FW: Do memes exist? Or are they fictions?

From: Andrew Johnson

Date: 2016-04-06 23:49:16

A cracking article by Jon Rappaport – not very long either.  Subject: Do memes exist? Or are they fictions?Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 10:40:48 -0400 (EDT)From: Jon Rappoport Reply-To: info@nomorefakenews….  Do memes exist?  Or are they fictions?  (To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)  Do memes exist? Or are they fictions? By Jon Rappoport There was a time when words like “slogan” and “motto” were used frequently. They were good solid terms. But then something happened.  The new, dreamy, utopian, educated, tech class wanted a mystical item for their new “information culture.” So meme came along in 1976. Thank you, Richard Dawkins.   “Slogan” comes from the early 16th century Scottish Gaelic: sluagh (army) and gairm (shout). An army shout. A battle cry.No mistaking it. Bang. “Motto” is just as good. The Latin gives us muttum (a mutter, a grunt).   But now, from the Online Etymology Dictionary: Meme: “1976, introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in ‘The Selfish Gene,’ coined by him from Greek sources, such as mimeisthai “to imitate”…and intended to echo gene.” Dawkins writes: “We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’.” A unit of cultural transmission. Sounds a bit like ‘gene.’ A replicator. Heavy pseudo-tech overtones.  With “meme,” we’re into different territory. We’re encouraged to believe (and even celebrate) that key words and phrases and images “automatically” transfer from person to person—a cultural phenomenon. As if there is a contagion factor beyond anyone’s control. As if genes are being passed along. Or viruses. No one is really responsible. It just happens.  This absurd notion is, of course, entirely in line with collectivism —“the things we’re all thinking at once.”  We’re supposed to believe that ideas “happen” in the group, the mass, the Glob. They just show up.    They especially happen on the Web, where these “memes” of the collective (all hail!) sweep through the brains of millions of people like a dust storm—because that’s how reality should work in the Great New Epoch. The individual is nothing more than a link in a chain. Electrical impulses pass along the chain. Or genes do. Or viruses.  No choice is involved. It’s a wonderful cheese-melt infection and contagion. The group knows. The group twitches this way and then that way. This is the heraldic future. Sizzle, twitch, sizzle, twitch. Independent individual consciousness? Choice? Never heard of it. But let me quote the well-known British psychologist, Susan Blackmore, because she lays out the “meme-philosophy” in an unmistakable way: “Consciousness is an illusion constructed by the memes.” Boom. There is no such thing as consciousness. It’s just a grab-bag of contagious memes. And if this isn’t enough, here is her foundation: “Memetics appears to have a lot of implications that we humans are machines, which people have never liked. Of course we’re machines, we’re biological machines. But people don’t like that. Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. People don’t like that. My view is that if these things are true it doesn’t matter if we like them or not.” I see. We’re machines. There is no freedom. In fact, there is no self. So Blackmore, I presume, is just another collection of memes talking to other collections of memes—and she’s not choosing to do so, because choice doesn’t exist. There is no “she.” There is no you. There is no me. Perfect.  Transhumanists must love her. They push the narrative that humans are merely biological machines, too. Therefore, since “no one is really there,” any changes to the machines are acceptable, especially if introduced from above, in order to create a far better future. Naturally, these transhumanists define what that future should be. They decide how to re-program all the billions of defective biological machines on Earth to fit their vision. Plant countless numbers of memes; modify genetics; beam electromagnetics into skulls; rearrange hormones; insert images directly into the visual cortex bypassing the usual mode of perception; prescribe drugs that radically alter brain chemistry; replace body parts; hook brains to computers that supply answers to all questions and problems; create human clones; establish hatcheries for synthetic births.  You know, that sort of thing. Rewire all the sizzles and twitches of the universal collective. In Brave New World, Huxley was presenting a future in which humans would opt for the pleasures of sensation and belonging, and in return they would sacrifice whatever they might dimly remember of a different kind of life.  All the suffering of the past would be the rationalization for making this new world, where suffering would be absent. The memes that refer to this trade-off are still in the infancy stage, but you can bet they will proliferate. And they will not spontaneously arise. They’ll be inserted, as part of the ongoing psychological operation to carry us forward into a shadowless society of happy bio-machines. A few memes that have come and gone and resurfaced—the meanings change as well: “Spaceship Earth, biosphere, infosphere, going viral.” Depending on the usage, you can see, creeping in at the edges, the Collective We, as if the “I” is simply a remnant of a bygone era of monsters…but now, thank goodness, the human race is being re-educated to the correct frequency. Meme-metaphysics emphasizes what the Internet supposedly proves: all is information. Life is information. Flesh, blood, desire, passion, high ideals, achievement—these and other “older” terms are now inappropriate and meaningless, because we know that organisms, including humans, are actually only houses for information-flow and transfer.  This essentially soulless view coordinates well with transhumanists, who would say of their projects to reshape all humans, “Well, we’re just directing information in new ways. No harm in that.” No harm, if you want to let loose soulless surgeons to drain the life-force from everyone they can, because underneath it all, they have no life left of their own.  No harm at all. You’re a machine. I’m a machine. You sitting there, reading these words, understanding them, knowing that you understand them at this very moment—that’s all some kind of synaptic boondoggle. You’re not conscious of this moment. How could you be? You’re just information. You’re composed of 5000 memes. I’m composed of 5000 memes. We’re memeing. That’s all. This is being sold to (and by) the educated class step by step. It was once called philosophic materialism, before that term was deemed clunky and aged, before it was dropped like a hot potato—because it characterized too well and too purely the titanic campaign to erase the individual and his unique consciousness. Replacing the unique and irreducible individual, we have the notion of a “soft infection” of memes. They are now the particles of existence. They spread endlessly. That’s the new philosophy. It’s utter nonsense, of course. It’s an op. It’s designed to take language, and therefore thought, out of the hands of the individual. The designers are betting you won’t notice, that you’ll waft with the tide of the elite info-nauts and eventually wind up in their placid beds of the Brave New World, sizzling and twitching with minor pleasures, bereft of what you once were. Their culture is a rank fraud.  And cultures only exist when people decide to enlist in them. They don’t happen by uncontrollable contagion. If you buy the contagion myth, you buy a fluffy puffy fairy tale that, sooner or later, leads you into a dark wet dead-end alley. They’re essentially claiming they can reprogram you to believe the alley is a bed of delights and never notice the broken bricks and the decay and the debris. You have the power to reason and analyze and imagine and create and invent futures and realities of your own choosing, out of your most profound desires. There never was and never will be a meme for that.      Use this link to order Jon’s Matrix Collections.    Jon RappoportThe author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.    You can find this article and more at NoMoreFakeNews.com.    No More Fake News, Encinitas, Encinitas, CA 92024SafeUnsubscribe™ beyondthemedia@start…  Forward this email