Dominator Culture

Jesus was murdered by people who were motivated by a contagious and pandemic emotional illness which had infected them. This sickness has ravaged the human race for the past 5,000 years. It is the cause of patriarchy, rape, hatred and murder of gays and lesbians, greed, loss of contact with, and destruction of, the environment, cruelty to animals, lust for power, Fascism, war, and genocide.

Wilhelm Reich called it the Emotional Plague, and Riane Eisler labelled it the Dominator Paradigm ("Dominator Culture").

It arises sometimes when a society is subjected to extreme and prolonged stress, for example, starvation, which causes a chronic activation of instinctual fight-flight-freeze instincts. This in turn results in depression, anger, suppression of free-flowing breathing and sexuality, and loss of full contact with reality. It is passed on to children by emotional abuse and indoctrination.

It is a mind-virus (meme or meme-complex) which arises and spreads by emotional and physiological, as well as cognitive, means. One of its most lethal embodiments is the Old Testament of the Judaeo-Christian Bible.(*)

However, this is just one part of a complex situation. The Dominator Culture consists of many mutually reinforcing phenomena:

Certain social (including religious) institutions and documents, for example, the Old Testament which has explicitly taught people, for thousands of years, to abuse women and children, dominate and destroy people not like themselves, use and destroy the biosphere for their own profit, limit or destroy people's sexuality, etc. If you tune in to conservative fundamentalist Christian TV or radio programs, you can hear the preachers explicitly telling people that gays are evil and are plotting to destroy them, that women and children should be subjugated by men and beaten if necessary, that if people are poor it is always their fault, etc. Up until maybe 50 years ago, these doctrines were standard throughout all of society. They have motivated all the religous wars of Europe, the Crusades, the mass murder of millions of women and homosexuals a few hundred years ago (witch burnings), many wars of conquest and genocide of native people (for monetary gain), two World Wars motivated and supported by certain wealthy (and greedy) industrialists and landowners (including some of the largest American corporations). The Bible is only one part of the Dominator Culture, but it has been the single most effective tool used to indoctrinate people to harm others, for thousands of years. Although it also contains some positive information, the teaching of its dominator principles has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and the torture, misery, suffering and poverty of billions more, over the several thousand years the Bible has been in use.

There are also two other very harmful doctrines in the Bible. One is faith , which is simply the idea that you should believe in something even though there is no reason whatsoever to do so! Of course, this doctrine is very beneficial to purveyors of self-serving lies (i.e., people in power), who decide exactly what we should have faith in. For example, "Work hard at your job, even though they pay you very little, and have faith that God will take care of you." Although "faith" is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever invented, its popularity is a good indication of just how programmable people are. The other harmful idea is that morality comes from "God", and that without "God" there would be nothing to stop us from killing each other. In fact, it is very obvious that if you harm other people, then they will harm you (if only to stop you), and nobody will be able to live happily. Therefore it's a bad idea to harm people. In fact, if you go a step further and help them, then they will help you when you need it. That is the basis of morality--it's that simple! The reason why "morality from God" was invented was to destroy that simple and fundamental understanding, and replace it by a "morality" chosen by those in power to serve their own ends. For example, they tell us that "God" says it is moral to kill the people whom the leaders say to kill--in particular, the Communists and Socialists, who backed labor unions that were eating into the leaders' profits (by demanding a livable wage for workers). Likewise, alcohol and tobacco companies finance the ubiquitous "Partnership for a Drug Free America" advertising campaign, which tells us that psychedelics (the sacred drugs of all peaceful indigenous religions) are immoral. But of course the cigarettes and booze that they sell, which are far more lethal than even cocaine, are declared to be perfectly moral.

, which is simply the idea that you should believe in something even though there is no reason whatsoever to do so! Of course, this doctrine is very beneficial to purveyors of self-serving lies (i.e., people in power), who decide exactly what we should have faith in. For example, "Work hard at your job, even though they pay you very little, and have faith that God will take care of you." Another aspect of the Dominator Culture is the programmed emotional illness within most of the people living in the culture at any given time; of course the extent of it varies from person to person, but it consists of the elements mentioned above--depression; anger (actually, powerful suppressed rage), and a consequent desire to hurt other people and/or to see them unhappy; suppression of free-flowing breathing and sexuality (which causes depression and anger); loss of full contact with reality, as regards perception, conceptualization, and the ability to examine and incorporate new information.

Another part is the results, in individual thought and behavior, of this illness. Most people will think the above characterization of their emotional state is absurd, and deny that they and their fellow citizens are like that. Yet the result of the illness is that they will, variously: not be very happy in life blame and emotionally abuse their children, employees, or other people under their control support Fascist (i.e., corporatist, pro-wealthy, anti-worker, anti-poor) political movements (like the current one by Gingrich, Limbaugh & co. in the U.S.) dislike or hate non-whites, women, gays, lesbians, etc., and encourage others to do the same, and sometimes do things to hurt these people lie, cheat, and rip off energy from other people for monetary gain, i.e., sell cigarettes (consider how many people do this without thinking twice about it!); rip people off when repairing their equipment (a survey showed this happens 50% of the time!); do telemarketing (or advertising on Usenet), i.e., ripping off time and energy from hundreds of people for each one they make money off of; cover up flaws in products which can cause injury and death, because it's cheaper to pay off some victims than lose sales, etc., etc. kill animals for 'fun' -- hunting tell children it is wrong for them to have sex prevent people from using safe and helpful drugs (in particular, marijuana) which can aid in overcoming the pandemic emotional illness support murderous governments, military forces, and wars

A very important part of the Dominator Culture is the emotional and physical abuse of children, and their indoctrination throughout their lifetime. It is now fairly widely understood that abused children often grow up to harm their own children in turn. What is not yet widely known is that almost all children suffer enough emotional abuse to injure them severely. Children are born in a psychedelic state--experiencing extremely intense perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. On the other hand, the adults who interact with them have been affected by the pandemic emotional illness (Emotional Plague) for a decade or more, and have therefore become insensitive, angry, impatient, blaming, antisexual, and have almost no ability to empathize with the child. Anyone who has ever taken a psychedelic drug and then been subjected to interaction with a person of this sort knows how unpleasant and sometimes terrifying it is. Yet this is what most children experience during a substantial part of their childhood, and they do not have the benefit of years of prior life (and the knowledge that their heightened awareness will end in a few hours) to mitigate the harm. This is the main way the Plague is passed on! This is why it is so infectious--because children are permanently in a very open, vulnerable, psychedelic state for year after year, and are subjected to very harmful and destructive behavior by parents and other adults who have been emotionally ill--depressed, angry, and vindictive--for a long time, and who have almost total amnesia for their own childhood experiences. Of course it is all the worse because these adults are the ones the children must love, respect, and rely upon for sustenance. As a result, the terrified children have their instinctual fight/flight/freeze mechanisms activated almost continuously. These instincts, while helpful against acute predator attacks, are very stressful, and were designed by evolution for only momentary functioning. And humans, with their large brains and excellent memories and intelligence (compared to lower animals) remember and recall the emotional abuse even after it has stopped, with the result that fight/flight/freeze stays activated. This is so stressful and painful to children that they learn to suppress their own awareness, feeling, breathing, sexuality (so as not to be attacked by parents for masturbation), etc. But at the same time, they are aware that their wonderful alive feelings and perceptions are dwindling away (because of the fear and self-suppression). They actually feel themselves dying inside, and rage at the parents for necessitating this, but must suppress the feeling to avoid losing the parents' love. Do these phenomena sound familiar? Suppression of breathing, movement, awareness, sex, and emotions? Suppressed rage? They are the same characteristics that comprise the Plague in adults! In other words, the reaction of the child to the Plague behaviour of their parents, becomes the Plague in the child. This is how the disease is passed on!

(*) I am not saying that believers of the Old Testament are evil or that anything should be done to them. I am simply telling them and others that those beliefs may frequently lead them to harm other people, including especially their own children (and themselves, too). These believers are victims of the Dominator (mind) Virus, even as that virus motivates them to victimize others.

Remember, I am not blaming anyone for this. No one is given the choice to be infected--it has gone on from generation to generation, automatically, for at least five millennia. Even the people who originated the dominator doctrines (in several places independently around the world) probably did it because they and their people were starving to death at the time. In any case, they are long gone.

A good analogy is the rabies virus causing an animal to bite others in order to spread itself. A rabid dog is not a bad dog, even though it is very dangerous. No human is born a dominator; the condition is always acquired from the family and cultural environment, and those people acquired it from others, and so on back through time.

No one is to blame for this!

Literature

Dreaming the Dark, by Starhawk (Miriam Simos), new ed., 1988, ISBN 0-8070-1025-1, Beacon Press, Boston, $12.95. A lyrical analysis of history and present-day culture, with a view toward replacing power-over by power-within, and regaining immanence, the sparkling aliveness of everything around us. Appendix A treats the relationship between capitalism and people's contact with the living world.

In Search of the Miraculous, by P.D. Ouspensky; the psychology of Gurdjieff--how to overcome the mass-hypnosis ("sleep") caused by the Dominator Culture. Contains actual instructions for waking up.

Practically any book by the psychologist Wilhelm Reich, who was the first person (that I know of) to realize the existence and nature of the pandemic emotional illness. He discovered and wrote a great deal about it.

Memetics Web site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~hingh/alt.memetics/

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca> Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: 20 Mar 1995 21:07:06 GMT In fact, it is very obvious that if you harm other people, then they will harm you (if only to stop you), and nobody will be able to live happily. Therefore it's a bad idea to harm people. In fact, if you go a step further and *help* them, then they will help you when you need it. *That* is the basis of morality--it's that simple! By the way, the moral system you have proposed is not an ESS. (ESS= Evolutionary Stable Strategy) ps Read some game theroy if you are unclear on why this type of morality is unlikely to spread by itself through the population at large.

From: hingh@xs4all.nl (Marc) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: 23 Mar 1995 19:12:11 GMT Ever observed a group of babboons in the zoo? Social primates definitely live by the 'dominator paradigm'. There is no reason to assume the human nature is different in this respect. Our genetic tendency towards dominance is compensated by what we call 'civilization', which is a result of memetic evolution. Mark Bilk seems to turns things round: in his view, the civilized attitude is the natural state, and the dominator culture a virus (meme complex). Which perspective is right? Could it be that our dominator culture is due to a shortage of viruses?

Newsgroups: alt.memetics From: bv056@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Richard Kulisz) Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 01:45:58 GMT In a previous posting, Marc (hingh@xs4all.nl) writes: > Ever observed a group of babboons in the zoo? > Social primates definitely live by the 'dominator paradigm'. There is no One notable exception is the bonobo. > reason to assume the human nature is different in this respect. > Our genetic tendency towards dominance is compensated by what we call Sorry there but that is not a genetic tendency. It has nothing to do with genetics at all! > 'civilization', which is a result of memetic evolution. Yeah ... I remember the innate good and evil from civilization vs. innate evil and good from civilization debate. They're both supremely stupid! There is no such thing as innate anything in humans! It *ALL* has to do with memetics. That's what memetics is all about! > Mark Bilk seems to turns things round: in his view, the civilized > attitude is the natural state, and the dominator culture a virus (meme > complex). > Which perspective is right? His is right and you're wrong on two counts; your position is wrong and your summary of his position is wrong. He *never* brought up an innate anything ... he only said that Dominator culture was a *whole bunch of meme complexes* or (momosome? :-) > Could it be that our dominator culture is due to a shortage of viruses? There are too many of those out there ... too many cults, too many religions, too many mystics, too many faith healers, too many evangelists, too many conservatives! You showed you believe in an innate evil nature in humans ... that's stupid. There is no such thing as good or evil outside of what a human is taught from infancy.

From: hingh@xs4all.nl (Marc) Newsgroups: alt.memetics Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: 24 Mar 1995 19:53:42 GMT Richard Kulisz <bv056@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote: > >> Our genetic tendency towards dominance is compensated by what we call >Sorry there but that is not a genetic tendency. It has nothing to do with >genetics at all! >> 'civilization', which is a result of memetic evolution. >There is no such thing as innate anything in humans! >It *ALL* has to do with memetics. That's what memetics is all about! I like radical positions, but this one is hard to defend. Memetics doesn't deny gene-based sociobiology -- memetics supplements the genetic model. It's important to understand that genetic patterns of behavior are not deterministic. They are activated by external influences during the development of the brain. These external influences include memes. Memes compete to activate genetic programs: a meme that 'satisfies' a genetic preference is more likely to survive in a brain. E.g. sex attracts lots of successful memes. Memes can activate a genetic program in a way that has nothing to do with the original survival value of the genetic program. This is however not necessarily a bad thing. The genetic 'dominance' program is probably activated in a context of overpopulation. It's also an attractor of many memes. Together these memes act more like a meme-pool than a meme-complex. In other words: there is not one dominator virus, there are many competing dominance viruses. >> Could it be that our dominator culture is due to a shortage of viruses? >There are too many of those out there ... too many cults, too many >religions, too many mystics, too many faith healers, too many evangelists, >too many conservatives! Memes give a society coherence: the presence of memes increases the number of social interactions. People sharing the same memes are more likely to help eachother. In a rich culture (many memes), sects/cults and dangerous ideologies do not survive. Well-educated people have a rich meme-set, and are therefore less susceptible to cult memes. E.g. I think the current rise of neo-fascist parties in Europe are the result of cultural poverty, i.e. a shortage of memes. > >You showed you believe in an innate evil nature in humans ... that's >stupid. There is no such thing as good or evil outside of what a human is >taught from infancy. I agree with that last one. You're mistaken about my believe in an innate evil nature. I want to constitute an objective model before I make any moral judgment at all. I think Mark Bilk's model is not complete without taking into account the genetic programming. Marc

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy From: tony@sidaway.demon.co.uk (Tony Sidaway) Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 00:05:36 +0000 In article <3ksqck$gqj@illuminati.io.com> mccoy@io.com "Jim McCoy" writes: > Phil Jones (dimsey@best.com) wrote: > > Richard Pocklington (pockling@sfu.ca) wrote: > > : In fact, it is very obvious that if you > > : harm other people, then they will harm you (if only to stop > > : you), and nobody will be able to live happily. Therefore it's > > : a bad idea to harm people. In fact, if you go a step further > > : and *help* them, then they will help you when you need it. > > : *That* is the basis of morality--it's that simple! > > > > : By the way, the moral system you have proposed is not an ESS. > > > > : (ESS= Evolutionary Stable Strategy) > [...] > > Who said what to whom? > > Are you saying the above is not ESS and why? > > It is not an evolutionary stable strategy because the basic principle has > been tested and shown to have flaws. It is ripe for a "cheater" strategy > to rip through the population and take advantage of those strategies which > do no harm in response to injury. [interesting description of Tit for Tat strategy cut.] I've seen the Tit for Tat cited before, but never in the context of _opposing_ the helper ethic. IMHO they are not incompatible with one another. Helping people until they show themselves unworthy of help is a valid implementation of Tit for Tat. It seems to work quite well on the net, with extraordinary sanctions being, in practice, quite rare. -- Tony Sidaway tony@sidaway.demon.co.uk "The most horrible thing they have done is to put out hundreds of messages all over the net that say "free phone sex", with the scientologists' toll-free phone number on it: 1-800-367-8788" --an211810@anon.penet.fi "Poor little clams - snap! snap! snap!" --SubGenius Pope Charles of Houston

From: onar@hsr.no (Onar Aam) Newsgroups: alt.memetics Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net (was: Brainwashing Without Force; CAN Date: 27 Mar 1995 22:41:48 GMT >There is no such thing as innate anything in humans! Aren't you pushing the importance of memetics just a tiny bit too far!? Fact: the human species is the only species in which memetic evolution extensively occurs. What should that tell you? That there innate aspects of the human mind that are *extremely* important to memetic evolution. Lots of things are innate in humans: language, sociality and conscience to mention the most important. >You showed you believe in an innate evil nature in humans ... that's >stupid. No, it's not. If you want to play relativist then it's equally stupid to believe that there is no such thing as "good" or "evil". The fact that all cultures have developed these concepts in some way should bother you slightly. Onar.

From: mccoy@io.com (Jim McCoy) Date: 23 Mar 1995 21:49:08 GMT Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy Phil Jones (dimsey@best.com) wrote: > Richard Pocklington (pockling@sfu.ca) wrote: > : In fact, it is very obvious that if you > : harm other people, then they will harm you (if only to stop > : you), and nobody will be able to live happily. Therefore it's > : a bad idea to harm people. In fact, if you go a step further > : and *help* them, then they will help you when you need it. > : *That* is the basis of morality--it's that simple! > > : By the way, the moral system you have proposed is not an ESS. > > : (ESS= Evolutionary Stable Strategy) [...] > Who said what to whom? > Are you saying the above is not ESS and why? It is not an evolutionary stable strategy because the basic principle has been tested and shown to have flaws. It is ripe for a "cheater" strategy to rip through the population and take advantage of those strategies which do no harm in response to injury. The situation that is occurring is an iterated prisoner's dillema and a ton of research has been done on this. The work of Axelrod is probably the most widely known, and the stable strategy resulting from this research is known as "Tit for Tat" (other variations of this basic stretegy have been discovered, but Tit for Tat is probably the most famous.) It can besically be reduced to "being nice" as long as your competitors are being nice, and "responding in kind" to injury. Another way of phrasing the Tit for Tat strategy is "an eye for an eye" :) Check out a couple of texts on game theory and look for sections discussing the iterated prisoner's dillema problem and they will answer your question for you. jim

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy From: msb@netcom.com (Mark S. Bilk) Subject: Dominator Culture, Human Nature, Biology (was: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net For purposes of clarity, I'm going to answer Marc's points somewhat out of sequence. In article <3ksh6b$65o@news.xs4all.nl>, Marc <hingh@xs4all.nl> wrote: > >Ever observed a group of babboons in the zoo? >Social primates definitely live by the 'dominator paradigm'. There is no >reason to assume the human nature is different in this respect. I don't think baboons are the most highly evolved of the non-human primates. There is a species called bonobos which are much more peaceful than baboons, or even chimps, and are highly intelligent (can learn sign language, make simple tools, etc.). They have sex in situations where other apes would fight (they also have homosexuality, among both genders). >Mark Bilk seems to turns things round: in his view, the civilized >attitude is the natural state, and the dominator culture a virus (meme >complex). I'm think it is very difficult to assign a meaning to the term "natural state". Once animals reach a sufficient level of intelligence, they communicate emotions and ideas to each other, including to their young. This is culture. So they always have a meme pool, which, of course, mutates and evolves much faster than their gene pool. So, if "natural state" is meant to signify "without, or apart from the effects of, culture", I don't think such a state can ever exist, at least under anything like normal conditions. Thus if "natural state" has this meaning (and I don't know what other meaning to give it), I think it is not a valid concept-- i.e., it has no referent in reality. Humans (as well as apes) are born in a very immature state, and have a long childhood, requiring a great deal of parental care. So if one were to take an infant away from its mother and allow it to grow up on its own in order to see how a "natural" person would behave, one would have in fact placed that individual in a very unnatural and stressful situation, which would cause the fight/flight/freeze instincts to chronically activate, with the usual results. In effect, we seem to have evolved genetically to the point where at least some degree of culture is *required* for our successful existence. >Our genetic tendency towards dominance is compensated by what we call >'civilization', which is a result of memetic evolution. I think you are right about this, but only up to a point. There is a degree of instinct for domination genetically built into humans and other primates, particularly the males, but in dominator cultures, the environmental influence toward domination far exceeds the genetic influence. The proof of this is in the historical existence of stable partnership cultures--if the dominator state were mostly genetically motivated, these cultures could not have existed, yet they were in the great majority. The state of human existence called Emotional Plague (Dominator Culture) is an emotionally and memetically *infectious* condition consisting of chronic (usually low-level) activation of the emergency fight/flight/freeze instincts, resulting in more or less chronic fear, rage, breathing inhibition, passivity, muscular armoring, sexual dysfunction, etc. If this state occurs in a sufficient fraction of the people in a community (due to a real emergency such as starvation), it may (but does not always) become part of the culture, and is then transmitted from parents (and other adults) to children by means of emotional and physical abuse. (The word "abuse" is not meant to connote blameworthiness on the part of the parents--in their emotionally ill state, they believe they are raising their children in a way that will benefit them.) This is how the Plague got started, in several unrelated cultures in various areas of the world, perhaps 5-7000 years ago. These dominator cultures then spread the disease by war and enslavement. Does it make sense to consider this state simply to be "our genetic tendency towards dominance" ? I don't think so, because in the absence of overwhelming deadly emergencies (and in the absence of external attack by Plague-infected people) humans did *not* live in this state. Up to about 5,000 years ago most human cultures were far less dominating, violent, and patriarchal than they are today. Most people lived in a peaceful type of culture (Partnership Culture) that had evolved almost everywhere, and it *was* a stable state. Almost all of humanity was converted to the Dominator Culture *only* by external infection, from a few original foci of emotionally ill groups of people that spread their ideas and emotions by war and conquest. It's also important to note that in most cases the conquered people were more advanced than their conquerors in technology, agriculture, literature, architecture, cooperative social organization, etc., in every way except in the technology of organized mass murder (war). Thus, (collections of) humans have the genetic *capability* of being forced into the Dominator state, which is then (often) memetically and emotionally stable, and highly infectious. But the Partnership state is *also* memetically/emotionally stable, and in fact evolved first. I'd tend therefore to call *it* "natural", but that word is overloaded with so many meanings that it might best be avoided. The history of the two types of culture has to be explained at length and in full; it can't be condensed into a single word. Consider the analogy, in the biological realm, of the prion disease scrapie (Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, Kuru). Everyone has the gene to make the prion protein (PrP), which can exist in two different physical shapes, one harmless and one fatal. A molecule in the deadly configuration occasionally arises, and it has the peculiar ability to transform other PrP molecules into its own shape, by physical contact (akin to crystal formation). Once a few of these deadly molecules occur in a person's brain, they continue to multiply, and kill him within a few years. If the infected tissue comes into sufficient contact with healthy people (ritual consumption of the recent dead, formerly in New Guinea, organ transplants, etc.), then the disease can spread to them. So all humans (and many, if not all, other mammals) have the genetic capability of producing the deadly scrapie molecule, and once they start doing so, it results in a *stable state* of ever-increasing production and even contagion (until that particular host dies). But the state of not producing *any* scrapie protein is also stable (and fortunately, usual). Now suppose there were a similar disease scrapie-X that was more easily contagious, but that instead of killing by spongiform encephalopathy within a few years, produced a chronic state of anger and greed in the people it infected, leading them to attack others and thus to spread the prion via the resulting skin abrasions (much like rabies in some animals), but left them alive. Scrapie-X would transform the entire culture of those whom it infected, producing myths and laws to indoctrinate people with specific ideas of a jealous, angry God, and the divine rightness of enslavement and slaughter of disbelievers. It might well spread by conquest to nearly all the world's people. Five thousand years later, the resulting almost universal human condition of anger, greed, and violence might well be considered to be the normal, *natural* human state, for lack of a standard of comparison. Only a few archaeologists would be able to interpret the evidence from thousands of years ago, and only a few anthropologists would be aware of the handful of still- existing uninfected cultures. Almost all human babies would be infected within a year or two of birth. Scientists (like Reich, Gimbutas, Eisler, etc.) who discovered that the now-universal anger and violence are actually the result of an *infectious disease* would be ridiculed as crackpots. After all, everybody "knows" that that's just how people are-- it's simply "human nature". Unfortunately, the actual situation, in which the pathogen is mimetic/emotional rather than biological, is much *harder* to demonstrate and correct, because memes can't be isolated as discrete objects in a test tube, visualized with an electron microscope, and injected into test subjects, like biological viruses and prions. Most people automatically think that their view of the world is the way things *really are*. In fact, most people don't even realize that they *have* a "view" of the world--they simply believe that they perceive and conceive it the way it really *is*. These few scientists are trying to tell people (in the words of the '60's hippies) that "almost everything you know, is wrong". And the wrongest things of all are those at the very core of our culture--most of the Bible and Christianity, patriotism, racism, unrestricted capitalism, anti-socialism, machismo, blaming, conservative "family values", i.e., patriarchy, antisexuality, homophobia, opposition to birth control and divorce, etc. >Which perspective is right? >Could it be that our dominator culture is due to a shortage of viruses? >From the archaelogical record, it appears that as humans acquired ever higher levels of knowledge and technology, their culture (meme pool) evolved in the Partnership direction. One may view this as a symbiotic relationship between genetically programmed (and evolving) human organisms, and beneficial memetic viruses. The only problem with this terminology is that, almost without exception, the word "virus", in the biological realm, is used to label something that harms its host. This is because biological viruses are very hard to detect, and so people have only studied the pathogenic ones. I don't know if any totally harmless, much less beneficial, biological viruses have been discovered, but I'm sure that they exist. (Of course, harmless, and even beneficial, computer viruses have been created.) Given the connotation of "virus" I would prefer to use a term like "meme complex" to mean any collection of ideas and emotions that replicates by means of human minds, and to reserve "virus" for those that harm the host. So, Dominator Culture is now in control because the original Partnership meme complex, which evolved all over the world, was supplanted (and often destroyed by force, along with its hosts) by the Dominator meme complex (virus), which arose in only a few places, but was very infectious (evangelistic). The remedy certainly must include the introduction and propagation of Partnership memes (kindness, cooperation, sharing, tolerance, feminism, liberalism, freedom, pro-sexuality, relaxation, non-competition, etc.) as well as immunization against the Dominator memes. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The most important book in the world! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- _The Chalice and the Blade_, by Riane Eisler, 1988, ISBN 0-06-250-289-1 An overview of the archaeological work of Marija Gimbutas and others. It explains the macro-history of human culture, and shows how domination, patriarchy, and war result from cultural programming, not human nature. \v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/^\v/

From: scott9609@aol.com (Scott9609) Newsgroups: alt.memetics Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Human Nature, Biology Date: 4 Apr 1995 01:58:42 -0400 I, too, have taken the opportunity to point out to Mr. Hingh the example of the bonobos and to suggest the dominance is not the only *natural* trait possible. However, I think a theory of human nature which is based largely on archaeology is, to put it bluntly, worthy of ridicule. In a spirit of fairness, I am going to read the book you cite and learn its ideas in order to develop a more informed critique of what Eisler is saying. I think, however, that it would behoove you to read de Waal's research on bonobos in context; Franz doesn't suggest that the bonobo's model of culture rules out dominance as a factor in the human species, merely that it presents an example within the primate kingdom of non-aggressive conflict resolution mediated by sex rather than dominance displays. I think, also, that the idea of a "Dominator Culture" as a infectious virus is not a scientific image. It is clearly a value statement, is it not? You are neglecting to emphasize the most important fact about a "Dominator Culture", if it exists, which is that it has presumably been extraordinarily successful in replicating itself. Yet at the same time you are staking out the almost dogmatic assertion that dominance is not a part of human nature. I find it difficult, in light of the mound of research into dominance displays by ethologists, to credit the idea that dominance is not to some degree set by inheritance, rather than culture. I think the only way out of this difficulty for you, frankly, is to define dominance in a very narrow and almost exclusively human way. I also think that to take the last few millenia as either a typical or atypical pattern of culture vis-a-vis dominance is illogical; again, I think you would be better off reading actual primatology or sociobiology before embracing a work of scholarship that discounts biological factors. I find that once folks are dissuaded of the belief that genetic determinism equals an absence of free will they are better able to appreciate the degree to which egalitarian models of human potential fail to "explain" anything I repeat an interesting intellectual challenge to one and all on this forum: can you conceive of a viable hypothesis of memetics that does not depend to some degree upon sociobiological models? Cordially...Scott Hatfield (kennesaw@ccfnet.com)

Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy From: jabowery@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Human Nature, Biology (was: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 07:21:03 GMT Mark S. Bilk (msb@netcom.com) wrote: : I'm think it is very difficult to assign a meaning to the term : "natural state". Once animals reach a sufficient level of : intelligence, they communicate emotions and ideas to each other, : including to their young. This is culture. So they always have : a meme pool, which, of course, mutates and evolves much faster : than their gene pool. Dawkins admits that memes are put under selective pressure by "psycological appeal". Skinner, the father of "nurture over nature" admits that WHAT we find reinforcing is primarily biological, and that "secondary reinforcement" (training which is targeted at altering that which the subject finds rewarding) is truly secondary. Therefore, memes are dependent on genetic constraints. The implication of this is that memetic capability, being the most recently evolved capability of nervous systems, are likely to be the subject of the GREATEST amount of genetic evolution/differentiation among humans. It would be astounding if there were not genotypes which were relatively immune to biologically self-destructive memes, that used this relative immunity to punish and reward other gene pools that were not as immune to biologically self-destructive memes. This is, in fact, the relationship between the genepools that occupy positions of moral authority and genepools that have been morally enslaved by those moral authorities -- the Politically Correct moral authorities being the most recent historic example. -- The promotion of politics exterminates apolitical genes in the population. The promotion of frontiers gives apolitical genes a route to survival. Change the tools and you change the rules.

From: hkhenson@shell.portal.com (H Keith Henson) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Human Nature, Biology (was: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net Date: 5 Apr 1995 08:29:30 GMT Jim Bowery (jabowery@netcom.com) wrote: : Mark S. Bilk (msb@netcom.com) wrote: : : I'm think it is very difficult to assign a meaning to the term : : "natural state". Once animals reach a sufficient level of : : intelligence, they communicate emotions and ideas to each other, : : including to their young. This is culture. So they always have : : a meme pool, which, of course, mutates and evolves much faster : : than their gene pool. : Dawkins admits that memes are put under selective pressure by : "psycological appeal". Skinner, the father of "nurture over nature" : admits that WHAT we find reinforcing is primarily biological, and that : "secondary reinforcement" (training which is targeted at altering that : which the subject finds rewarding) is truly secondary. : Therefore, memes are dependent on genetic constraints. Well stated, Jim! : The implication of this is that memetic capability, being the most : recently evolved capability of nervous systems, are likely to be the : subject of the GREATEST amount of genetic evolution/differentiation : among humans. : It would be astounding if there were not genotypes which were relatively : immune to biologically self-destructive memes, that used this relative : immunity to punish and reward other gene pools that were not as immune to : biologically self-destructive memes. I have speculated on this very meme, that there are genes for skepticism. On the other hand, I also note that succeptibility to memes in general is very pro survival--clasic case being that learning the streets are dangerous places to play by trial and error is not likely to be a genetic success. This distinction may be a little too fine for genes to control, but I am not at all sure. There are, of course, meta memes (logic, scientific method, etc.) which strongly affect the survival of the memes themselves. Put another way, phrenology is history. Meta meme training of the young may also be effective. My family (both sides) has a long tradation of kidding children, telling them absolutely outrageous lies when they are very small, and more subtle ones as they get older. This way, they build mental modules which are on guard for BS even from their parents. (If they don't get it, you pile it on till they *do*, and never leave them with unresolved BS!) : This is, in fact, the relationship between the genepools that occupy : positions of moral authority and genepools that have been morally : enslaved by those moral authorities -- the Politically Correct moral : authorities being the most recent historic example. I am not sure I can parse this accurately--too terse. If you have time, some examples might help. : -- : The promotion of politics exterminates apolitical genes in the population. : The promotion of frontiers gives apolitical genes a route to survival. : Change the tools and you change the rules. Boy, does that last sentence describe the fix CoS is in. Keith Henson

From: hkhenson@shell.portal.com (H Keith Henson) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.support.ex-cult,alt.memetics,alt.activism,alt.conspiracy Subject: Re: Dominator Culture, Human Nature, Biology (was: Dominator Culture, Book List, Bible, the Net Date: 7 Apr 1995 06:24:17 GMT Jim Bowery (jabowery@netcom.com) wrote: [considerable snip, including some of mine} : Of course! Otherwise genetic evolution would almost certainly never have : produced such extreme memetic capability in our nervous systems and : produced humans that can have the meme meme. : The question is, what sorts of selective pressures drove our genetic : evolution to such a bizzare capability? The answer is complex, but to : first order, my working hypothesis is that beta males, ousted from : troops, were forced into marginal or "bizzare" habitats where genetic : instinct simply didn't work as well as memetic override. There were : probably cultures of beta males at the frontiers that shared memes for : survival and accepted (VERY gladly) any impregnable that would leave : the harem of the alphas and share their food. I see your point, and something like this may have been operative at some zone in the past, but it does not fit very well with what we know about current human social systems, or what we can infer about the past. Humans *do* slip in and out of polygamous systems, but we don't seem to be that adapted to polygamy--at least not amoung the northern temperate zone farmers. Along that line, there is a recent (last few years anyway) Scientific American article which you should read if you have not already. While the article was on the causes of persistant high fertility in sub-Sahran Africa, the more interesting part to me was a discussion of just how *weird* (and diverged from the original state) the sexual constraints were, and are in *our* society. Your point about the selection pressure is certainly valid-- but (I think) really hard to recouncil with the fossil/stone artifact record. William Calvin (in a series of books starting with the Throwing Madona) argues that the expansion of the human brain over the last 1.5 million years was driven by more brain->better throwing accuracy->meat on the fire->more surviving offspring. Calvin's arguments re expanding where the glaciers moved back is similar to yours, only we seem to have done it a number of times, and near the ice edge hunting was the *only* way you got through the winter. The problem with relating this to memes, is that up until about 30k years back there is little evidence for an extensive culture. Then it just expolded, and in far too few generation to do much adapting, relatively advanced cultures were all over. [snip] : Pioneers are primate losers, but memetic mutants. : Good examples of such pioneers are the folks who followed the winterlands : north after the last iceage, and my own ancestry of prerevolutionary war : Quakers, who were considered a bunch of mutant betas "too afraid to fight" : by the King of England. I think an even more impressive memetic driven expansion happened with the domestification of plants. The groups which did this displaced or absorbed the hunter-gathers in all the places where their "tech" could "take root." : Your terminology focusing on "survival" rather than "reproduction" is at : the heart of the present controversy over the genetic games being played : via Political Correctness memes. Individual survival isn't threatened by : Political Correctness -- reproductive quantity, viability and quality is : threatened -- of groups susceptible to its memes. It is this "subtle" : distinction that escapes the attention of our would-be moral authorities. There was a time, years ago, when I too worried about this topic. But we are no more than 50 years, something like 2-3 generations from the point where the memetic takeover could leave DNA in the dust. Stiegler's Gentle Seduction story expresses my feelings about the topic. In truth, since we developed birth control, or perhaps celibrate priests, memes have had, if not the upper hand, a heck of a strong suit. *My* worry I guess from reading the *Marching Morons* sf story long, long ago, was the tendency for smart people to control their fertility would result in dumbing down the race. (look at how few children Mensa types have.) But people who are stupid to the same extent Mensans are smart don't reproduce very well either. snip : "Moral authority" genepools overtaking the genepools of "gullible" : genepools throughout western history probably breaks down something like : this: : Egyptians overtake the Jews. The Indians overtake the Aryans (who are no : longer with us at all save a few lighter skinned folks in northern : India) The Jews overtake the Hittites. The Greeks overtake the Romans. : The Romans overtake much of Europe (more by manipulation than by force if : you read history, such as Tacitus, carefully) and are displaced, again by : Jews during the Judeo-Christian diaspora. : We are just emerging from the Judeo-Christian era with colorful : events like the Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation and a long : history of expulsions of ethnic Jews from various parts of Europe, : culminating in the Nazi holocaust -- primarily in a struggle between : meme-controllers and the meme-controlled. Sorry, Jim, I can't agree with you here. It is my arguement that pre Dawkins, everybody was meme-controlled. Post Dawkins we still are, but at least we are a little more aware of it. As I put it in one of my articles, Hitler too was a victum of the Nazi meme, a willing victum, but none the less, a victum of that nasty meme set. : As Darwin and Dawkins free us from the old rituals of Judeo-Christianity, : new rituals are required, and it is here we find Political Correctness : filling the void, born of Marxism, which began its illustrious career by : decimating the rural leadership in Russia (just as foretold by the : Czarist police in their forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). An interesting historical note (which I don't at the moment have a cite for) is that Marxism seems to have had a huge cash infusion to get it going--perhaps as much as 300 million bucks in modern terms. The Germans paid Lenin to foment the revolution to get Russia out of WW I. Good short term investment, and a bad long term one. : It is no conspiracy, and yet it was no accident, that it was illegal to : study genetics under communism, and that feminism and environmentalism : differntially attack the fecundity of people who are prone to follow : those moral codes to the bitter end. It is sadly predictable that the : leaders of these movements, as well as the meme-control centers are, in : overwhelming disproportion, secularized individuals, of Jewish ancestry : -- and that the male fertilty of that group has been higher during the : baby boom when compared to the genetic groups historically prone toward : hatred of Jews. Hmm. Pointers and sources would be interesting. I was not aware of non economic distinctions between identifiable groups with respect to fertility except that blacks with high incomes tend to have even fewer children than their white counterparts. I do remember reading in recent years that if you factor out income, catholic fertility differential vanishes. Isreal had quite a boom post war, but it sagged back toward baseline, well below the Arabs who live there. Given the extreme difficulty even a government has in trying to influence fertility, I am rather skeptical about some of this--though it *is* true that overpopulation memes have causes some drop in the birthrate for those who hear the message. Keith Henson Ps, the post war baby boom, as significant as it was, was only a blip on the long term drop in fertility which had been going on for close to a hundred years.