I read some parts and skimmed others, and went back an forth connecting pieces of thoughts… I didn't see anywhere that you made it clear that humanity isn't just humans which are incorporated (in a material body, so to speak), but also the “dead” who are in the realm layered upon ours, from which the ethereal beings do the possessing. I think that is an important piece to consider: that ancestors who are healthy and aware of How Things Work are also present and able to possess us, which is a helpful thing for the human community, and ultimately for the stewardship of This.
(Im aware some memes inform my perspective; I find that unavoidable-- but actually something to work with)…
Thanks for blasting these thoughts out here; i agree that it’s important to be thinking about this stuff…
I think that can be a great frame. I also think it can be deceptive. And I didn't think it was central to the main point I wanted to make. So I didn't talk much about the way in which the dead are "with us" best as I can tell.
But I can say a little bit. I think we humans tend to identify with our memetic structures. A lot can change about our biology without our sense of self changing, but if something changes our *memetic structure* then there's a sense in which we want to say that *we* have changed.
When someone dies, the body that was cohering a particular memetic structure stops being able to do so, and the whole thing falls apart. But the memes themselves can in fact live in others. To the degree that they can run as coherent chunks, they can act kind of like tulpas: chunks of *personality* or even *memory* running on other people.
(The most mundane common expression of this I'm aware of is, we might repeat stories that our ancestors told, or stories *about* our ancestors. But there are more subtle things, like a way that we hold our bodies or hook our thumbs on our pockets being inherited from our ancestors, maybe without us being aware of it.)
The thing is, as far as I can tell, the *coherence* of the memetic structure really *is* lost. There might be some way of letting it survive the physical body and sort of hop between people, but I've never clearly seen that work. Instead you get memetic blobs that internally cohere (like Grandpa's particular quirky way of viewing right-wing politics), and those kind of persist and "talk" to us.
I carry some verbal and body-language quirks from basically everyone I've seriously dated. That'll continue in me even after they die. To the extent others pick up on those same quirks, those patterns would survive me too. So in that sense the "dead" can "live on".
But there isn't a *person* in those patterns. There are just some bits that they were identified with that manage to persist.
With that said: some people have *very strong* resonance with some kind of memetic attractor. Like being very strong-willed and loud tends to be paired with coming across as forceful. Resonating really strongly with what Jung would call archetypes can mean that the archetype lives *through* you. And if someone had a particular style of expressing an archetype, and you pick up on their style, that can act like a key to unlock that expression of that archetype *in you*. In that case it can come across pretty strongly like "Whoa, it's like Grandpa just spoke through you!"
I sometimes wonder if there might be enough of this kind of info in memespace to re-cohere the dead. My guess is that's quite hard, but in principle doable. In a way that re-cohering their *bodies* basically isn't.
Hm.. i often have a hard time following what you say. But a far as i can tell, I feel like i disagree. Couldn't say i can exactly put it into words for you why and how i disagree with the above... maybe it's that our paradigms are different, which is not a problem until we start trying to convince each other our paradigm is better... before time and experience on both our parts proves one over the other... or neither, and another!
Hmm. Well, let me try asking to understand: do you think the dead are basically just like us, only without bodies and in a kind of parallel realm that sort of interacts with ours?
I think they have bodies not like ours, and i think what's parallel is actually within us, and within this physical world… and i think ancestors aren't just human ancestors.
…and by within, I mean in the aetheric body encoded as historical DNA; so I believe our ancestors from since humans were a thing are still a thing in The Here…
I haven't had the chance to try to explain what I believe before…apologies if i'm clumsy with it…
It's quite possible I just agree, but in the context of this essay and the whole series I'm being somewhat careful not to rely on more magical-sounding language (e.g. "aetheric body"). My guess is that what you're calling "bodies not like ours" is what I was referring to as "coherence" in the context of memetic clusters.
The main spot we might disagree about is, I think the *default* is incoherence after death. I don't think the dead hold together. It *might* be *possible* for them to do so! But I think the standard story is more like, memes cohere *as a person* because there's a physical body, so when the physical body breaks down, some memes just die too (like firmware in a computer if the computer is destroyed) while others might carry on (like files or programs that are copied across machines). My guess is that if a memetic body isn't constructed to be independent of the physical body, then one doesn't exist by default.
One unknown for me is: is there *already* coherence beyond what humans know, such that some part of our memetic structure *already* has an additional "body"? That'd be something that deserves to be called the "soul". Like, if the world we see (the "physical world") is just part of some larger context, kind of like our souls are playing in a video game and need to don an avatar (the physical body with its various quirks and context).
If something like *that* is going on, then yeah, I'd totally expect some version of the deceased to continue on by default, depending on the details of what that larger context is.
But I still think that the person *as we knew them* will fragment. We can literally see that as the body rots for instance. What of them was stored in the body? Literally nothing? That strikes me as implausible.
A quick Google search with an AI summary says it’s about believing that everything is fundamentally physical. If that’s what you mean… um, I guess so? But I think that’s a misleading way to name what I believe. I’d have to also add something like, we don’t (and probably can’t) know the full extent of what “physical” necessarily must mean here.
But I do think that modern science-leaning cultures have a tendency toward what I might call naïve physicalism. And my view of memes is perfectly compatible with that view, best as I can tell.
Part of my point in this particular essay is, if you connect the dots on what science already must say about the evolution of behavior, you end up with something very much like a theory of the spirit world. And to deny that is logically equivalent to deny that there are living things. Which you can do! (Cf. emptiness!) But if we want to talk about how a lion is trying to catch its prey, and we want to say that’s not merely a metaphor, then it’s not merely a metaphor that corporations have intentions and that ideologies are trying to harvest human minds for their compute.
I say all that in this essay in part to try to build a bridge, because there’s part of the “physical” world that is very loud and dominates our world and yet mostly goes unnoticed. We think we’re arguing about politics or culture or economics, but even within the current worldview we’re actually more like food for thoughts. And we don’t have to be. So I’m hoping we can notice it more clearly.
Hey Michael.
I read some parts and skimmed others, and went back an forth connecting pieces of thoughts… I didn't see anywhere that you made it clear that humanity isn't just humans which are incorporated (in a material body, so to speak), but also the “dead” who are in the realm layered upon ours, from which the ethereal beings do the possessing. I think that is an important piece to consider: that ancestors who are healthy and aware of How Things Work are also present and able to possess us, which is a helpful thing for the human community, and ultimately for the stewardship of This.
(Im aware some memes inform my perspective; I find that unavoidable-- but actually something to work with)…
Thanks for blasting these thoughts out here; i agree that it’s important to be thinking about this stuff…
I think that can be a great frame. I also think it can be deceptive. And I didn't think it was central to the main point I wanted to make. So I didn't talk much about the way in which the dead are "with us" best as I can tell.
But I can say a little bit. I think we humans tend to identify with our memetic structures. A lot can change about our biology without our sense of self changing, but if something changes our *memetic structure* then there's a sense in which we want to say that *we* have changed.
When someone dies, the body that was cohering a particular memetic structure stops being able to do so, and the whole thing falls apart. But the memes themselves can in fact live in others. To the degree that they can run as coherent chunks, they can act kind of like tulpas: chunks of *personality* or even *memory* running on other people.
(The most mundane common expression of this I'm aware of is, we might repeat stories that our ancestors told, or stories *about* our ancestors. But there are more subtle things, like a way that we hold our bodies or hook our thumbs on our pockets being inherited from our ancestors, maybe without us being aware of it.)
The thing is, as far as I can tell, the *coherence* of the memetic structure really *is* lost. There might be some way of letting it survive the physical body and sort of hop between people, but I've never clearly seen that work. Instead you get memetic blobs that internally cohere (like Grandpa's particular quirky way of viewing right-wing politics), and those kind of persist and "talk" to us.
I carry some verbal and body-language quirks from basically everyone I've seriously dated. That'll continue in me even after they die. To the extent others pick up on those same quirks, those patterns would survive me too. So in that sense the "dead" can "live on".
But there isn't a *person* in those patterns. There are just some bits that they were identified with that manage to persist.
With that said: some people have *very strong* resonance with some kind of memetic attractor. Like being very strong-willed and loud tends to be paired with coming across as forceful. Resonating really strongly with what Jung would call archetypes can mean that the archetype lives *through* you. And if someone had a particular style of expressing an archetype, and you pick up on their style, that can act like a key to unlock that expression of that archetype *in you*. In that case it can come across pretty strongly like "Whoa, it's like Grandpa just spoke through you!"
I sometimes wonder if there might be enough of this kind of info in memespace to re-cohere the dead. My guess is that's quite hard, but in principle doable. In a way that re-cohering their *bodies* basically isn't.
Hm.. i often have a hard time following what you say. But a far as i can tell, I feel like i disagree. Couldn't say i can exactly put it into words for you why and how i disagree with the above... maybe it's that our paradigms are different, which is not a problem until we start trying to convince each other our paradigm is better... before time and experience on both our parts proves one over the other... or neither, and another!
Hmm. Well, let me try asking to understand: do you think the dead are basically just like us, only without bodies and in a kind of parallel realm that sort of interacts with ours?
I think they have bodies not like ours, and i think what's parallel is actually within us, and within this physical world… and i think ancestors aren't just human ancestors.
…and by within, I mean in the aetheric body encoded as historical DNA; so I believe our ancestors from since humans were a thing are still a thing in The Here…
I haven't had the chance to try to explain what I believe before…apologies if i'm clumsy with it…
No problem, this stuff is tricky to talk about.
It's quite possible I just agree, but in the context of this essay and the whole series I'm being somewhat careful not to rely on more magical-sounding language (e.g. "aetheric body"). My guess is that what you're calling "bodies not like ours" is what I was referring to as "coherence" in the context of memetic clusters.
The main spot we might disagree about is, I think the *default* is incoherence after death. I don't think the dead hold together. It *might* be *possible* for them to do so! But I think the standard story is more like, memes cohere *as a person* because there's a physical body, so when the physical body breaks down, some memes just die too (like firmware in a computer if the computer is destroyed) while others might carry on (like files or programs that are copied across machines). My guess is that if a memetic body isn't constructed to be independent of the physical body, then one doesn't exist by default.
One unknown for me is: is there *already* coherence beyond what humans know, such that some part of our memetic structure *already* has an additional "body"? That'd be something that deserves to be called the "soul". Like, if the world we see (the "physical world") is just part of some larger context, kind of like our souls are playing in a video game and need to don an avatar (the physical body with its various quirks and context).
If something like *that* is going on, then yeah, I'd totally expect some version of the deceased to continue on by default, depending on the details of what that larger context is.
But I still think that the person *as we knew them* will fragment. We can literally see that as the body rots for instance. What of them was stored in the body? Literally nothing? That strikes me as implausible.
Are you a physicalist?
I don’t know! What does that mean?
A quick Google search with an AI summary says it’s about believing that everything is fundamentally physical. If that’s what you mean… um, I guess so? But I think that’s a misleading way to name what I believe. I’d have to also add something like, we don’t (and probably can’t) know the full extent of what “physical” necessarily must mean here.
But I do think that modern science-leaning cultures have a tendency toward what I might call naïve physicalism. And my view of memes is perfectly compatible with that view, best as I can tell.
Part of my point in this particular essay is, if you connect the dots on what science already must say about the evolution of behavior, you end up with something very much like a theory of the spirit world. And to deny that is logically equivalent to deny that there are living things. Which you can do! (Cf. emptiness!) But if we want to talk about how a lion is trying to catch its prey, and we want to say that’s not merely a metaphor, then it’s not merely a metaphor that corporations have intentions and that ideologies are trying to harvest human minds for their compute.
I say all that in this essay in part to try to build a bridge, because there’s part of the “physical” world that is very loud and dominates our world and yet mostly goes unnoticed. We think we’re arguing about politics or culture or economics, but even within the current worldview we’re actually more like food for thoughts. And we don’t have to be. So I’m hoping we can notice it more clearly.
Are these teachings mostly online or do you also share them in person in some format?
Right now, mostly online. I don't have a venue for delivering this stuff in person right now. I'd be happy to accept one though!