New Shrapnel extension meme - Scars

[P3nT4gR4m]

Shrapnel, when removed, leaves scars.

Without the shrapnel there are no scars.

Without either shrapnel or scars there is no personality.

I prefer the company of people who's personality consists mainly of scars than those who seem predominantly composed of shrapnel.

[Cainad (dec.)]

[AFK]

Nice. 

[Cramulus]

Without either shrapnel or scars there is no personality.

I'm not so sure.

I'm thinking of this kid I knew in high school who didn't have a TV in his house. He was certainly exposed to a lot less shrapnel than most. But it didn't seem to translate into having less personality.

Is there a way to live without being exposed to shrapnel? I mean, even if you're a monk who spends entire years copying the bible from inside your cell, (very few "scars") you still might have a sense of humor.

I think of poorly adjusted kids who spent their childhood in homeschool rather than socializing wiht peers... they weren't exposed to less shrapnel really, just different shrapnel.


To me, the relevant part of the shrapnel meme is
-we're exposed to all this crazy input (shrapnel) every minute of every day
-we also output all this crazy media (explode shrapnel) every time we talk to someone or react to something or even as just a face in the crowd
-so then I guess your scars are the overall effect that the shrapnel has had on you. The Odyssey hit the greeks pretty hard, and it scarred a lot of them. And Star Wars hit a lot of Americans. The war on terror has left a scar shaped like your opinion on the matter.


see I'm not sure that scars are a good extension. It makes sense because in the material world, explosions injure people. But I think that leaves us with a rather victim-like relationship with culture - that it's just constantly injuring us and leaving us battered, and we have to overcome. But it's kind of fatalistic. The majority of the shrapnel we're exposed to is benign. And it seems weird to classify even the good effects of shrapnel as "scars".

The shrapnel image (to me) implies that your internal state at any given time is this explosive, rapidly evolving soup of memes and ideas, history and fiction... The image of a scar is something that is permanent, unchanging, remaining forever.

I think certain bits of shrapnel leave scars (cultural imprinting, important life events), but ultimately you can change those things, right?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Was thinking more along the lines of - scars are what's left when a wound has healed. Scars are the memory of the damage the shrapnel made.

[AFK]

But not all Shrapnel is bad.  Perhaps "impact" is a better word than "damage".

RWHN,
thinking ahead to all of the complaints and criticisms about the negative imagery. 

[Cainad (dec.)]

Scars, IMO, are what's left after you've removed a piece of Shrapnel (fucking DUH, but srsly, I'm going somewhere with this). You can never completely remove the effects of Shrapnel from yourself.

If you were raised in a hardcore Christian family, you may have removed that Shrapnel from yourself, but the memory will still affect you. Inevitably, regardless of what position you take on Christianity, you will always have something to say on the subject. If you could simply remove the Shrapnel without any lingering effects, it would be as if it never happened, and you would have nothing to say.

Also, we should probably remember that we're playing a rather elaborate mindfuck with ourselves by talking about "good" Shrapnel. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just an observation.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Also, we should probably remember that we're playing a rather elaborate mindfuck with ourselves by talking about "good" Shrapnel. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just an observation.

Bit like karma in that respect - no good and bad, just shrapnel

I would like to state for the record, my firm belief that there is NO personality until the memes kick in. Don't believe me? Check out a newborn baby, maybe a week old or less, show me some personality traits that define it's character. Babies are pretty much just a clean slate on which the memeplex that becomes the person is scribbled. Once this starts it becomes self refining to a point but until you start giving a baby input it's nothing and it will grow up to be nothing until it gets input.

[Cramulus]

I would like to state for the record, my firm belief that there is NO personality until the memes kick in. Don't believe me? Check out a newborn baby, maybe a week old or less, show me some personality traits that define it's character. Babies are pretty much just a clean slate on which the memeplex that becomes the person is scribbled. Once this starts it becomes self refining to a point but until you start giving a baby input it's nothing and it will grow up to be nothing until it gets input.

you're talking about Agency
(see also: Art of Memetics page 35)

and in general, I agree with you. At the core of a human being there's this sticky meme called "I Am", and there's just a bunch of garbage stuck to it. I don't subscribe to free will - I think people (read: a collection of shrapnel) do what their shrapnel tells them to do. If the bit of shrapnel which says "Be a good person" is lodged in my flesh, I'll act accordingly. but with no memes, there's no person. Which also means that you don't really have a will, just a bunch of influences and control mechanisms to choose from.

It sounds like it diminishes free will, but I don't see that as a threat to personal freedom. The AoM says that Freedom is just the ability to move within a network, even an internal one. And I can get behind that.

[LMNO]

I like the idea of Scars similar to Cainad, in thinking about shrapnel as errent ideas.  Some you want to take with you, some you don't.  But you can't "un-ring the bell".  Even if you don't like an idea, you now know it exists, and you will take it into account from now on.

So, scars would be the ideas you've learned and disagreed with.  Which makes p3nt's OP accurate, in that I'd like to meet someone who has encountered a lot of ideas but has not necessarily subscribed to any of them.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

Why do the scars have to be the ideas you have disagreed with? 

Why not just the ones you learned from? 

Does that also mean that scars can disappear with age and knowledge?  What I once disagreed with vehemently as a 20 something makes a lot of sense as a 40 something?  So does that make me boring because some of my scars have faded away?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Also, we should probably remember that we're playing a rather elaborate mindfuck with ourselves by talking about "good" Shrapnel. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just an observation.

Bit like karma in that respect - no good and bad, just shrapnel

I would like to state for the record, my firm belief that there is NO personality until the memes kick in. Don't believe me? Check out a newborn baby, maybe a week old or less, show me some personality traits that define it's character. Babies are pretty much just a clean slate on which the memeplex that becomes the person is scribbled. Once this starts it becomes self refining to a point but until you start giving a baby input it's nothing and it will grow up to be nothing until it gets input.

Dunno... it seems to me that some aspects of personality might be genetic, so perhaps 'mosbunal' of the personality comes from colliding with memes?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Why do the scars have to be the ideas you have disagreed with? 

Why not just the ones you learned from? 

Does that also mean that scars can disappear with age and knowledge?  What I once disagreed with vehemently as a 20 something makes a lot of sense as a 40 something?  So does that make me boring because some of my scars have faded away?

LOL - excellent point. I suppose this opens a whole can of worms, along the lines of scabs and not healing due to the picking thereof 

[Cainad (dec.)]

Why do the scars have to be the ideas you have disagreed with? 

Why not just the ones you learned from? 

Does that also mean that scars can disappear with age and knowledge?  What I once disagreed with vehemently as a 20 something makes a lot of sense as a 40 something?  So does that make me boring because some of my scars have faded away?

Not if vehement disagreement can be thought of as a kind of Shrapnel.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Also, we should probably remember that we're playing a rather elaborate mindfuck with ourselves by talking about "good" Shrapnel. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just an observation.

Bit like karma in that respect - no good and bad, just shrapnel

I would like to state for the record, my firm belief that there is NO personality until the memes kick in. Don't believe me? Check out a newborn baby, maybe a week old or less, show me some personality traits that define it's character. Babies are pretty much just a clean slate on which the memeplex that becomes the person is scribbled. Once this starts it becomes self refining to a point but until you start giving a baby input it's nothing and it will grow up to be nothing until it gets input.

Dunno... it seems to me that some aspects of personality might be genetic...

example?