“When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in you life
Is the one staring back from the glass..” -Steve Benedict
So, Nicholas Nassem Taleb once said something funny – actually he often says funny things – that he suspects the real reason for IQ tests and school grades is simply allowing higher IQ nerds self congratulate each other endlessly on their purported intelligence.
Begs the question a bit, but what the hell, I think he has a point.
In a real way, a lot of what I’m trying to say boils down to, few care about the past of those you or I wish to claim as our own, irrespective of whether they are our own (rarely) or if we are trying to co-opt the past of others..
“Laysa marrau, man qala ‘Kaana Abi‘ wa lakin marru man yaqulu ‘Ha Ana dha”
“He is not a man who says ‘my father was‘, but the man is he who says ‘here I am” – an Arab proverb
What is relevant is what you are doing, now.
The herd is for sheep, do you wish to be among sheep or among men?
Clinging to the herd for identity instead of a holistic self identity that takes into account both the herd and your individual skills and talents is what matters, to me. Personally I draw inspiration from, and am constantly fascinated by, the way in which the Quran’s narrative focuses on letting go of your fathers, this shouldn’t be misunderstood it’s a matter of emphasis, but of killing your nostalgia – your fathers and your mothers are not you, you are a sum total of their contributions, but with other subtle elements that escape them.
You are a unique and new creation, historical continuity is important, but false revisionist continuity as a feel-good strategy is ultimately a dead in. Wallowing in other people’s glory is a substitute for achieving your own glory.
So, like I said, Memetics affects Genetics – though not in the way many might think.
My opposition to the idea of biological determinism isn’t because of its baleful consequences in history; if a dangerous idea were true I would support it without question though one would, at least, hope I’d have some intelligence as to how, and to whom, I articulate it.
However in this case the idea as it’s often bandied about is simply false and somewhat stupid – I mean, the fact that it’s led to gas chambers, firing squads, and chattel slavery is pretty horrific, but when it comes down to it I just don’t like tendentiously advanced stupid ideas that are not true.
The stupidity, and falseness is more a matter of emphasis, putting things out of their proper places to fulfill certain social and cultural and political agendas – it also can lead, and has led, to people being killed in horrible ways.
Consequences do not affect whether an idea is true or not but they should be considered in seeing why certain ideas are attractive to others.
And consequences likely determine why certain ideas are attractive to others.
Powerful environmental conditions leaves genetic imprints, this is something that modern science is increasingly discovering. The evidence for this previously was slim, but it is slowly becoming increasingly recognized and we expect that in another generation the full ramifications of this will be seen.
Cultural environment mimics and even molds physical environment itself, to not expect it to also have an impact would be most foolhardy.
It’s becoming recognized that certain genetic changes can occur far more rapidly than previously thought. But how?
We don’t know all of the mechanisms. My argument is that a society’s dominant memetic frame – for worse or better, or both – can induce epigenetic responses in individuals through everything from dominant activities, sports, exercises, sexual practice modes and modalities, language, grammar in particular, – thereby molding the individuals’ brains and their perception of reality itself, food and drink, folk pathways and rituals.
Climate of a region as well can influence both culture and epigenetic responses to that climate, when a people move to a new area with differing climate, habits developed in the older area initially as pragmatic responses to the climate will continue for some time, in particular if they are framed in a sacred context.
Feast and famine cycles are known to have epigenetic ramifications, class stratifications and specific modes of food and luxury item consumption in a society, part of their operative memetic framework, can mimic artificial feast/famine conditions. Picture the eternal gorge and purge of the patrician..
Some epigenetic changes have hereditary impacts. Science is just starting to wrap its
This way of seeing things may seem to emphasize individuals, but it does in the context of the group. Both are important.
Saying environments: physical, and emotional, intellectual, cultural, religious, and more subtle levels, influence the physical man or woman in ways that may trump certain hereditary and evolved genetics, doesn’t minimize genetic aspects of your character that are immutable – there are many we may discover someday.
It does mean you can turn off, or turn on, or induce rapidly faculties of yourself, and on an aggregate level of many individuals in a society social and intellectual conditions can do this at large.
Within generous limits; culture and the epigenetic dance together – the waltz gene expression, the jitterbug of the magic ability of humanity, the most adaptable and moldable species in the world, to adapt to any environment: physical climatic, or cultural mental and spiritual.
A slight edge of predispositions towards some activities or others that one population may have, over another, may just be simply the result of several generations of adaptation to specific areas. Giver 300 years things can even up greatly. Perhaps even over 100 years.
Obvious Implications: the yarn goes as follows, those exhibiting great cultural or scientific development do so, and it follows, because of their innate cognitive superiority. Those exhibiting great physical prowess, also, do so exclusively because of genetics. Those without such facility are because they are congenitally deprived.
Thus the march of culture and civilization depends on developing the right kind of people, and preventing the wrong kind of people from predominating, compassionately of course, caring for their needs in reservations of some sort until they have the common decency to die off and let the truly useful and ‘better sort’ inherit the world.
This idea is quite seductive to some people, particularly when articulated with a silver lined tongue (or pen) – indeed a good deal of modern liberalism and progressivism alike have their origins in such thoughts of exceptionalism. That a good deal of the modern conservative discourse also does is a foregone conclusion and sensible people needen’t have it pointed out to them.
Part of the seductiveness is because there may be some ring of truth to it.
Certain types of talents and gifts do appear to be innate; one child astonishes you with her facility in drawing, her grasp of perspective, and another by his physical dexterity, seemingly effortless. Some appear to “get it” when it comes to certain ideas, to be drawn towards certain things, to easily grasp what others are unable to.
On the other hand the dirty secret, when looking at a population at large, is that effort trumps all things, effort applied with manical focus in a direction will produce excellence, the degree of excellence may differ from person to person but heights are heights.
Secondly; for the most part, let’s face it folks, most of us are rather ordinary and commonplace people, things average out.
In fact, to be rude and bastardly, most people are blindingly mediocre. This is exceptionally apparent, to anyone who travels, among some of the more supposedly gifted people of the world. Hence we find ourselves staring at the myth of exceptionalism. The vast majority of people of any race, any ethnos, any nation, are usually quite mediocre by the very standards they value.
This is not a bad thing; a population full of exceptionally gifted and serious Wunderkinder reminds one of a perverse episode of Lake Woebegone. Frankly society works best if many people do necessary things, things vital for survival, like hunting, farming, cooking, and of course defense. Having and raising children and fixing things trumps scrying the secrets of the universe in an atomic teacup and inventing new weapons of war. All things should be kept in proper proportions.