated in the realm of the inscrutable with god.  In the Meme, it is god’s place to judge the dead, not humans.  This entire world is vouchsafed into an impenetrable trunk of refined conjured dignity which is lumped with the god meme. 

We pray for the dead, which is ultimately a narcissistic, self-serving, and insecure act.  We demonstrate the arrogance that our thoughts are pertinent to the decision of an omnipotent imagined god-jury.  We reinforce our commitment to the god meme.  One day we know we will die.  If we submit such prayers while living we are in a manner purchasing lottery tickets to Pascal’s wager. 

If we are to face a similar spiritual tribunal our lawyering for the deceased predecessor demonstrates a threshold of seriousness for the authority of such a judicial body.  This is in spite of being limited to the ignorant limitations of human existence.  The act was accomplished on mere faith.  We do this publicly in part so that if our living-contributions are found deficient, those who survive us will emulate such lobbying on our behalf.

The Christian crucifix is a grand example of death fixation.  Crosses serve as a claim on death, a reminder of what is to come, who owns the process, and why the Meme must be followed.  The morbidity is diluted in the joyous miracle of resurrection as if the monster has been conquered.  The wall becomes the doorway out of blanket darkness into light.  This in turn takes the greatest human fear into a joy.  This is a joy requiring faith, which is the lifeblood of the Meme.  The Meme breathes the rhetorical and suffocates like a fish in open air of the empirical.  

The Meme does not want laughter at death because that could spill over to life and uncover the Meme.  We associate dishonor to the deceased by doing so, but this is really disrespect to the Meme.  The dead do not care, because the capability to care is no longer applicable without cognitive brain function.  Even the words cognitive brain function threaten the Meme so much that one will use breathing machines and feeding tubes to argue for the Meme through a proxy absolute-respect for life.  These theatrics are often not realistic hopes for the functional survival of the dying, but reinforcements of one’s internal fears redoubled as recommitment to the Meme as the non-dying views death.

41

This is a veiled section of the Meme that god picks one for death.  The Grim Reaper or Fate are comical characters of this part of the god meme.  How can a pro-Meme human turn off a breathing machine?  God will let humanity know when the death (killing) exemption under the fifth commandment becomes validated like a hall pass.  (If the machine were turned off, god would answer.) 

This is why euthanasia is anti-meme.  Suicide in all forms is anti-meme.  The potential chaos is far too great.  Organ donation is anti-meme.  This threatens the sanctity of the body and the crucial death rituals.  An outlandish meme-fetish hints that one will find use for one’s body in a potential afterlife.

The Meme will tell stories that if one has a leg blown off in war, in heaven one will have that limb replenished.  At the same time if one’s body is buried improperly this could risk one’s eternal heavenly ability to function.  The contradiction in these extremes is often washed over in other forms of miscellaneous rhetoric by the Meme. 

Obviously there is no empirical evidence of the relevance of these death taboos, so the Meme capitalizes on our human desire to live and cheat death.  Unfortunately in the area of organ donation, this often expedites the deaths of other desperate human beings who might enjoy elongated lives with the cellular tissue of these pro-meme deceased.  A Muslim heart transplanted will pump blood in a Christian chest.  Cells may reject based on blood type or some organic factor but not on a variable of the Meme.  In the event of a successful transplant say after a car accident, the Meme will quickly apply that god had a plan and everything happens for a reason.

Our newscasts obsess over the idea of a viral outbreak or some microbial assassin in the form of virus, defective cell, brain amoeba, or bacterium such as mad cow disease, SARS, AIDS, or cancer.  The Meme has hijacked and compartmentalized the AIDS fear to the sexually promiscuous or needle sharers.  Thousands of people still die and suffer from AIDS, particularly in countries like South Africa primarily spread through heterosexual acts.  Safe-sex and sex education are particularly detoured by the Meme.  Therefore any sexually-spread epidemic is treated differently by the Meme.

Basically anything that could kill massive numbers of human beings or jump out the dark based on behavior or being in the wrong environment is publicized in an exaggerated manner often out of proportion with the actual physical risk to the human population.  The Meme capitalizes on this disparity with other distortions which profit from human fear of death.