Responding to If Prince who said in LO6188
> The meme is just a replicator seeking,
> blindly, its own replication. Out of the interaction and interconnection
> of memes emerges organisation exactly as organic organisation emerges out
> of the interconnection of genes bent on their own replication.
Let me start my response through saying what my focus is in thinking
about what gets reproduced in communication. Sorry if the metaphor is
too intense!
Did you see the recent remake of "The Shadow"? The Shadow, at least
in the recent movie, was a man behaving as a barbarian who was
brought to a different understanding by a master from the Orient. He
"had the power to cloud men's minds" and so could avoid being seen.
In the movie, his opponent was another man who had been trained by
the same teacher yet without the resulting use of his power against
crime. He would say things in a soft manner that would take control
of other people's minds. A recent episode of the X Files had a
related incident though without an intimation, at least to me, of the
power that is at work.
Those are, of course, filmed imaginations and need not show that that
type of speech is possible. I don't know if I can do an example of
the speech because I really don't like it when I hear something that
influences me against what I think is right, seeming to destabilize
my will. At the same time, I think that I could allow myself to speak
in a like manner for a view that I thought was right. That doesn't
mean play the pied piper for unwilling or misled people, just use
speech that I myself could hear knowing that it was more than just
appealing to reason. Yet I believe that in my behavior I basically
sabotage having a following, making untender or untenable potentially
tender moments. The power that I'm talking about doesn't seem to turn
off.
I understand that what I'm saying could sound pretty bizarre :)
What if we approach from the direction of "hearing what we want to
hear". Oh, that sounds so much better. You really think I have nice
taste in coats? You've been admiring my posts for the last few years?
You noticed as being true about me what it was obvious that I might
be hoping and your guesses have such a reasonable likeliness that a
miss is flattering. Now, that's beginning to sound like accusation,
so I better stop.
Before I saw your note today I was thinking about the undue
winsomeness of "fair speeches" and wondered what it would be like to
live in a world where the time for the success of those speeches was
up, where it became commonplace to identify a tug beneath the level
of reason, and notably a tug that either "made you go" or resist with
greater ability.
Well, now I've made a fairly long speech that maybe doesn't much get
to the point. The main idea is that wherever such influential speech
is at work, it isn't the power of an idea, or an idea reproducing
itself. Someone says something out of their understanding, an
understanding that is remarkably witless in regards to unsustaining
selfishness. To use less analytical language, when a man speaks a
spirit comes out. Back to analytical for a moment. Because
selfishness usually doesn't have the same appeal for other people,
something else has to be added to the purpose to get others to go
along. So whatever a selfish mind can think, it may use. Oh, I get
it, selfish things for the listener. Actually, that's a revelation
for me :)
Let me also add that these notes are not directed at anyone and that
I haven't heard people on the list who start tugging and won't quit.
Also, it's unpleasant to disturb the reflections of you all.
Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
jpf@myriad.net
--"John Paul Fullerton" <jpf@mail.myriad.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>