Canada contemplates ending freedom of speech.
Jordan Peterson
A Meta-Strategy
Every organism has a survival strategy. Survival strategies are species and subspecies templates for living. They describe a specialized role within an ecological niche. Their roles are defined by exploiting a particular angle on making a living and by the adaptations of their bodies toward this goal. The amazing anteater for example makes a living…anyone? Anyone? Correct, eating ants. And has adapted in an amusingly specialized way with powerful claws for ripping into nests and long sticky tongue.
That is a deep, deep commitment to eating ants. But not really any deeper a commitment than most other species: The overall species strategy is a highly specialized job with a body increasingly adapted as a tool to do that job.
Virtual Speciation
But not us. We are constantly looking for new angles to play and new ways to play them. In pursuit of that goal, we may vary our focus, lifestyle, and ecological niche. But except for phenotypic variations based on local weather, our bodies don’t adapt. We don’t specialize via our bodies, we specialize via technology: A spear is a 7-foot long claw that can fly. Well sewn clothing is a thick warm pelt, opening our way toward the ice caps. Horses turn us into ten-foot-tall monsters moving at the speed of antelopes. Farming is a “Game of Life” survival cheat code the levels us up. Sufficient change in technology equals a virtual shift of species with an altered template for life.
Virtual Evolution
Our technology transforms us personally and as social animals. The rules for hunter-gatherers are not the rules for farming villages. We reorganize ourselves in a bottom-up that unpacks itself through the individual daily actions of each human playing the new game. Pyramids and kings pop into being from the right tools and population sizes. Each shift redefines the group size that we consider to be: Us. Ourselves. Are we 50 people, a thousand people, a million people? Ask the tools, they make the rules.
Virtual Ecosystem
When the human community becomes large enough and complex enough it becomes a virtual ecosystem unto itself. The specialized work of individuals mirrors the variety of organisms in a wild ecosystem. Enough complexity makes a self sustaining virtual ecology. AT least until the robots throw us all out of work.
Cultural Variation as a strategy
Every human group that can define as “US” creates culture. That culture expresses local traits with one unique voice. Varieties of approaches to mating, religious dogma, openness to outsiders, etc. equal a real-time experiment in how successful these traits are as a human survival strategy. The values for these different traits emerge from the tension force within the community. Authoritarianism is a strategy, so is liberal democracy, so is theocracy. Winning could mean stability or expansion. I call this expansionist trait “Virality”. One culture may make it’s people happy and healthy but virally dominant cultures can take them over.
(That’s draft one. As usual, if you found this intriguing check back once in a while. I do update and re-write.)
May you love and be loved.
Remote Control
We know it as we speak, we handle words instinctively like tools we’ve used a thousand times. Every time we use words to make someone angry or to comfort them we are producing chemical reactions in their body. Admittedly, our physical presence plays a part in intimidating or calming, but in a low sensory telephone call, or a zero sensory letter, the disembodied words can still bring horror or joy. Naturally most words aren’t used to flood the listener with stress hormones. A great book can grow a world around the reader. A great comedian can pull happiness and relief from a crowd of thousands who share the mood like blood circulating in a body. And of course there are those who can move crowds past restraint into activity and even violence.
Many words cause changes in our minds and bodies but the context generally defines our reaction. There are words that build up enough charge from the way they are generally used that they often elicit an emotional bump. Please don’t be offended at the following content, it’s only here for demonstration purposes, you filthy fucking whore! Sorry, but I wanted you to pull up short. Did you feel that? It’s easy to find these words, just ask yourself what you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying. Feel what happens in your stomach and in your nerves as you read: Cunt, Nigger, Slut, Kike, Slant Eyes. Was it stress, fear, shame? Probably it was. These words are obvious hooks that make it hard not to react. The connection between words and chemicals is right there, requiring no further test. 
Even though it sounds mystical this is why I believe that humans of our state of development could not have been functionally mute, ever. We couldn’t have been ourselves and slowly developed language. Language is innate because it must be. That is circular thinking on the face of it, but I don’t mean it as a place to sit contentedly. I mean that it’s tangled up with something about the evolution of species that we have developed no foundation for. The reason I can feel so certain is that humans, but without language makes as much sense as a fully functioning car, but without an engine.
Words are the catalytic enzymes of the human domain.
This is so obvious as to be invisible. Words (and language) are the answer to the question “How will these complicated primates get their complicated business done?.” Language points to the human foundation of society. Language is about humans as a group, and about the group as organism. Innate language ability is the “human genome” of thinking and relating.
And species wide, our many languages speak to the same issues. That is, no language is alone able to discuss some angle on reality that others are not. No one language holds a surprising- one of a kind function that others can’t touch. If it’s difficult to imagine what that kind of exception would even be, that may point to why it doesn’t exist. It’s not in our presets for communication. The fact of innate language with a common range points to some underlying structures: A library of recombinant symbols and memes the we use both to interpret and explain.
And that’s up next in this category.
“The Human Memeome”.
What Nuisance?
- Netflix considers an accidental click or a movie you ditched after 5 minutes to be perfectly valid sources for recommendations.
- The Netflix equivalent of bad one night stands you want to forget. You had fun watching Naked Zombie Apocalypse but you’d rather not base future suggestions on it.
Let’s fix this mess.
Log in to your Netflix account, I recommend doing this on your computer or results may vary. As soon as you are logged in, follow the link to “Your Account”. Once there, look near the bottom for “Viewing activity”.
Here is the history, take out anything you don’t want affecting future recommendations.
The bad news is that even with a clean and shiny viewing history Netflix has a bit of “WTF” built right into their algorithm…
Yes, 100 Billion frames per second. We now have the technology to see light moving!
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jinyang_Liang
There are a number of places in this blog where I take the political left to task for their dark side, their shadow. I am closer to left than right but I know what’s wrong with them and I’ve described it at length elsewhere.
When “moderate” people express a dislike for politics, they show appreciation for people who have no strong opinions. The idea is, if none of us had any strong opinions to push, the world would be a better place. The problem is, you have to have a opinions to have priorities. There was a young man who had brain surgery a few years back and lost his emotions. He didn’t become a cool and competent Mr. Spock, he became a mess who found every single decision difficult, because none of them had any force behind them. Our emotions play a big role in every preference we have for anything in this world.
Here is Merriam Webster’s simple definition of the phrase “Politically Correct”: agreeing with the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people.
Both right and left wing have a version of “politically correct”. The left’s version is more famous and it’s where the phrase originated. I imagine it being coined in the soviet system by political officers. But the definition for the phrase includes the right wing to the extent that they practice “How dare you” tactics such as righteous indignation, and holier than thou judgements. If a football player remains seated during the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance for political reasons there is a segment of the right wing that will compete for “Loudest wail of outrage”. This is being politically correct. “Freedom fries” is PC. Anyplace where the right asserts a word that is compulsory and one that is forbidden, they are being the kind of thin skinned whiny babies they think only other people can be. Let me hear you say “Happy Holidays!”
When the right complains about people on the left not being patriotic they are being PC extremists. In fact the whole idea of patriotism needs some serious freshening up. It’s kind of dumb if you think about it that the right thinks they are the ones who get to decide what patriotic IS. How the hell do you dare to impugn the patriotism of people who question and challenge the government? America is practically based on the validity of different points of view.
The right wing have their own issues and the state of the world is showing those issues like anaphylaxis shows an allergy. The world leans at any moment more right than left because the Human Operating System first requires STABILITY. It doesn’t want collapse. If you are building something very tall you will think a lot of bottom heavy thoughts and not quite so many top heavy ones. If you don’t think enough about the foundation you won’t build tall because it will fall down, if you think too much about the foundation you won’t build tall because your sole value becomes retaining and preserving, not reaching higher.
Here are some of the troublesome issues of the right:
- Symbol simpletons. Flags are symbols. Symbols mean something…but symbols aren’t the things they mean. An American flag is not America any more than a Colombian flag is Columbia, or a Dunkin Donuts logo is a donut. Love your treasured symbols but be sophisticated enough to see the this crucial difference. There are birds that will murderously attack a FEATHER of the wrong color. You are sometimes that kind of dumb.
- Unconditionally positive love of country. Imagine if both parents both acted like their child could do no wrong: Healthy?
- You guys are besotted with making rich people happy. I know I’m not going to get anywhere with this. Conservatives include two key groups everywhere and always, the poor and the bastards who keep them poor. The conservative poor sell out their own children generation after generation to show solidarity with power. We get it, you support structure and stability but is it wrong for me to wish you’d notice how pathetic it is? Being a serf is not patriotic.
- Conservatives elect moderates in a healthy and balanced system (with different ideas) but when you get riled up you elect authoritarian fuckos like Trump and Putin and honest to God...even Hitler. He is an example of that phenomena. You have a weakness for tough simple talk that hands everything over to bad guys if there aren’t enough commie-pinkos pulling on the other end of the rope.
- Same point continued: You are too easy to manipulate. Demagogues know exactly what to say to you. 1. Country – 2. Church – 3. Foreign enemies… and you are in bed on the first date.
Our country wouldn’t be healthy with only conservatives OR progressives. There’s a reason a tree farm isn’t as healthy as a forest. A mono-culture creates its own failure. When either side seeks purity they lead all of us straight towards Hell.
Tension force, people. It’s healthy.
by David Budbill
Han Shan, that great and crazy, wonder-filled Chinese poet of a thousand years ago, said:
We’re just like bugs in a bowl. All day going around never leaving their bowl.
I say, That’s right! Every day climbing up
the steep sides, sliding back.
Over and over again. Around and around.
Up and back down.
Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands,
cry, moan, feel sorry for yourself.
Or. Look around. See your fellow bugs.
Walk around.
Say, Hey, how you doin’?
Say, Nice Bowl!
Poem: “Bugs in a Bowl,” by David Budbill, from Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse (Copper Canyon Press).
