This is just some rambling thought that came accross a list I'm on from the very engaging and witty Robert Merkin
Me Gusta Tu by Manu Chao, who is apparently a big hit in Europe right now.
Dearest friends, amigos, amigas, amiguitas, amies et amants,
It's moi, Euro-Backpack-Elmer again, with just a footnote to my silly Me Gusta Marijuana song by Manu Chao.
I knew bupkis, nada, zilch about Manu Chao when this little Argentine grrlie sent this metric shitload of a file (1 metric shitload = 0.897 English shitload). I'd heard it once before, maybe in the Caribbean. For all I knew, he might have been singing in Turkish. But I got the drift. And the whole song, every line, had instantly tickled something very deep in my soul. If listening to Me Gustas Tu were a drug, Larry could have charged me $20 a dose, and I'd have been very careful not to lose Larry's number.
In fact if I click on Me Gustas Tu one more time, my wife is going to divorce me, or stab me with a knitting needle.
Even just the lyrics, without the noise, has people e-mailing me for the mp3. My brother, who once, very briefly, wore a beret and was Wannabe Euro, sent me from memory, from 45 years ago, the lyrics to the Pop Song that blared that summer through every speaker in France.
The right song, the right rhythm, the right lyric, seem to be Brain Peanut Butter or Superglue of incredible strength and duration.
When I am not watching Jerry Springer in my torn undershorts and unmatched socks, I spend a huge amount of my time and energy trying to Persuade People. In fact, I am on a Mission From God to persuade all the governments of the world to let most of their prisoners out of jail immediately, and to cease all war and state violence within four months, and forever. When I have achieved these goals, I will get around to Reforming the Current Collapsed Æsthetic State of All Music, Art and Literature. Then I will take a short vacation.
This Bunch is also heavy-duty into equally ambitious Persuasion. Preston, Libby my Blog Neighbor, and Erin, the Mom Who Made Maryland Legalize Medical Marijuana, are just some of this bunch who kick ass in the Persuasion Arts.
A formerly active drugwar star, Andria E-M, lives in London and has a modest ambition: To persuade all the governments of Europe and the World to stop criminalizing and jailing needle-drug users and addicts, and to grant them all Human Rights, a voice in government drug policy, and even observer status at international drug treaty summits.
Don't laugh. She's winning. When prohibitionist governments lock her out of these summits, the world media surrounds her, interviews her, and her reform efforts get all the Euro-headlines. Her reform quotes for the camera are more colorful and interesting to the BBC producer than the UN Anti-Narcotics Commissioner's quotes, so Andria's on the BBC that night, and the Commissioner, with his million-Euro media blitz budget, isn't.
Yes, it's always seemed that Persuasion is an Art. But it's also become a Science. And the Science is called Meme Theory.
A Meme is just a fancy technical word for an Idea.
But in Meme Theory, we ignore the idea itself, and concentrate entirely on how some Great Ideas immediately are ignored and forgotten, while many Really Bad Ideas catch on with big crowds like wildfire, and take over the politics and history of entire nations or continents or generations.
A good example of a Really Bad but Highly Successful Meme is Hitler and the Nazi Agenda. When this Meme was born during the 1920s, with a couple of lonely, weird cranks screaming hatred and loony ideas on streetcorners, there were lots of competing Memes in Germany and Europe which I personally think were a lot better than conquest, genocide and totalitarianism. But Nazism quickly won the battle for the minds of the German people, and all over Europe, all the other competing ideas were extinguished for fifteen years.
Meme Theory looks at ideas as if they were little living organic critters, like bugs or ants, or Viruses ...
"Language is a virus." -- Laurie Anderson
... and, like the boll weevil they sing about down South, they're just a-lookin' for a home.
Every Meme is born in somebody's brain. Somebody thinks it, and then thinks, "Wow, this is a Great Idea! I want to share it! I want everybody on Earth to believe it!"
So the lonely baby Meme travels from the brain to the Thinker's Mouth or Fingers. And from there, via TV, radio, newspapers, the Internet, and gossiping in diners and grocery stores, and arguing in bars, the Meme tries to leap into the ears and the eyes which are the Input Devices of Other Peoples' Brains.
Will the newborn baby Meme find homes in new brains? Or will the new brains spit the new Meme out again, and the Meme won't find new homes in new human brains?
The Virus is the best analogy. Never mind what's in the center of a virus, never mind what disease it represents. If a virus can't leap from one human to another, and find a new home, and make more virus babies, it's going to Dead End and vanish from the Biosphere. Viruses can kill or cripple people, but they have to be very careful not to kill you too quickly -- before you have a chance to fuck or share a needle with someone. Only in Hollywood movies are there diseases which kill you in ten seconds, so you can't make it to Ted's party tonight.
There's a lot of mathematics that describe the way a disease or plague spreads through a human population. Exactly the same equations describe and predict how a Very Interesting Rumor spreads through a human population. "Did you hear what happened to the Governor of New Jersey?" bears a startling mathematical resemblence to smallpox or the Bubonic Plague or influenza.
Meme Theory looks instead at the ways, the Package, the sticky Protein Jacket, the hooks, the rewards, the little tricks, the candy-coated shell, helps a Meme leap from one human brain to the other.
The son of friends of mine spent three years as a Solid True Believer of a Nasty Cult. He was smart enough to be accepted at Harvard, there was seemingly nothing damaged or wrong with his brain. So there he is on his first week at Harvard, far from home, lonely, friendless, disoriented. Also, he is a Straight-A Honor Student Nerd, and has absolutely no social or romantic skills, he has never dated or had a gf or bf, he has been much too busy getting into Harvard. It's Saturday, and he has a 100 percent certainty that he will spend tonight alone in a tiny dark room.
He is standing on a Cambridge sidewalk feeling sorry for himself, when suddenly a gorgeous 18-year-old girl, with freckles, and a Friendly Smile that spans an ocean, walks directly up to the lonely Harvard freshman, and says: "Hi! Want to come to a party tonight?"
He went to the party, you bet. He never got bare wrist from Freckles, but he spent the next three years in the Cult, driving his parents insane.
That Cult Meme came wrapped in a protein jacket of Cute, Adorable, Gorgeous, Friendly Freckles. And also had Radar for Lonely Nerds. It also came wrapped in a protein jacket of How I Can Drive My Parents Crazy and Give Me Power Over Them.
And it's a wildly successful Meme, with millions of humans who've let it into their brains and given it a home -- and passed it along, all over the world.
Cooties live in the Biosphere. Memes live in the Ideosphere.
Here's a great Protein Jacket:
Give this new idea a permanent home in your brain -- or else you will burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity.
A twin component of the Protein Jacket: If you give this new idea a home, you will Live Forever in Heaven, and be Young and Pretty and Healthy and Pain-Free again, and Happy Forever. Everything you want will be yours for free.
It often helps a Meme to expose it to new brains when the brains are four or five or six years old. And to tell the kids that they are Good if they like the Meme, and Bad if they don't give the Meme a comfy and permanent home in their little brains.
Notice I haven't even mentioned what the actual Idea is. You probably can guess. The Idea might even already have a permanent home in your brain. Maybe you've spread it to others. (Or just driven your kid to Sunday School and picked him or her up again three hours later.)
Open an Almanac to Religions of the World. Go down the list, from the religions that have billions of members, to the religions that have less than a million. Then consider their particular Protein Jackets. What do they promise if you give them a Brain Home? Which Religions are growing? Which are shrinking? Then find a list of Dead Religions. Once they had millions of followers, their churches or temples were all over Eurasia, like Manicheanism. Now you can only find them in old dusty library books. What was wrong with their Protein Jackets? What was better about the Protein Jackets on the new religions, with their 100 screwy followers, that eventually replaced them?
For the moment, forget about legalizing or decriminalizing cannabis, ibogaine, heroin, cocaine and LSD. De-focus on the Goals.
Focus on the Protein Jacket. Focus on the pretty young smiling girl on the sidewalk, on la musica de Manu Chao, on the Phish Farewell Concert, on the Vans Warped Tour, on Lilith Faire. Focus on the Terror of Not Giving Our Meme a Home in Your Brain. Focus on the Eternal Rewards of Giving Our Meme a Home in Your Brain.
Focus on Sunday School -- Drug Legalization and Decriminalization Memes, in cartoon form, for six-year-olds. Don't give them drugs. But give them Happy Drug Decrim Memes every Saturday morning, that they can sing about with their friends.
All or most of the above is shamelessly filched from the best Intro to Meme Theory I ever read, a long section in Douglas Hofstadter's book, "Metamagical Themas." Hofstadter is most famous for his book, "Godel, Escher, Bach" (Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction). Anyway, everybody go read all about Memes in "Metamagical Themas."
As I said, Persuasion is a Science Now, not just an Art, and maybe we should think about mastering this Science. Maybe we're just a few hundred weirdos screaming on sidewalks now. Maybe we're as loopy and screwy and as universally ignored and ridiculed and persecuted as Paul, Peter, Matthew, Luke, Mark and John were. It's hopeless, right?
Elmer the Mad Scientist (in the UK: Boffin)
Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic
for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has
happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to
the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail,
there will be anarchy throughout the world.
http://www.marshfield.net/History/webster.htm' target='_new'>Daniel Webster
