Sunday, November 17, 2013

Part 8 Knowledge 80 to 82: The Meme



80
Superstition is pro-Meme and another exception to the do-not-lie commandment.  Sports encourage superstition to affect the outcome of games the viewer has no direct interaction through the pixels transported by a satellite stream.  Commercials even play on the notions of rally-caps, rubbing a head, removing a sock, or turning branded beer bottle labels as triggers correlated with one’s team victory.  If a team scores during a certain person in the crew taking a bathroom break, the crowd may demand or joke the person should stay away. 

Other superstitions include horoscopes and astrological fates tied to wealth.  The Meme wants to spread the idea that the wealthy are blessed and deserve their wealth rather than family history of snowballing up or down or systematic inequities.  Caste and karma systems prey on such superstitions.  Not walking under ladders, avoiding black cats, and finding four-leaf clovers are all permeations of similar pro-Meme false-knowledge untruths.  To a degree so is “Do good to others and others will do good to you” and “Do bad to others and bad will eventually come back to you.”  While kindness and meanness are correlated to how one is treated, this is a byproduct of volition, not karmic superstition.

Another bastion of pro-Meme superstition links back to the human obsession with Big-Weather.  Weather becomes pornographic indulgence to see the wanton destruction of a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami and the craven indulgence of witnessing how little human society and thus the Meme can actually control.  The aftermath drives us to churn inward like the Carioles effect to unleash ourselves into the winds of knowing there is only so much we can do. 

Humans are drawn to the meteorological news for a veil of chaos.  We participate in a lingering marvel over events termed “acts of god” in property insurance policies.  The superstition goes back to all manner of Greek Mythology, biblical linkages and deity interfacing with the climate of Earth and the universe. 

Weather is also the filler on newscasts to keep eyeballs glued to the screen.  Journalism costs too much.  By spouting ad nauseam regurgitated tidbits and sensationalized screen-crawls viewers can fill in the blanks as if the news is a movie script and not an attempt at one-to-one presentation of occurrences.  Framing, perception-shifting, and conversation-shaping are key. 

One can always tell it is a slow news day when basic weather forecast is the lead.  Broadcast networks blame viewers for demanding immediate information.  This is a corporation rationalizing poor product quality because it maximizes profit.  This translates to a ratings shift on which has the most entertaining newscast, not which presents journalistic integrity.  News organizations cannibalize the information dispensing industry. 

The spouts were once constricted to CBS, NBC, and ABC.  The internet and satellite horde has allowed contradictions to simple manipulations and white-noise to massive manipulations.  The truth can hide in plain sight.  The truth is a plain picture with little editorial, shown once and able to be pulled up on the internet when desired by a viewer.  False-knowledge paraded and replayed in constant repetition tends to make the truth a needle in a haystack.

The concept that there is no relevant news worthy of global, local, or national report is a farce.  Journalistic potential is ubiquitous.  Viewer interest is not.  The scale is driven by advertising dollars.  The problem is in the suggestion that these weights are not being measured by the Meme. 

Forthright, transparent gamesmanship is preferable, yet so often besmirched by the wry smile of a Fox News Fair-and-Balanced or an MSNBC focus-point in gawk-caulk.  These two American extremes are at least somewhat honest due to their targeted markets.  The Associated Press filters the media-horde.  This is where true commodity-journalism crafts its fetid monotony.  

Occasionally public non-advertising based organizations like NPR can get through the quagmire.  Foreign journalist like the BBC or Al Jazeera also can sometimes slip through the Meme.  America provides itself a version of the truth as reality as a society and as individuals.  This is relevant as a reference point of what we are comfortable viewing, discussing, and acknowledging given the Meme.  

81
Many of us question afterlife the first time our parents try to give us a response on what happened to our dead pet.  Sparky is not in doggy-heaven.  We knew it then, but rarely let it out.  This is part of how the Meme is powered and grows. 

Followers of the Meme are much more likely to obsess over a pet such as a canine or a feline.  Pro-Meme themes include anthropomorphizing the mental complexities and requirements of the animal by worrying about the dog’s or cat’s physiological wants and desires as if the animal were human.  Humans will take the animal on more walks and buy the animal more treats and human-like accessories the wild-counterpart of the species lives fine without.  The purchases and obsession with the bowel movements, worries about what the dog thinks of the thunderstorms, its relationships with family members and strangers, and treating the creatures likes members of the family are all pro-Meme. 

This is in direct support to the Humans-are-not-Animals Meme.  If symbiotic animals granting companionship, protection, rodent elimination, food, or clothing such as: dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, or cows are given personalities to an excess degree beyond their natural animal instinct and instead ordained with the fears and contemplations of a human, we are not only saying humans are not animals, but that these human-like animals are not even animals.  

Manifestations of this meme can be witnessed in the variety of inventory available for purchase at pet warehouses, grooming centers, and pet training academies.  Humans often feel a pack mentality which a dog assumes as comfort is cruel once established by an owner who would rather call the dog Smoochie-Poo than dominate.  

Pets can take on the role of surrogate human offspring in some cases.  The Meme’s inclination for adults to extend childhood in all forms and superimpose the demand for innocence in children is bridged to dogs and cats.  The Meme wants to reinforce imposing a land of make-believe where dangers are distant and sexual activities are kept in the prison of the bedroom.  Dogs do not get in heat and blatantly wish to procreate.  Fourteen year old girls do not want to engage in carnal thoughts or activities.  They do not masturbate with shower head massagers. 

If the Meme can keep the illusion of children in houses absent of children, say after the young ones have gone off to college or grown, then pets can rationalize engaging in parental and thus child-conscious behavior.  Uncomfortable subjects which the Meme instructs us not to discuss are less likely if one is treating a full grow mastiff like a three-year old human.  We are less likely to speak of what humans are, where we came from, why we do what we do, we can continue to play make believe, attend church services, sit in front of the television and engage in festivals of distraction.  

Anthropomorphizing pets is just another form of superstition to ignore the science of why dogs and humans relate well.  We perpetuate superstitious untruth because it is more palatable and comfortable than facing the reality that we bear a similar fate and life as the canine.  We are animal, yet refuse to swallow and acknowledge the thought. 

We think All Dogs Go to Heaven and personify and anthropomorphize animals when convenient to make animals more human, more like us.  We attribute the occult to perform the reverse: vampires, werewolves etc. of us more like them.  This explains the thematic overlays and targeted audiences of say the Bernstein Bears compared to Dracula. 
82
We make movies like The Matrix, In Time, Star Wars, Children of Men or movies based on books like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, which conduct veiled and not-so veiled assaults on the Meme.  Most of these subject matters are reserved for the science fiction genre.

To display a nonfictional direct attack on the Meme would spur fury and rage in rebuttal from the Meme.  However if we put symbols we will show up in droves as good fun.  In Star Wars a hooded dark-side of the force emperor manipulates the masses.  In The Matrix a robotic hive-mind created by man, which feeds off the humans who designed it to present the illusion of life, rather than reality.  In each a Christ figure; Anakin Skywalker and Neo are used, destined to be saviors.  We have previously entertained the realm of Harry Potter under commandment two, which mirrors such storylines. 

There is a reason these science fiction universes are found to be so appealing.  It is because so much of the world seeks to unplug from the Meme, yet is not sure exactly what the Meme is, how to accomplish tolerating a world without the Meme, and what to insert or trust other’s will insert as a substitute. 

Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings are three of the top five grossing movie series of all time making over sixteen billion in U.S. dollars collectively worldwide.  Harry Potter is number one.  Out of the top fifty grossing movies in history only four that were not overt science fiction and those are Titanic, the James Bond themed Skyfall, Fast & Furious, and The Da Vinci Code.  The Meme and anti-Meme are blatant throughout such films as Avatar, The Avengers, Iron Man, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurassic Park, Alice in Wonderland, Batman, Spider Man, Twilight, Shrek, and Inception. 

Even the adjusted for inflation top grossing films of all time demonstrate human preoccupation with the Meme which include in order: Gone with the Wind, Avatar, Star Wars, Titanic, The Sound of Music, E.T., The Ten Commandments, Doctor Zhivago, Jaws, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  

Other films toying with or exploiting the Meme: Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Percy Jackson, X-Men, Willie Wonka, G.I. Joe, and any horror movie.  Films which reinforce the Meme include direct religious movies such as Jesus of Nazareth, the Last Temptation of Christ, The Passion of the Christ, and the aforementioned and eponymous Ten Commandments.  

Almost all Disney cartoon feature films reinforce the Meme.  Most are based on Christ metaphors and classic European fairytales or stolen storylines.  The recipe calls for a child with a deceased or missing parent: Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Simba, Hercules, Aladdin, Tiana, Oliver, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Mowgli, Pocahontas, Snow White, Nemo, Peter Pan, Aurora, Mulan, and Bambi etc.  

By eliminating one parent from the equation humans naturally feel sympathetic and endear ourselves to the character.  Just as Christ had his missing father in heaven rather than on earth we are bound to have a greater level of concern for Disney’s creation.  Most of the storylines are stolen or purchased from Chinese legends, the Brothers Grimm, Galland, Shakespeare, Andersen, Collodi, European fairy tales, Kipling, Salten or Mother Goose.  The roles of underdog-hero, reluctant, but beautiful princess, and Faustian bargains with dark-skinned villains rotate and recycle the Meme. 

Films, books, and art help distort sentiment and reality.  By bringing the dream-work into reality the Meme is more threatened than supported.  This is one reason the most popular modern films tend to be creative child-like anti-Meme storylines presented to adults as parents of the world digest the notion of the anti-hero and the anti-Meme.  Dreams process false-knowledge.

In this knowledge, we have convinced ourselves we require Commandments to attain morality and civility.  This has never been true.  Morality, civility, and almost all forms of altruism inside species generate from the long-term advantages such responses to the prisoner’s dilemma iterations all life, but particularly more complex life, engage. 

Humans are animals who can contemplate likely and expected outcomes to utilize altruism for the good of our species given knowledge.  We do this even if there is a risk that a certain short-term benefit to the individual is less valuable than less certain, but greater benefits to the whole of the species and environment to which that individual belongs.  This is a major reason why market-regulations are so crucial to operate an optimum free-market. 

To evolve and successfully avoid extinction it is imperative that humans base these long-term versus short-term, individual versus group, calculations on empirically-based true knowledge rather than false knowledge.  The exceptions of the eighth commandment hinder the mathematics and ultimately risk a compromised threshold of volition determining the fate of humanity. 

No comments:

Post a Comment