TCAHR - Better Living Through Memetics Volume 02, Issue 03 The Memetic Menace 11/26/01 ------------------------------------------------------------ "What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter- revolutionaries and wreckers of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy: we simply deprive them of speech." -- Mao Tse-tung, "On the Correct Handing of Contradictions Among the People" It was the writings of Jean Sartre that clued me into the dangers of personal convictions and opinion. Sartre believed that the choice of any concept by the individual is led by the belief of that particular concept being superior to all others. I concur: I'd never heard of anyone who chose a political ideology, style of music, or brand of cereal without believing it had some merit above all other choices. Therein lies the problem of human existence. We are all doomed to be the unwilling (and usually unknowing) soldiers in full-scale memetic warfare. It is the battle of your beliefs verses my beliefs for the rights of replication. As memes conflict, they also recombine and generate new tangents in thinking. Our trade-off for human conflict is human evolution. I do not fear the meme, I fear those who have tried to control it. When Mao Tse-tung implemented the memeplex of Chinese Communism, he made sure to install enough preservational and adversative memes to sabotage any other viable form of political ideology in China. While the United States seems to collectively believe that they not only invented free speech, but also own it exclusively, its government has not been above using its laws to silence its people. The average U.S. citizen does not realize that freedom of speech is tempered with the "clear and present danger test" which has been used to jail people on the grounds that they "may someday" form a revolution. The control of free speech is different now. There is not need to trouble "commies" on soapboxes anymore. Free speech is no danger when the implements of effective dissemination have been so easily set beyond our reach. No matter how liberal the ideas disseminated through our televisions, newspapers, magazines, and radio are, we must never forget that they businesses dedicated to turning a profit. Fox Broadcasting may be seen like a liberal memeplex with viral shows such as "The Simpsons", but its owner, Rupert Murdock is pure capitalist pig. His British holdings have had $2.1 billion in profit, but he schemes the British out of taxes. In the United States, he has used lobbyists to break U.S. broadcasting laws. The same kind of scheming is at work throughout Murdock's empire. Robert Hilliard of Boston's Emerson College was invited by the Boston Herald in 1987 to review the television shows "Married..with Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show". Initially refusing, due to the Boston Herald and the local Fox television channel, he relented when a Boston Herald editor told him the Herald wanted a "honest review." Hilliard panned the shows, calling "Married...with Children" one of the worst sitcoms he had ever seen. Neither Hilliard's review nor that of any other non-Herald's employee saw print. Instead the Boston Herald's own critic wrote up a glowing review for these shows and the fledging Fox Network. Rupert may be a conservative, but has no qualms about forgetting his ideology when there's a buck involved. Due to the ire of the Chinese government, Murdock cancelled the book contract of Chris Patton, the outgoing governor of Hong Kong, after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule. When the Chinese government expressed anger over the BBC's unflattering news coverage, Murdock yanked the BBC off his news service. Rupert Murdock and his company are not alone in sneaky practices. A report by Peter Karl, a reporter for Chicago's NBC affiliate, was edited to delete all mention of GE as a maker of faulty nuts and bolts used in the construction of bridges, airplanes, missile silos, and the NASA space program. United Press International, not only reports news but sells its sometimes sells its services. A column by the name of "Washington Merry-Go-Round", which was distributed by a company controlled by United Press, planned to exposed political malpractices in Latin American countries. United Press ordered the writers of "Washington Marry-Go-Round" to drop the idea; in Lima, Peru, Paraguay, and Brazil the government were the ones whom United Press sold its services to. The mainstream media is corrupt and not a safe outlet for news or entertainment...but you already knew that. Because there's the "Big 6" Empire of media (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corp, Bertelsmann, and General Electric) and wanna-bes like Sony and AT&T on one side. Then there's the patchwork rebellion made of zinsters, indie rockers, radio pirates, hackers, taggers, anarchists, activists, and billboarders on the other side. Some old men in the halls of power may spent the money to build the stations, satellites, and cables that created the datasphere. We, however, were raised in it: it is our homeland, we understand it, and we speak its language far better than its creators. We are its guerrilla warriors; inventors of its most virulent meme-containing viruses and master manipulators of their own corporate-sponsored viruses. By the time the mainstream figures out and implements our newest forms of art, music, and culture for profit, we are onto new ideas and recruiting new accomplices. Welcome to the new Vietnam. Jet Jaguar TCAHR CEO ------------------------------------ Books the CEO was too lazy to source Bagdikian, Ben H. "The Media Monopoly", Beacon Press, Boston, MA: 2000. Janda, Kenneth et al. "The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America", Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA: 1994. Lynch, Aaron. "Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society", Basic Books, New York, NY: 1996. Mao Tse-tung. "Mao Tse-tung: An Anthology of His Writings", Anne Fremantle (editor), Mentor Books, New York, NY: 1954. Rushkoff, Douglas. "Media Virus", Ballantine Books, New York, NY: 1996. ------------------------------------------------------------ tcahr@hotmail.com Copyright 2001