AHumans' grand theory of the state

Blades

Below is a post that I've just written in findmes' thread 'what makes your group (insert political group here) better than another?' in which I've finally put into words an idea that I've been mulling over for a few weeks now - namedly, the idea that the state is a self-replicating, self-serving memetic entity that exists for the benefit of its own reproduction and not for the benefit of the humans who replicate it. I'm quite excited about sharing this idea, because if what I'm saying is correct then the deeper implications of the 'predatory meme' concept upon humanity could be significant and far-reaching. It's quite a lot to read, but I give you my personal, pompous e-garuntee that it'll be worth your while and give you some food-for-thought to chew over for a while

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I have a somewhat different perspective on why government must not exist. It takes some explaining, but I really think that I'm onto something in this line of thought...

In biology, the gene is the unit of inheritance that is passed from successful parent to child, who if successful themself will in turn pass that gene on to its child... and so on and so on, the gene is a unit of hereditary information than is copied and copied if it is a 'good' gene and quickly removed from the gene pool by natural selection if it is a 'bad' gene. A very similar concept as regarding to information has relatively recently been realised, which we call a 'meme'. Effectively, a meme is any unit of information that is replicated by human culture - if it is a good meme then it is replicated, if it is a bad meme the unit of information quickly fades into unpopularity and obscurity. An example is a joke - "Knock knock, who's there?", let's say. This is a GOOD meme, a very good meme, because everybody has heard 'knock knock' jokes and likely themselves know a few 'knock knock' jokes, probably even having told them to friends and thus themselves having contributed to the replication of this meme. A song might be another example, this time of a potentially bad meme - if a song flounders on the charts and is quickly forgotten by everyone except for Wikipedia, it is a bad meme that has failed to replicate itself as successfully as other 'good' memes.

Why is a meme successful? In the case of the 'knock knock' jokes or songs in the charts, it's because people LIKE some value which the meme apparently has going for it - the joke is 'funny' and people like funny jokes, so they tell the joke to each other to make each other laugh, or the pop song is 'cool' so the 'cool' kids play it at their parties, where other 'cool' kids listen to it and feel pressured/are unsophisticated and uncultured enough to like it. Essentially, memes serve some kind of human need which makes us want to replicate them because we like the meme/the entertainment the meme provides - however, what we don't realise when we tell a 'knock knock' joke it's a two way street, for we're actually benefiting the meme too by reproducing it, which replicates the meme and makes it spread in the meme pool just as any good gene does in the gene pool. If nature can be said to be the selector of which genes survive and which don't, humans can be said to the selector of which memes survive and which don't. This isn't surprising, because we've created the memes in the first place!

However, imagine a predatory meme. Imagine a meme that doesn't actually benefit the people who spread it whatsoever... indeed, it actively surpresses them TO FURTHER ITSELF at the expense of the individual. This is a selfish meme, a meme that has been mega, ultra successful in the meme pool because it PREYS UPON some aspect of human culture and the human brain that actually forces us to replicate it... meet the state. As a meme, we may state the state (pun!) to be something like the following - 'This meme organises people as a unified group led and governed by a centralised authority; this is a meme for centralising power.' Note that the state is actively BAD for the huge majority of the people involved in it, who are told what to do by it, sent away by the state to die in wars for the 'the love of their country', pay taxes/personal resources to the state and otherwise live their entire lives serving the state/state economy primarily and serving themselves as a secondary result of serving the state. So why would people ever replicate this nasty, sinister meme?

The reason is quite haunting - 'by default'. A state of anarchy has never truly been and probably never will be as strong as a centralised state, especially a military state. Let's take America. The Indians were living in tribal societies that could largely be pretty easily be described as libertarian socialist... and even if you classify them differently, the important fact is that they certainly were never living under a 'state' - besides for the great civilisations in South/Meso America (Aztecs, Incas etc) and the Iroqouit/unified Sioux confederations, with the latter two not properly being able to be considered to be 'states' anyhow. So, the Indians were living in a state of natural anarchy and stateless-ism, under which the people had largely self-organised into self-sufficient groups in which they lived. The British, on the other hand, had long been organised under the centralised authority of The Crown, with all people on the island of Great Britain being 'British' and pledging allegience to that British identity. The stateless Indians were, by almost all reports from the time, the healthiest, strongest and 'happiest' people alive in the 17/1800's - many of the Plains Indian men grew to over 6 feet, could chase down and spear a buffalo on foot (for fun!), ate as much as they wanted of whatever was available to the tribe at any point of the day they wanted to eat it and were free to pursue whatever tribal career they wanted to/were 'fated' to; warrior, medicine man, arrow-maker, horse trainer, even become 'women' by choosing to perform the duties of women and self identify as being women trapped in mens bodies! Compare this to the British - relatively short, relatively weak, a huge percentage of them in dire poverty with barely enough to feed their filthy, disease-ridden families, dismally unhappy and living in a society in which their career choices were dictated to them by class distinction and personal circumstance. Practically all lower class Brits (which was the overwhelming majority of them...) would have been very unhappy indeed, and practically all of the classless Indians would have been very happy people. How did these weak, unhappy people conquer such strong, happy people?

By default, as said - the Indians are weaker than the British BY DEFAULT of not being organised into a centralised state with the power to resist attacks by centralised states. Anarchy is a fine dominant meme for a society to have if they don't face the threat of organised states invading them, but if these states exist then they will inevitably face annihilation by default of stateless-ism being a weaker meme on a 'society' level than statism is. Note that this doesn't say that statism is a 'better' meme - indeed, as I've discussed it's far worse for those living under it than the stateless alterantive is - it just says that it's a 'stronger' meme, and this is all it takes to make it successful. The Indians and their dominant meme of anarchy/libertarian socialism may have resulted in the Indians being individually stronger/happier than the British, but if you pit unorganised strong, happy individuals against a horde of organised weak, unhappy individuals (who are all burning to conquer their land so that they themselves can be strong/happy), the stateless society will inevitably crumble beneath the state society by default of anarchy being militarily weaker than a centralised state.

And doesn't that terrify you?! We're sacrificing our labour, resources, human potential and happiness to a predatory meme that we ourselves have created, all for the benefit of the meme itself! We are getting PLAYED LIKE SUCKERS by something that is only more successful than its stateless alternative BY DEFAULT of organisation being stronger than non-organisation on a mass scale, not because this meme is more successful at providing human happiness to its stateless alternative! THIS is why we must tear down the state, because it is a parasitic leech that drains us of our physical resources and metal happines/liberty and gives nothing back, only uses us to further its own survival and reproduction... and here's where I turn to your next quote

Money is also a human construction that we replicate and replicate through pouring all of our time/resources into it, which accumulates and 'reproduces' as a result of our efforts. Money is very arguably a predatory meme comparable to a state, a parasitic leech that is feeding off of us to further its own survival and dominance, as a meme, in the meme pool. We are being held up at gunpoint by the very safe that we're trying to steal...

Being born blind or retarded is a fact of biology, it happens and there's nothing we, as a society, can do about it. Being born poor is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION, and we absolutely can do something about it - there's no intrinsic difference between a poor boy and a rich man if you take all their money away from them, the difference is one that we have created. If we can create it, we can destroy it and make everyone equal by shutting down the very thing that makes them unequal in the first place - money.

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So, there we have it! Discuss! Is the 'predatory meme' a legitimate concept? Is the state a predatory meme? Is money a predatory meme? What other predatory memes exist? I'm thinking religion to be one, but I'd love some input and other peoples ideas on just what other memetic parasites we might be serving.

And finally, if you've read this far... cheers!

 

Some form, sure, money is a useful tool in the very difficult task of comparing apples and oranges... I'm talking about the pursuit of money, money used as an indicator of social status and as a means of acquiring goods/putting goods back into society.

If anything I'd have to think that religion MIGHT not be a proper 'predatory meme', because it does arguably 'give back' in the form of religious bliss - you know what I mean, the insipid comfort a creationist feels because they're right and can never be wrong because God's on their side and that's that. On the other hand, this might not be a 'benefit' anyhow, and it shows that religion as a meme preys upon peoples need for intellectual security, thus stunting their mental development into a freethinking person with no fear of challenging their ideas.

Mmmhmm... they might as well tell their kids that the holocaust never happened ("and that's the TRUTH, son!"), that Earth is flat or anything else that the evidence overwhelmingly condemns but is 'truth' anyway.

AHA! You've misunderstood the point man - 'a state of anarchy would be much better than any statist society because it doesn't force people to do anything', sure, but would it be stronger? If you had a society where everybody is forced to do 40 pushups, 200 situps, weights training and combat training every day, would it really matter if they're forced to do it when we consider that the end result is a country of very strong (and oppressed) people? It would ethically, because that's fucked up, but we're talking about whether this centralised military pushup state is STRONGER than the anarchist society... and you'd have to be blind to think that the anarchists are going to be stronger than the well-muscled, well trained people in this fictitious hyper-military state. And this is why statism is such a successful meme - because the alternative is 'weaker'. Not inferior, anarchy is far superior because everybody has the freedom to do as they wish - but weaker, because this freedom undermines the unity that a state has and uses to its advantange in crushing anarchist societies around the world.

Quoted for truth.

Got it one man, I'm not talking about money as you've put it in your salmon/loaves of bread example - money of this nature is simply a convenient and useful way of comparing the two 'values' of a pair of items. I'm talking about money as a commodity itself... the glorious phenomenon of fiat money

 

A communal 'resource pool' from which any contributing member of society can take anything they want, thus making money redundant and meaningless because anything you can buy for money you can just take for free from the resource pool anyways...

Meh, the strong man argument is arbitrary, suppose the state was devoted towards making nukes, if every man, woman and child worked at their jobs to assemble nuclear missiles to 'defend' the state against roving anarchists. Fact is, a heirarchal group of people organised under a state will always have more potential for 'strength' due to having an enforced chain of command, being able to tell someone to do something. It's wrong, nobody should be told what to do, but it's none-the-less the case. This is indeed my argument - that the state generates evil by bringing out the worst in mankind in serving an entity that (though created by mankind to begin with) is in constant competition with other states.

Possibly true, you can certainly create a lot more wealth a lot faster than you can under socialism. Whether that wealth and growth is sustainable or not is a different question... one that we shan't go into here, for fear of derailing the thread too much from its original topic

Charity will never address the root of the problem, it cures the surface symptoms but as soon as it is shut off the people are just as poor as they were before they started getting sent food, machines etc. The focus must be on building these people up to sustainably taking care of themselves and, more importantly, exercising complete self-determination. You give them charity and they lose this self-determination, they have those giving the charity determining their futures for them, determining whether they eat or starve etc. 'Charity' indeed has a lot of potential to make the problem worse, we need to SHARE with these people rather than just giving them whatever we have too much of and can afford to essentially throw away.

 

Bolded for truth, bolded and underlined for greater truth... I'm not educated on economics much so I can't talk too much on the first part (gold/silver etc), but I've heard many good words spoken about the validity of a gold standard and practically nothing against it so I'm gonna have to extend my bestowels of truth to say "not underlined/bolded for truth, also!"

It's not charity, charity is one person giving to another for no return - this 'pool of resources' is one that everybody contributes to and everybody takes from; 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'.

Got it in one bud, there's no point and you wouldn't pay the surgeon.

The incentive varies from person to person. Some might be particularly passionate about being a surgeon and always have been - think of those kids who always wanted to grow up to be a fireman and ended up becoming a fireman. A different person might have a surgeon for a father, or come from a family involved in the medical services, and thus there's family pressure for him to pick up the scalpel. Another man might get his life saved by a free surgeon and decide himself to pursue becoming a surgeon, so as to give the gift of life to others (for free) the same way that it was given to him (for free). Other people might simply say "Well, someone's gotta do it and I have the brains/good hand control to do it, so I might as well - after all, what better job do I have to dedicate my talents towards than becoming a surgeon?" There are many incentives, all slightly different for each person...

If someone wants something and society can provide it, why wouldn't they? Obviously there are limits, one man who sits behind a paper shredder all day shredding paper wouldn't be taken very seriously if he said "ALRIGHT SOCIETY, I WANTS ME A MANSION... SO BUILD IT!" But otherwise, why wouldn't the people be able to provide for each others wants as well as needs? Say I want a new guitar. I say to the local luthier "Hey man, when do you think you have time to make me a guitar?" - for there would be priorities of labour, lathing out ruts for a bridge would clearly be more important than making a guitar, especially if I already have one. But supposing that he's not focusing his labour towards something socially vital, he'd probably say "I got some time in a week or so, what do you want man? What music do you play, what wood do you want for it, what scale neck are you after?" and so on and so forth. And this, to me, is far better - I can tell him what I want and get it made exactly how I'd like it, rather than looking through a myriad of guitars in a store and eventually finding one that suits me but still will never have EVERYTHING I want in a guitar, it'll never be a perfect guitar. Not so for my hypothetical custom guitar, which would completely satisfy me - after all, what's the point in the luthier making a product that the consumer isn't satisfied with if the entire point of the luthiers job is TO satisfy the consumer (and not to make a profit)?

Who do you think build the pyramids, voluntary workers? How many lower class Brits do you really think wanted to live in that society of oppression and dictatorship from above? Fuck man, how many people in North Korea do you think actually want to be there and how many are only there because of the social pressure/threat of military men getting on your throat if you ask the wrong questions? Man, even HERE people are slaves, even in America you are all slaves - to whom? To the corporations whom you work for and buy from, who have you by the balls... giving you crumbs from their table, only to take it all back off you when you go and shop in their stores. To the contrary of your statement that 'the people would get tired of being slaves', it seems to me that slavery all too often comes about because of apathy, because the slaves get tired of fighting the system and lie down because it's easier to keep your head low and do what they tell you to rather than carrying on fighting the tyrants.

This is actually a very good point... however, everything must be voluntary (and so no one is forced to do anything) for socialism to work and sharing the same economic/social system as first world countries doesn't mean that the people of the third world lose the right to control their destinies as they please. There is no government telling them what and what not to do, only the people themselves, and those people are very capable of handling their own affairs once they get their feet on the ground.

Once again, nobody's forcing anyone to do anything, voluntarism is vital to the success of socialism... or any other system other than statism

 

I don't see how you can force voluntarism, and I don't see where you pull statements such as 'You can't say that they aren't being forced because they are' from without telling me HOW they are being forced... regardless, there's no coercion present. No monopoly on force, not even any USAGE of force, the person has a choice - work as according to the mutual labour contract, or move to 'your society' and work as according to the free market. I could just as easily say that you're forcing people to work... if they don't work, they have no money, and if they don't have any money then they don't have anything to eat and end up dead - in my society, money is cut out so that it reads 'if they don't work, they don't have anything to eat and end up dead'. Both present the same choice... work or die, sad as it is to have to put it so starkly. I guess it's all a matter of what/who you want to work for - the community and benefit of the people, or the free market and the benefit of yourself.

 

You are primarily benefiting yourself in the free market, with secondary benefits trickling down to others. Fuck man, you might as well use the same logic to support crony corporate capitalism - the monopolies that these bosses have creates mega jobs, makes the corporation expand, gives even more people jobs and everyone benefits! As we know, it's not like this - for every one 'percent' of benefit that the people recieve from a corporation hiring more workers or expanding, there is one hundred 'percent' benefit going to the corporation owner. The numbers are purely arbitrary, but the point is that the only benefits we recieve are crumbs from the table of the business owner because he has so goddam much wealth that he can afford to give some away to the people by employing them... only because, of course, he benefits even more by doing so!

Any o'le how, we're probably derailing the thread a bit with all of this conversation about markets, socialism, poverty and all the rest of it. We've had some awesome convos and battles of opinion, but from here on in (for this thread, anyhow) we'd better handle further debates that are off-topic through private messages and the like

 

Indeed, it's hard to make proper predictions about the future based upon today. We must remember that the people of tomorrow have been primed by the realities of today and are, to an extent, mentally conditioned to the realities of today. It just takes a good ol'e social revolution in thinking though, a la the sexual liberation/black emancipation movements of the 1960's or the 'Enlightenment' of the 17/1800's. Hopefully something like this is gonna come along soon and we'll all ride the wave of a public shift in opinion to detesting the institution of government...