Yet another overloaded ersatz BIP metaphor

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I came across a document (credited to Terrence McKenna, but it was short and full of misspellings, and would probably constitute an anachronism due to the content, so this is questionable but irrelevant to the point) comparing culture to an OS for the human biocomputer. I like this metaphor, but I think the way that this may-be-or-not-McKenna explained it was total BS and was not taking full advantage of the metaphor. So, this is my attempt at an extension/rewrite to make this coincide with the various attempts at making a less clunky map-pataphor covering the BIP's territory.

So, as a child, you are more or less indoctrinated into culture. Before you have said your first words, you have already been imprinted with certain functions in more or less the way that is standard across the culture. By the time you reach puberty, you are expected to more or less have a default install -- this is the function of schools and of family units, generally, as well as one of the functions of television and other audiovisual media. Part of this cultural imprinting is highly pragmatic (in the colloquial sense): it is far easier to interact with a large network of nearly-identical systems than to interact with a large network of highly disparate systems, and so it is a benefit to both maintenance crews (administration types, arguably, and probably law enforcement too) and to anyone who needs to interact with a very large swath of strangers (advertisers, salespeople, marketing people, news media, entertainment media, &c.) since you can assume that most of the time the software will be nearly exactly the same -- people are trained to do little more than changing the cognitive equivalent of their desktop wallpapers and homepages, and they rarely even write their own files, instead being comfortable with downloading other people's image macros and saving archives of internet chain letters.

But, little do most people know that their cultural OS is in fact open source. They have been trained to stay away from the text editor and compiler, and they have been trained to deny that they can program, although they certainly know that they are written in the language of dream logic.

You know the language you are written in. You know how to modify your existing programs. Why don't you fix a bug or two, write a game or a utility here and there? Script some common actions, and change your API when it will benefit you.

Before you know it, you are no longer stock. Sure, you look the same from the outside -- the interface is transparent, so you seem to be using the same protocols. But you've been tuned up -- optimized under the hood, with hidden functions that your friends don't know about and fixes for the common exploits that nobody has released patches for despite the fact that the script kiddies have been using them to send you popup spam since the advent of television.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I don't remember McKenna using a computer metaphor, but both Leary and Wilson use it. Antero Alli uses Robot/Gears, but also uses programming metaphors. I like your extentions  (Open Source and downloading macros).  If you haven't already read through the model RAW laid out in Prometheus Rising, I recommend it (someone has a link to the PDF around here). I think you could probably extend it quite nicely.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I have read Prometheus Rising more times than I can remember. Mostly I was just (as someone who has written OSes) verbally vomiting all over this potentially-ersatz-McKenna's blatant ignorance of most of what OSes are constituted of and his seeming lack of desire to use the obvious extensions of the meaning of the metaphor. (His metaphor was mostly about how you can use hallucinogens to erase your cultural conditioning entirely).

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I have read Prometheus Rising more times than I can remember. Mostly I was just (as someone who has written OSes) verbally vomiting all over this potentially-ersatz-McKenna's blatant ignorance of most of what OSes are constituted of and his seeming lack of desire to use the obvious extensions of the meaning of the metaphor. (His metaphor was mostly about how you can use hallucinogens to erase your cultural conditioning entirely).

I must have missed that one LOL
Do you has link to it?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I downloaded the PDF off scribd. http://namcub.accela-labs.com/pics/McKenna_-_Culture_is_Your_OS.pdf

[Reginald Ret]

can't find a serious flaw, but then again im tired.

[Golden Applesauce]

I actually like this a lot, as a metaphor.  (Your, version, not McKenna's.  Psychoactive drugs =/= reboot from new OS.)

But in practice, I'm not sure how useful it is.  This line:

You know the language you are written in. You know how to modify your existing programs. Why don't you fix a bug or two, write a game or a utility here and there? Script some common actions, and change your API when it will benefit you.

doesn't really ring true to me.  Maybe I'm just weird, but a LOT of these apply to me, and I don't really know how how to go about fixing them - and before I'd read psychology texts I only even knew about a handful of them.  Knowing about them, I can try to be aware of when I'm thinking erroneously, and then I can try to compensate (or at least devalue my own faulty perceptions) but I haven't a clue as to how to stop any of the major ones from occurring the the first place.  I can patch myself until the end of days, install new 'virtual machines,' but I know that my first response to anything new will probably be overly literal, semantic, and logic based.  I'm going to find people unattractive for no good reason, I'm going to allow my roommate's judgements on things I don't know much about to substitute for my own, (except for the one roommate I don't like.  I'm going to disagree with him for no good reason.)

[Golden Applesauce]

On reflection I realize that my response focused on a level lower than culture.

Yeah, culture is much more easily replaced/updated, although I suspect a clean scrub to be impossible short of near total amnesia.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

On reflection I realize that my response focused on a level lower than culture.

Yeah, culture is much more easily replaced/updated, although I suspect a clean scrub to be impossible short of near total amnesia.

Well, there are cases where near death experiences have led to people getting something like a clean scrub, even without amnesia. In general though, I agree with you,  I don't think a clean scrub is likely or even necessarily desirable. Our past experiences, past beliefs, bias etc all inform who we have become... its all shrapnel, stuck in us or at least leaving a scar. Reprogramming aspects of our personality or cultural views seems, to me, far more useful.

[Requia ☣]

Yoinked for Interrmittens.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Yoinked for Interrmittens.

Yay! I have been teh yoinked.

[the last yatto]

hmm so cliques would be different distros?

[Reginald Ret]

heh yeah sounds about right pinecone.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

heh yeah sounds about right pinecone.

[Reginald Ret]

not pinecone? mybad