Comments on: Dangerous Little Memes

By: Frank Michael

Frank Michael — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:02:10 +0000

Hi Dave, I’m new to your blog.Here’s a dangerous little meme: blessed be those who live in the suburbs, because they already have rain gutters to collect rainwater, and because they have some yard area which they can convert to square foot gardens and solar strawbale greenhouses to feed themselves and others. And build a double hole composting outhouse. rsvp,Frank Michael

By: Kyle Schuant

Kyle Schuant — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 04:15:20 +0000

I don’t think Sharon Astyk’s readers had an “offended response” about the ideas of “radical simplicity.” The issue was simply some bad, imprecise writing. She said we should become “peasants”, but didn’t specify what exactly that meant. As a result, some readers talked about a French farmer in the modern day, while others talked about Kalahari Bushmen. These are VERY different lifestyles, and need to be distinguished. One is happy but unsustainable, the other miserable but sustainable; surely it is not beyond human ingenuity, and good husbandry of resources, to find a way which is both happy and sustainable. We could look for example at Cuba. While they are not sustainable, using as they do 3 barrels of oil per person annually, since most of that goes to power generation, they could be sustainable, using solar and wind, and perhaps some ethanol from all that sugar cane they grow. Whereas the USA or Australia’s 24 barrels per person annually certainly could not be. Cuba also produces a lot of its food in the cities. Food production has become for them like child care is for us – most people do some at home, though limitations of time and space mean they sometimes pay others to do it a bit; some do none, others do it all themselves. The lifestyle of Cubans is not as materially rich as in the West, but it is not what comes to mind when someone says, “peasant”, which to most people will mean, “someone living on their land, with no power or running water, only just producing enough food to survive.” I don’t believe we’re dooomed to that. I also think that it’s perhaps a bit soon for you to assume you’ve reached enlightenment, O Buddha :p You have a very good and significant PART of the truth, but not it all.

By: Mariella

Mariella — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 04:02:45 +0000

…and what about an “anti meme” : Thou shalt not conquer the Earth…. ¿Could we be able to validate both meme and anti meme together at the same time?

By: lugon

lugon — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 16:32:20 +0000

What would such a set of “dangerous little memes” look like? Each is supposed to be disruptive, obvious and small. Small like a point that can take you to different lines. (Some will follow some lines, others will follow others.)I don’t know how to start, so I’ll grab the meme you suggest and look at it for clues. You say the [approach of seeking] “solutions” as “ways to keep things mostly the way they are” is completely mistaken.Here you simply highlight something the other person has implied, and needle it dead without further explanation.So maybe it’s a matter of first looking at other people’s (and our own’s) “lethal memes” and then suggesting there are alternatives?Some lethal memes: “thou shalt conquer the Earth”, “animals and humans” (I mean the division) … what else?

By: Janene

Janene — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 16:03:39 +0000

Hey Dave –You are reading my mind, again :-)And in this case, it is a great thing, because I often feel guilty that I am not able to put more (effective) effort into spreading alot of these ideas. Sure, I debate a fair amount with others ‘already on the path’ but I find it extremely difficult to even think about starting a conversation with someone that is not here yet. But I *do* drop a lot of little paradigm ‘tweaks’ into conversations. As silly as it is, your thoughts make me feel more…. comfortable with that behavior. Janeneps Hi Chris! Good to see you out and about. Hope all is well :-)

By: Ed Diril

Ed Diril — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:22:19 +0000

It is certainly not about forcing our own beliefs down someone else’s throat. That approach simply creates more resistance. OTOH, there certainly are absolute truths with which we either align or not and we face the consequences of our alignment.My answer is that when you are able to identify the absolutes and can articulate them, the ones who need to find them will find them one way or another so long as you make your material available. You cannot pick who these people will be and how they’ll find their way to your material, but they will. Just like you somehow found your way to the books you read and the ideas you were infected with; and the way your readers found their way to this blog.All you have to do is make it available and easy to reach. Blogs are wonderful for this. That’s why I started my blog too.

By: Jordan Mechano

Jordan Mechano — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:12:31 +0000

This is EXACTLY how I feel. Wow. Thank you for the post.

By: laodan

laodan — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:12:02 +0000

Oh Oh. Is this about erasing your own contradiction?In an article he wrote a few years ago George Monbiot referred to the silence you write about in this post observing that many well educated people he knows had jumped from the ship of the rat race and were now leading simple lives out of sight from media projectors. Many of them have JK, Lao Tzu, Castaneda and others on their bookshelves and, in all likelihood, would agree with the comments of Vish Goda.Change is our reality and we are no more than particles on its waves. The art of life (wisdom) is to know and accept our limitations and then to surf those waves of change… The wind that blows the waves forward does not come out of the blue and knows about its direction. Humans seem not to know about that. Driven by their ideologies they toil at changing the wind’s direction. Sisyphus. “Those who love you, will still listen, but hoping that you would someday come to your senses…”. I’m one of those who continue to read your posts hoping you come to your senses. It seems you are on the right way.Bestlaodan

By: Jacob Haqq-Misra

Jacob Haqq-Misra — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:07:57 +0000

This is a frustration I regularly share: I have come to this place in life through a series of things I've read, experiences I've had, and people I've met. There is no simple way to summarize this wealth of knowledge and experience in conversation (or even writing, for that matter). In conversation, listeners often are thinking of objections rather than trying to understand, but at least with writing, the readers have a chance to things about the content and digest the material. We might not change someone's mind with a single blog entry, but a blog entry could contribute to a person's own journey.I'm looking forward to hearing about your meme experiments. I've noticed that my vocabulary has changed over the years (such as how I refer to civilization, nature, and so on), but these clues are probably too subtle for most people to pick up on.

By: Mariella

Mariella — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 14:05:08 +0000

“The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding” — The Kybalion…..This hermetic axiom is more than 6000 years old…This little and simple book contains my favorite non ethic memes “to drop gently into conversations about…” ———The one I like best is inside the “polarity principle” and says that “all truths are only half truths”…http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.asp?chapter=X