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Tcahr Issue 27
TCAHR - Better Living Through Memetics
Volume 02, Issue 03
The Memetic Menace 11/26/01
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"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
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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.
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tcahr@hotmail.com Copyright 2001
