The Virus

[sailing to byzantium]

Something has gone wrong with the human experiment. Problems worsen, like the days before a flu kicks into high gear, so we tighten our belts and charge ahead as best we can. Doubt itches and burns and infects our sleep, but we can't find a clear source of the problem. We know we do not feel well, and even use the term sickness. Could it be we're infected with a thought-virus?

Diseases are organisms which have adapted to a parasitic role. While a cold makes you sick, it is living off of your nutrients and spreading outside of you. Each sneeze spreads it further, and every meal goes in part to the cold. Idea viruses live in your mind and spread through your acts. Every time you go into work and every person seems to be repeating a clever phrase from a television comic or radio commentator, you have seen the thought-virus in action.

Read More (323 words): The Virus (http://www.corrupt.org/articles/virus/)

Discuss. Greetings all.

[Fawkes]

I think this may be a troll.....

[sailing to byzantium]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:52 pm
I think this may be a troll.....
No. I'm serious. I promise :).

[Councilman Doug]

Why is the word "class" not mentioned anywhere in the site's goal section?


Most people, especially our poorest, breed above replacement rates, so seven billion becomes nine billion and then twelve and then twenty. "Education" does not work; almost all of them are not intellectually capable of grasping the consequences of their overbreeding. In first world nations, breeding has slowed, but what this means is that our smarter people die out while hordes of people who could not develop first world wealth swell. We are not only overpopulating, but we are breeding from the lower strata of our intelligences.

Very revolutionary of you to equate wealth with intelligence.

[MrDoom]

'Though virus'? You mean memes...

All your base are belong to us.

[gilhyle]

We're infected with history. If we dont know what our situation is, that is the nature of all animals - cognition is selective and practical.

You don't like humans, fair enough.

You want to end humanity and return the planet to nature., fair enough.

But please, please, please, not 'memes' : surely the most trivial, pointless, superficial, insignificant concept ever put down on paper: maybe the only thought crime for which a tribunal should be set up in the Hague is the use of the concept of 'memes'. A few death penalties might bring this drivel to a well earned end.

[sailing to byzantium]

"Very revolutionary of you to equate wealth with intelligence."
How does the article do this? Most people overbreed; most of the people who are overbreeding are not very bright, because we alienate people of any intelligence in this society (generally because they commit the ultimate sin of questioning whether things really are as good as we are told).

The "hordes of people who could not develop first world wealth", need not be the poor, but are most certainly the incompetent (who exist at all levels of society). Wealth is being accumulated in the developed world, but its going largely to an undeserved 'elite'. Where it is in the hands of the masses, it is being used to buy useless crap which ends up as landfill pretty quickly.


"Why is the word "class" not mentioned anywhere in the site's goal section?"
Class orders people in terms of their wealth, their goal is to reinvisage society outside of the abitrary divisiveness of class and wealth. Removing financial oligarchy and the ideological basis of capitalism (materialism) are a part of this vision.

[Councilman Doug]

How does the article do this? Most people overbreed; most of the people who are overbreeding are not very bright, because we alienate people of any intelligence in this society (generally because they commit the ultimate sin of questioning whether things really are as good as we are told).


Did you actually read the quote? It clearly says that people from first world nations reproduce less because they are more intelligent.

[Severian]

Originally posted by from the article
This explanation summarizes 2,000 years of a slowly worsening society (albeit with more comfy technology) that continues to decline.

Really. Society has been steadily getting worse for 2,000 years?

If I had a time machine, I'd send this whiner and self-avowed reactionary back in time, see how he likes being a slave in Rome.

No, humanity has been making slow social progress for 2,000 years. This is a good thing, and we should try to accelerate it. Comfy technology is also good, plus it helps produce social progress.

From the site's FAQ:

2 - Biological: The best do not rise in Social Darwinist systems, so instead we are breeding humanity into two distinct groups, a vicious upperclass and a servile, near-chimpanzee stupid underclass.

Oh, so class has nothing to do with it, huh, Sailing? How about you come out and say what you really think?

I'm not going to bother further analyzing it. This is some intentially confusing shit: they don't want to come out and say what they're really for. Instead, they generate a lot of abstract verbal fog.

The only reason anybody has to do this is because they have something to hide. Either:
1. They really have nothing to say, like postmodernists and New-Age types, or
2. They core content of what they have to say is so depraved and atrocious they have to disguise it.

Oh, and "memes" or "thought viruses" is pseudoscience. There's no evidence that the evolution of ideas works by the same rules as the evolution of DNA. It could just as easily be, say, Lamarckian.

Even Richard Dawkins, who came up with the "meme" idea, admits this.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by sailing to [email protected] 10, 2007 12:23 am
we alienate people of any intelligence in this society (generally because they commit the ultimate sin of questioning whether things really are as good as we are told).


I think that is not the reason; as Kautsky suggested, the more likely reason is that it is an inherent tendency of capitalism to oversupply 'educated' (read 'trained' - educated is too loaded a term) people. Consequently, people who invest in education commonly have the experience of being 'under-demanded'. Education does not equate to being socially disruptive.

[SecurityManKillJoy]

The concept of thought-virus just goes back to mechanical materialism. We can just objectify everything, and chemicalize ideas so we can say they control a person like ideas are their own awareness, right?

Well, enough metaphysics. It is the user which makes use of the thoughts they have, even if we call them 'diseased' just because they keep making use of a certain select few ideas. If it's really that bad, step up and give them a few more ideas to use or reject.

The goals section also has too much mechanical materialism. I mean, it sounds just like a Raelian genetocracy, with the intelligent on top. Why not stop manhandling genetic ideas onto other peoples' subjectivity and rather give them new subjectivity to make use of if you think they're so stupid and prone to overbreeding? We're aware; every person has physical awareness and subjective memories; they're all approachable in some way and can make decisions like anyone. The new mechanical materialists of today know this better than anyone; they can think back to the time when they didn't have such mechanical materialist views, and simply lived life as an aware being making use of objects and memories like anyone else before learning about scientific research and subsequently making use of the metaphysical methods connected with that research.