R U really U or a memed up U?

[David]

Way back in the good old days of 2008-2009, you didn’t have to ask yourself that question. The technology to quickly and ruthlessly replace some of your memories, desires, and personal identity with a memetically engineered update was only on the drawing boards. You didn’t have to worry about walking around and getting touched or coughed on by a stranger who was a carrier for a genetically engineered brain virus that turned your freewill into mush and made you hyper suggestible to whatever you heard or read during the first stages of your encephalitic infection. We just learned a few weeks ago that a new faction of the Reformed Jehovah’s Witnesses managed to make over 100,000 converts in a single weekend until authorities caught on and put curfews in the area they operated. This group is not to be confused with the other splinter sect of the old Jehovah’s Witnesses that is called the Progressive Jehovah’s Witnesses, and use legal, standard adaptive memetic engineering (AME) to influence people and increase their membership.

You would think that bioengineers back in our time would have looked ahead at the potential negative consequences of their work, but you see the future positive applications were just too attractive. There was hope that these new technologies would save the environment by making the public emotionally and mentally receptive to changing their worldviews into more green friendly mindsets, where they would use public transportation or walk/ride to work to reduce their carbon footprints. There were dreams of using this on criminals to reduce the recidivism rates once they left prison. Parents loved the idea of using the technology on their children to make them more interested in education and to study harder. Of course the big hope was to use these methods to calm down the crisis and hot spots around the world where social unrest was happening 24/7. The Republicans and even many liberals asked, why shouldn’t we just make the world’s poor happy with being poor instead of having them try to scramble up the economic ladder and use more limited resources in the process.

Somewhere amidst all these grand ideas and practical applications, private interests realized the huge economic bonanza by using this technology on politicians and corporate CEO’s to manipulate their behavior to the aims of the controllers. Once the genie was out of the bag for the meme weapons, it was damn near impossible to control.

Everyone now realizes we should have just stopped with standard AME techniques which require no direct biological assault on the brain with viruses, chemicals, and the new nanotech stuff. Good old AME went far beyond advertising and propaganda techniques to really figure out why people believed the things they do, behaved the way they do, and worked out the most effective way of influencing behavior of the subject with them in full control of their mental faculties. AME had resounding successes in those early years with changing polices of corporations, institutions, and even public perception about important issues. Isn’t there something to be said for that old saying, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?” But “no”, our world, our race, likes to go through the school of hard knocks and it must have something to do with the old social memes we all have deeply inculcated that makes us … wait I seem to forgotten what that was. You have to forgive me, you see I was memed last week.

Okay, U got any memes about my memes?

[Marco Antonio]

Fantastic piece of writing! // I work in advertising, and sometimes I daydream about bringing somebody from the 15th century to the modern world. After watching the world in marvel through his eyes, I wonder how long he would survive the advertising bombardment and manipulation? We have grown up learning how to discern truth from ... 'advertising' truth. (we all know that if you drink Coke or eat Doritos, the girls in bikinis will NOT come running towards you).

So I wonder - if someone from two or three centuries ago came today, would he survive the manipulation of modern day communications? And ... if WE move forward two or three centuries, what will we find? A memed up world?

:) Like I said, i found your story fascinating.

[David]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for the kind words about my story.

Per your thoughts about bringing someone from the 15th century to the present, it stands to reason that they would face an incredible case of "Future Shock." We know that people who have been in prisons a long time have a very difficult time adjusting to a world they are not familiar with because of all the changes that happened after they were locked up. In those cases we are talking about decades, not centuries. I think even many people in our own time are so confused about the rapid pace of change and new memes that they try to retreat as much as possible and close out the world.

As advertising and memetic manipulation become more advanced in the near future, I think a lot of people will not be able to discern advertising "truth" from consensual reality and will find themselves in a strange mental place, almost like being in a dream or a fantasy in some ways and continue their role playing in normal life, pretending everything is the same. People are wonderful at self deception and the pressure will be on much more then.

[Marco Antonio]

hehe, having said that... and to give things a 180 turn... what if we get used to being faced with illusion so much... we grow stronger from it? // What if that 'dream state' between reality and advertising/digital world is a state in which only humans can exist - and just like imagination and intelligence has set the human race apart from the animal kingdom, what if this new /environment/ of hybrid existance pushed a post-human life and way of understanding the world?

After all, I do prefer the way we live now to the way they lived in the 15th century - no matter how bad things seem sometimes, we do have it pretty sweet in comparison. A common cold could kill you, there was no electricity and life was... well, just a lot of hard, thankless hard work. :)

Maybe we will be Memed up - and like you say, maybe we won't be completely unaware of it, and therefore learn to grow with it. What, then? :)

[David]

Some thought provoking ideas for sure! In fact, when I started to explore the idea of our mental evolution being influenced by this intentional dream state, I was reminded of a compelling book I'm reading right now, "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey" by Jill Taylor, Ph.D. which describes a personal life changing experience of the author during a massive stroke when a blood vessel ruptured in her left side of her brain. It turns out that the right side of the brain not only is fully conscious on its own but experiences the world in a remarkably different way, much like the dream state you reference. In fact, without the left brain's interaction with the story telling version of our reality and sense of time, we no longer even see ourselves as creatures of form, but rather a being that has expanded to the size of the universe and we find ourselves in such a pleasurable nirvana, it becomes so addictive that even wanting to recover to the point of what we were before with a whole brain is a tremendous and unpleasant challenge!

I'm beginning to think that perhaps some of the intense mind altering experiences produced by drugs may simply be a result of inhibiting different parts of the left brain. If I’m correct with this idea then the new techniques being used by medical researchers with inhibition of different areas of the brain with pulsed magnetic fields may lead to being able to safely explore this part of ourselves without the profound physical and mental consequences of a stroke. Will it become a place we never want to leave or help us change the nature of who we are? These are unanswered questions.

Per living back in the 15th century, I’m no Luddite either! That is why I support the aims of the Bright Green movement which hopefully can help us have our cake and eat it too. It may not be the flavor we expect, but still pretty good tasting.