Living with Kryptonite: June 2020

Non-stop question-begging. "An excellent place to start" would be the human fascination with the image since we could smear paint on cave walls, but now have Star Trek technology for under $50 in the palm of our hands, so we can create images of ourselves, by ourselves, any time we want. This is a first. Men are not judged by appearance? Look whom we elect to office? Are they competent leaders or Pretty Kitties? Oh, boy, Confirmation Bias anyone? Young women are not unaware of the impact they have on those around them. Many young men are as well. The the same degree? Now they can all "bottle" this social power, spread it around, and save it for later, rather like the song "If I could save time in a bottle." It would be interesting to actually quantify this (Oh, no, heavens forefend! hard science!) across ages, genders, cultures, even times (like back when you had to hire somebody with a little brush), come up with a few actual theories (eeeek! hard science again!) and using the enormous power of Big Data to be able to test them.

Nah, instead let's trot out a few random images, repeat third hand instances of men (and women) making fun of women for some random reason, treating that as scientific fact, drawing unsupported conclusions, randomly dredging Simone de Beauvoir and others up as if they represent some kind of body of supporting theory (like Special Relativity or something -- alack! hard science rears it's mocking head again! Imagine dredging up THIS talk 50 years from now as support for something...!) and acting like we've accomplished something. Women's liberation is the most important social-political movement in history. Trying to fix overpopulation (duh!), deforestation, pollution, war (duh!), poverty, etc., is all just pissing in the ocean if we don't make serious inroads in the liberation of women. Only then can we move on to fix those things, eliminate racism, and men's liberation is never going to happen until women's liberation is good and far along. Men's problems may never be solved (war, work until you're dead, etc.) but they may one day be ameliorated. The oppression of women, including women of color and poor women, who are the most oppressed, but least able to get TED-talkers up on the stage to speak for them, is, I feel, ultimately something we can just "switch off" if we have the political and economic will to do so. Oppressed by having to wear a chador in 120-degree heat? Oh, okay, now you don't have to. Done.

I find it enormously ironic that she asked us to imagine if fashion got as much air time as sport. Women are defined by fashion (I have a great many female friends who would find this insulting or just mystifying) and men, whose oppressive deathgrip on the reins of power is exemplified by the amount of airtime that sport gets (which I find bizarre, insulting, mystifying, as I'm sure most of my male friends would, too).

Do people like this even take themselves seriously?
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PS: Oh, yeah, forgot to complete the thought above, Women's Lib is the most important thing we have to do, and this sort of nonsense is just getting us off the track. More clothing fashion reports on the news? Really?! This sort of thing is a bunch of cooptionist crap, trying to surf on the wave of an important movement in order to get the spotlight on herself for a few extra minutes...and probably drum up a bit of cash, too.

This alludes to the principle of "The Delusion of Power" to do with memetic nexus in Macromemetics. I'm still working on a definition of a memetic nexus, and I want to solidify my definition of Power in memetic terms and demonstrate that it relates to memetic nexus, i.e., that the two are interchangeable.

I want to work out how early on in my Macromemetics textbook I want to dive into memetic nexus -- it's seminal, but I haven't really decided if it's a fundamental concept or may be derived from other concepts.

Here's an article on genetic (memetic) evolution in language, and an effort to find the universal proto-language.

https://medium.com/s/nautilus-fame/fame-for-23-words-is-15-000-years-overdue-295e1285de2e

And here's on the concept of celebrity. Again, that relates to memetic nexus.

https://medium.com/s/nautilus-fame/on-the-origin-of-celebrity-46f888196d68