In our last instalment, we heard about the climate trials from an academic. We also met our hero, Mikhail Bookchin. He was told about a shadowy organization---"the Elders" or "the Old Ones"---who were interested in having him work for them on a project. In this week's Weekend Supplement readers learn a little more about that and something about how they do things.
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What is a Meme and What do they do?
People currently use the term “meme” to refer to silly images or video clips that refer to a common human experience in a humorous way. Some of the more common ones are things like “angry cat”, “the dubious child”, and so on.
What most don’t know is where the word “meme” first came from. It was coined by the geneticist Richard Dawkins to describe self-replicating fragments of culture. It is an important by-product of the so-called “selfish gene theory”, which posits that evolution is driven exclusively by the self-replication of specific pieces of genetic material. Individuals and species are both merely “by-products” of the process of replicating this material. By focusing on the genetic material instead of the individual, certain elements of evolution become easier to explain.
Take the example of altruistic behaviour. Of what possible use can helping another individual be for natural selection? A worker bee or ant will stand in harm’s way and let itself be killed for the good of the hive. What is it about this behaviour that ensures “the survival of the fittest”? The solution is to realize that the genetic inheritance of any individual sterile worker bee or ant is shared with that of the queen---who does reproduce, and indeed reproduces much the same DNA as the worker that dies in her defence.
One doesn’t have to be a member of a hive to share DNA. Human grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, even cousins share it. And if they work together selflessly---even to the death---that can increase the likely-hood of genetic material similar to each individual surviving to the next generation, even if the particular individual dies without reproducing. Human beings evolved in extended family groupings that more-or-less shared the same DNA. The tribes that could work together as a team for the common good were better able to survive and out-competed other tribes of individuals that refused to help each other. This behaviour became so deeply embedded in our nature that it “jumped out” of the context of the hunter-gather community and still motivates most human beings to act altruistically towards larger groupings where there is no common genetic inheritance, such as the city, empire and state. This behaviour allowed human beings to become the most successful vertebrate on the planet.
The way the human race did this was through the creation of an entirely new form of self-replicating information structure: culture. To understand this point, it is important to remember that DNA is nothing more than a way of encrypting and recording information---just like the computer that was used to write these sentences and the hard-drive that records them. In the same way, human culture also records information. And where DNA manifests behaviour through instinct, culture manifests itself through tradition, indoctrination, fashion, art, philosophy, patriotism, religion, and so on.
In much the same way that plants and animals are manifestations of different strands of DNA that compete with one another through Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” (where “fittest” really means “those that survive”---which makes the phrase something of an empty tautology), so human civilizations and subcultures have been involved in intense competition for the survival. Viewed from this point of view, you can see how different elements of various cultures have different results.
For example, the Greek civilization’s belief in the importance of each individual developing their own “excellence” may not have allowed them to create anything like the Roman Empire. But it did allow brilliant representative individuals to out-fight and take over other civilizations like Alexander and the Persians. Moreover, the squabbling little ancient city states had such dynamic cultures that other civilizations---like the Romans, then the Arabs, and then the Christian Franks---were happy to copy and preserve many of their ideas long after Greece had ceased to be anything but an insignificant backwater.
To suggest an example of a different survival strategy, the Chinese written text is based not on the sound of the spoken language, but instead memorized ideograms. This meant that no matter how much the spoken language fragmented into different dialects---Hakka, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc---the unitary culture survived because the same books were read by all. This is why when the Roman empire split into different states they created their own written languages and, eventually divergent cultures---French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. In contrast, literate members of all the different dialects of Chinese were still part of a unified written culture. This meant that when the time was right, a centralized Imperial state could reassert itself in a way that the old Roman Empire never could---no matter how much people like Charlemagne tried.
The “memes” of both the Greek and Chinese civilization were able to survive the collapse of the host body, either by moving to another body as in the former case, or, by remaining in a state of hibernation until conditions were again ripe for the original body to rise from it’s grave, as in the latter example.
Both Genes and Memes not only survive within the host body of a culture, they can also survive and spread in a virus.
In a biological organism, a virus is a fragment of DNA that is able to infect a cell and alter it’s processes so it stops doing whatever it is supposed to do and instead devotes it’s energy into creating more viruses. Eventually, it ruptures and spreads out viruses that then go out to find new cells to infect. In a civilization, a small fragment of culture can similarly infect, take over, and, reproduce using the bigger culture. Christianity took over the Roman Empire and spread throughout Europe. From there it spread around the world. Similarly, Communism spread from Western Europe, infected Russia, took it over and then spread to other countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and so on.
Christianity and Communism were massive viral infections---like AIDS, the Spanish influenza, and, COVID-19. But there are also minor infections, the cultural equivalent of the common cold. Fads like fashions, hair styles, hem lines, etc, are like a runny nose that comes and goes almost without comment.
The Elders believe one of the ways the climate emergency can be dealt with is through creating an engineered meme which will change the way a large swathe of the human population thinks about how we impact Nature. In effect, we are attempting to create a meme-weapon that we can spread globally to help develop a sustainable society.
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Magic All Boils Down to Hard Work
One day Mikhail got another email from the Old Ones. They had noticed he was limping and suggested he contact a particular individual. They said she could help him deal with the arthritis pain he was suffering. He did and eventually met her at her martial arts club.
She introduced herself as “Isabeau”.
A slender, attractive, grey-haired woman of indeterminate age, she wore comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. The club was clean, but in a run-down building. The hardwood floor had been sanded too often. A cheap table sat next to a radiator in a corner. On it an ancient coffee urn and a stack of iron-stone cups sat next to boxes of herbal teas.
Shortly after his arrival, she got down to business.
She asked him to walk around the room for her, then to pick up a heavy box, then asked him what hurt. He told her that his knees ached, he had sciatica, and, his armpits felt like needles were being jammed into them. He also said that sometimes he had migraine headaches which were preceded by a hallucinatory aura.
When he was finished, she taught him some exercises. First she showed him how to do hamstring stretches. Then how to do a specific type of deep knee bend. Then a strange set of arm stretches. In addition, he learned a series of front and back bends, how to move his neck and hips through a series rotations, and, a few other things too.
Then she gave a little lecture. “I will make no guarantees other than if you do the exercises I have taught you today there is a good chance that most of your pains will go away---except for the migraines, which will require something else. The secret is you have to do them almost every day. In addition, you have to really think about what you are doing. You need to really feel what is happening in your body. You must dissect your body with your mind. By working on this mental aspect of what you are doing, you will recognize slightly different ways of doing these exercises. You must experiment with these subtle aspects in order to find the best ones. If you do not put this mental effort into the practice, you will not gain the benefit you seek.”
“Really think about this point. I am not a drill sergeant who is just after obedience and muscle twitching. I am instead someone who is coaching you about how to find your full potential. And that requires mental activity just a much as physical. I am here to help, but ultimately you have to figure this stuff out for yourself.”
“I would also like you to join a taijiquan class that I teach here. If you stick with it and work hard, I am hopeful that it will stop your migraine headaches. But even if doesn’t, it will help you in many other ways. But you have to practice thoughtfully every day. And even if you think you have mastered an exercise, I guarantee that there will always be more that you can learn about it.”
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With all the “strange shit” now going on in his life, Mikhail had a strong inducement to try out the exercises that Isobeau had taught him. They worked! The knee pain ended overnight. The shoulder pain took a week. The sciatica two weeks. This was all the inducement he needed to “stick with the program” and join the classes that Isabeau offered.
Often once everyone else had left, Isabeau would ask him to stay and she would give special corrections or show him some new exercises. Sometimes she’d offer him a cup of tea and talk to him about more general matters.
He asked her why no one else---like a doctor---had ever suggested these exercises to him.
“You have to understand that what I’m teaching you won’t work for most people. That’s because the exercises depend so much on you actually doing them, and doing them thoughtfully. Most people lack the ability to actually follow the sort of regime that I’ve put you on. For one reason or another, they just cannot do it.”
“Think about it this way. We have an epidemic of obesity in the world. Ultimately it all comes down to people eating more than they need for an optimum weight. People who don’t have weight problems look down their noses at people who do. They think ‘Why can’t they just stop eating?’ But this judgmental approach is based on a flawed understanding of why people eat too much.”
“For example, if someone feels nauseous they don’t feel like eating and they won’t, so they lose weight. If, on the other hand, someone feels hungry all the time they eat too much---so they gain weight. Some foods leave some people feeling full and satiated, while others leave people feeling like they need more. If the grocery store is flooded with the latter foods and the former are hard to find, well, more people are going to gain weight.”
“Here’s another thing to think about.”
“People should ideally only eat when they are hungry and only what they need. But what if you are a very busy person and you have a limited number of times when you can eat? If you don’t eat at that particular time, then you won’t get to eat until many hours later. You have a very busy life, which means when you eat is dictated by your work schedule---and these have nothing to do with whether or not you are hungry at that particular moment. Living like this conditions a person to not wait until they need to eat, but instead always eat when an opportunity arises. Is this helpful for someone who is trying to lose weight?”
“In addition, modern busy people often buy food at restaurants that control the portion size---not you. If you don’t already know this, it is a fact that the size of portions at restaurants are much larger now than they were back in the 1950s. If you were raised---like I was---to always eat everything on your plate, your parents have left you with a very strong conditioned reflex to eat everything in front of you. Is it any wonder that people gain weight when they have to eat at times when they aren’t really hungry, the food portions put in front of them are much larger than a sensible person would choose if they cooked for themselves, and, the food itself lacks essential nutritional elements that your body still craves no matter how much you eat?”
Isabeau looked William up and down. Then she added. “A human being is a complex agglomeration of culture, past history, education, and, the personal choices that they’ve made every day of their life. They aren’t just a “body” or a “mind”. This applies to exercise just as much as it does to eating. How many people are in a personal “head space” where they can benefit from the exercises I’ve taught you?”
“Now consider the situation of the doctor. Medical attention is very expensive and the time she can spend with any give patient is tightly rationed by the insurance provider. This means that she shouldn’t waste the few precious minutes that she has with her patient by telling him to do something---stop smoking, eat right, exercise, etc---that experience has told her he will simply not do. Instead, her approach will be to reach for treatments that work no matter what the patient thinks or does.”
Isobeau stopped, considered, then decided to say the next bit.
“There is a saying in our school that ‘only the sick people stick with it’. That is to say that most people have to be in bad shape before they will commit to a regular, boring, everyday exercise that is difficult to learn. Moreover---as you now know---if you put in the effort, there are a great many afflictions that this system can alleviate, some almost immediately. This is a revelation to many people, and results in dedication to the art. Healthy people don’t have a similar experience, so they never make the commitment, get bored, and, eventually move on.”
“You are a special case. There are limitations to even what sick people will accept. Very few of these people make an effort to “generalize” the insights that they could gain from the exercise to the greater world. I won’t bother going into it now, but the same sort of social conditioning goes into accepting the world’s dominant paradigm as does eating badly and not exercising regularly. Very few people are willing to question absolutely everything about their life.”
“The Old Ones approached you because we believe that you are one of the few who do have the potential to question the Dominant Paradigm and move beyond it. They are always on the lookout for people like you because they are very rare. It is a waste of time and effort to try to teach any other type of person, so they don’t bother. Indeed, there is a saying among the Old Ones: ‘Good students are rarer than good teachers.’”
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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
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