Power

[Kai]

One of Anthony Gidden's books (cant remember precisely which) has a good take on how agency and structures mutually affect each other.  Individuals affect structures and vice-versa, so they are co-determinating.  Actually, now I think of it, Nicolas Onuf might have something to say on the subject too.  Back in a bit with citations.

Lewontin (cf. The Triple Helix) says the same thing about genes, organism and the environment, that they are co-determinating. Interesting.

[Cramulus]

Fascinating Excerpt

Very interesting... definitely, I'm just not sure how much I can agree with it.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think the idea laid out is a very interesting one, but, I have a real problem with this concept that 'memes' or structures or norms or whatever you want to call them are in any meaningful sense alive. I especially have trouble with any concept which dehumanizes people as much as these ideas seem to.

as for the "livingness" of these structures (or "entities", if you prefer  ), it is just a metaphor. Certainly they don't have any biological reality, but I do find it useful to conceptualize these large amorphous organizations as their own living things. The layers of network in which we exist act like a sort of ecosystem, and biological language is well suited for discussing their patterns and relationships. However, like any model, it's just a lens through which we can view these things - only as real as one makes it.

I'm not sure how humans are dehumanized through the memetic-network model though. Is it the absence of that kernel of "free will", somehow independent of a larger system?

I've long thought that free will is a phantasm, but I also don't see it as necessary to the human condition.

I cannot accept that human beings are essentially fleshy robots programmed by their society, and nothing else. I can accept that these factors have some influence over people, I cannot accept that they have absolute influence over individuals. That takes it one step beyond what I can see as plausible. If we are nothing more than a point where various ideas have converged to take form, how can you explain individual preferences, personality and creativity? Someone, after all, created these norms, values and ideas. They did not spring out of the ether.
... or maybe they did. I definitely need to get hold of that book and see what they say.

the collection of shrapnel which I think constitutes the self comes from everywhere, not just society. Your personality, preferences, creativity, etc, are influenced by all the experiences you have - family, media, the climate you live in, the girl who sat in front of you in fifth grade, everything-- not just society. We each exist in dozens upon dozens of nested memetic networks - social ones, professional ones, and cultural ones.. they're not exactly distinct, either. And they all have a formative effect on the individual.

To bring the conversation back to Power --

Under this model, there are certain nodal relationships which are stronger than others. ("Not everything is equally interconnected!") If we want to look at, for example, the power that Christianity has over people, we need look no further than how well Christianity has invested itself in people's internal networks. A lot of people are linked to Christianity by familial, economic, moral, and intellectual relationships. When people act as a Christian, one might conceptualize this as the Christian meme acting through them.

We could view this as an exchange of power - the individual has sacrificed some of his individual agency for membership in the larger Christian network. But let's take it to the extreme and see if it still makes sense - let's visualize someone with ultimate agency, total free will. This person would have to exist independently of any other network. No memeplex would be able to work it's "will" through him.

This person would have to be living alone on an island! Only there would he be totally free of outside influence.

And then what kind of free will is that? the freedom to pursue your biological needs in any order you prefer.   

[Cramulus]

also --

I want to go back to something you said earlier, because I think it answers a lot of your uneasiness about this model-----

Perhaps the room for individual agency is in the idea that we, as rational human beings, have the ability- and the responsibility- to choose which nodal networks to internalize. That is, different people select different groups and preferences to identify with for a variety of reasons (which we can see because if that wasn't the case, anyone with your background would be exactly the same as you, which certainly isn't my experience). So the process by which you choose which groups to identify with and which norms to internalize would be free will, or  . Probably not finished on that train of thought.

yes, to some degree, this is where the "individual" really emerges. It's the agent who is aware of his agency.

The Art of Memetics suggests that its in your best interest to sit down and have a long, hard look at the programs you're running. A long dark teatime of the soul. This is the beginning of being able to choose which ones are really good for you and which ones are baggage you've picked up riding around in your head.

That's really the core of the Black Iron Prison discussion. We have all chosen a lot of shrapnel which has become us. In a way, it is limiting. Even that stuff you like acts as a constraint on your behavior. But the point isn't to throw out everything and arrive at as much independence as possible - you really can't escape from the prison! The point is to be aware of the bars in your personally-constructed prison cell and knock down / replace the ones you don't like.

Power, as conceptualized in a nodal-network model, is the ability to move within and influence the network. Self awareness and the ability to reach for mental independence are absolutely quintessential.

[The Johnny]

[Cramulus]

I think Dolores has something to add, about how to cope with the idea of being cells in a giant entity -- http://chaosmarxism.blogspot.com/2009/09/there-is-war-between-rich-and-poor-war.html

Anyway. *ahem* Nothing happens because of great men or women, their great egos, their abilities to manipulate memes, etc. That's just an ideology which reflects the cultural-techician class masturbating to its own cooklness. No, to use religious language again - if it looks like you just kicked a door down, God already opened the door for you and you happened to be in the right place at the right time. This kind of humility isn't popular, though, because it goes against the reward structure of the Matrix - viz., if great individuals aren't the ones who cause change, if they are actually only expressions of broader forces within human society as a whole, then the whole basis of intellectual property and authoritarian leadership goes down the drain.

Polish your mirror. You can't individually change the world. But you can perhaps see where change is coming, and be in the right place at the right time at the right frame of mind so that the positive currents within humanity - the forces of Waking Up rather than Choking In Our Sleep - can use you as their gateway into the world. This means really realising that you don't own anything, you don't have any rights, that your ego is an artefact of the Matrix, that you are froth on the surface of crashing waves, but that if you know all this you can surrender yourself to the real forces which move everything, and make yourself a useful part of evolving, awakening Humanity.