Memetic Essay IndexIndex (for Book)
Sydney Watson YouTube video
An unfortunate trait that often accompanies “activist, liberationist” movements is the creation of lots of “bullying opportunities” which typically target some group of Bad Guys (yes, usually guys…but not always), e.g. the Skinnies, or cis-men, etc.
This seems great, and like what else are ya gonna do to fight Evil and oppression and the suffering of the innocent? More on that anon…
One of the many negative side-effects of this kind of memetic design for social change is that in order to continue to deploy these immunomemes against (skinny) scapegoats one has to continue to identify with one’s victim status, eg, fat, or woman oppressed by the patriarchy, etc. it’s a kind of self-perpetuating cycle of victimhood and increasingly vociferous protest.
So what to do? We need a memetic system whereby the the oppressive memes directed against fat people (or oppressed women or whomever) are curtailed, but still allow fat people to get healthy (or women to have the satisfactory and full lives they want) without having to surrender the victim status and the memes that status allows them to use.
“The poor ye have always with you”
One problem is that defining what it means to be “poor” (or “fat”) and that “helping the poor” is something we have to do to be a good church member, for example, we always have to have people that meet that definition.
So we have to have fat people in order to be able to shame people for shaming them, which is the way this sort of liberation movement functions.
What could we try instead?
I have a body of theory and practice (“Macromemetics”) that should be able to provide some useful answers—I promise!—but I’m getting tired of typing now….. 😊
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