Memes have immune systems - guest post by Conor O'Higgins

Memetics is about modeling ideas as evolutionary critters – they breed, reproduce, survive and die. Unfit ideas join the dodo; those that successfully survive and replicate become influential.
In the struggle for survival, one thing that every beastie needs is a way to defend itself from infexion. Even pretty unsophisticated animals seem to have some sense of hygiene, an instinct to avoid infexious conditions. But avoidance only goes so far; living in a sterile plastic bubble is impractical. To roam free and breathe contaminated air, a critter needs to develop an immune system. It needs to come into contact with pathogens, but fend them off. To do this, animals carry around a system of antibodies, T-cells, lymphocytes etc. that attack any threats that get inside the body.
As it is with resilient organisms, so it is with resilient memeplexes. (A meme is a belief; a memeplex is a Belief System.) Without an immune system to reject ideas that contradict it or otherwise threaten it, a Belief System won't long survive the dirty information-environment of today. A memeplex's immune system consists of a bunch of counter-memes that attack threatening ideas. These defensive memes are often derogatory labels – Christians tag threats as 'blasphemy'.
Anything contrary to atheism-materialism is 'woo'.
Verboten experiences like UFO sightings can be dismissed as 'mass hallucination'.
Scientologists have an interesting way of installing an immune system in their Believers. They tell you that adherence to the Scientology Belief System will solve all your problems, but – be careful! – there are people out there called “suppressive personalities” who'll try to contradict and undermine Scientology. A biological robot receives this programming in a Scientology center, off he goes into the world, and it is not long before he talks to a friend who tells him to steer clear of Scientology. Alarm bells go off: “this is one of those suppressive personalities I've heard about; disregard whatever they say”. Any further advice from the friend falls on deaf ears. The immune-meme about suppressive personalities fends off the friend's memes about the dangers of Scientology, and the B.S. survives the threat. In a world generally pretty hostile to it, Scientology still manages to be influential enough to pull in a half-billion dollars a year; it couldn't do that without a strong immune system. I mentioned that critters avoid dirty conditions. Memeplexes also use avoidance to survive. The Catholic church maintains an index of prohibited books, infexious memes so dangerous to the Catholic B.S. that believers need to steer clear. Very totalistic Belief Sytems resort to the most extreme kind of memetic avoidance and isolate Believers on a ranch in Guyana or whatever, where they have no contact with foreign memes.

The most successful therapy for depression is cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy achieves its results by modeling depression as a Belief System and disproving it with logic and evidence. At the center of the B.S. are beliefs along the lines of “everything sucks”, “nothing is ever gonna get better” and "I'm worthless".
These beliefs should be easy to disprove; there's plenty of joy and fun out there and the person under the spell of this memeplex comes into contact with it every day. The depressive memeplex is under constant attack from happy memes. So how does it perpetuate its species enough to disable 121 million people? The same way we survive in a world full of influenza viruses; it develops immune responses to fight the fun. Psychologists' preferred term for the immune system of depression is “disqualification”. Depressed people disqualify joy and fun. If you make the obvious points to them: that lots of things are good, we don't know the future well enough to say that things won't get better, and they personally have good qualities, they'll disqualify it with a defense-meme – usually some variation on “it doesn't count because...”: If you point out a depressed person's accomplishments, they'll often tell you, “Anyone could've done it”, or disqualify it as a fluke, or say that it was no accomplishment on their part, that they were just doing what they had to do in the situation. If people praise them and show them affexion: “They're just doing it to be nice” or “they think well of me because they don't know the real me”. 100% of depressed people disqualify like this. This is what makes depression such a knotty problem that disables more of our brothers and sisters than nearly anything else.

A key feature of all these immune-memes is that they aren't really testable. You can't know whether people's praise is genuine or mere politeness, not unless you can read their mind. A report that proves a conspiracy theory wrong looks the same as disinformation put there by Nazi gremlins. You can't pee on a strip that detects blasphemy. If something really weird did appear in the skies, the reports would be identical to reports caused by 'mass hallucination'.
Therefore, the memetic immune reaxion can remain undisturbed by facts. (My last article on this blog discusses bla-bla: claims that are adrift from empirical evidence.) This is the source of both its resilience and its stupidity.

Domesticated primates find it easy to sneer at the B.S. of Others – but doing that just digs you deeper into your reality-trench. You can't see much from in there, and you rob yourself the creative play of Kaos.
This site exists to help you to evolve beyond your B.S., and my purpose in writing this article should be obvious. I want you to get aware of your own memetic immune responses. Identify them so you can start to dismantle them. Notice how you react to ideas you dislike, notice what labels you use. The next time you find yourself labeling something as 'nonsense' or 'right-wing propaganda' or using whatever defense-meme is installed in your nervous system – get excited, because this is your chance to expand your reality-tunnel. Let the foreign meme in. Some of the best innovations in evolution came from viral DNA being integrated into the body.

Jacques Vallée's Messengers of Deception - Humans posing as Aliens?

This book is amazing, it's like it was written last week. Unbelievable that this was written in 1979, that we still know as little as back then, and that the bullshit cults and belief systems keep springing up. (Here's looking at you Steven Greer & co.)

update: check this post and see this through another reality tunnel, see this phenomenon as ourselves out of time peering through to us in time here and just confusing the hell out of us.

Read it here

Excerpt: Foreword to the 2008 Edition: 

Nearly 30 years have elapsed since Messengers of Deception first appeared in the US. Since then, the controversial views it expressed have been vindicated and thrown into sharp focus by shocking events that were reported worldwide. In particular, the stark warning I issued in connection with the HIM cult ("It only costs your life!") appears as unfortunately prophetic in light of the March 97 collective suicide of Heaven's Gate, as the group became known. The mass killings of the adepts of the order of the Solar Temple in Canada, France and Switzerland in 94 illustrated the dangerous form of mind control and the simulation of extraterrestrial contact I first described here in connection with the "Adventures of a Grand Master." The cattle mutilations phenomenon remains unsolved. As for the Raélians, the cult started by Vorilhon whose early lectures in San Francisco are recalled in this book, it has flourished internationally and burst into prominence in recent years with claims of human cloning.

Not only have these issues continued to simmer under the surface while UFO believers basked in their benign expectation of aliens from the stars, but a veritable mass conversion has taken place among the public and the media elite. The belief in extraterrestrial visitation is practically taken for granted among wide section of the population, and especially among the young. While the hypothesis of alien contact is an exciting one, justified on the basis of continuing observerations of unidentified flying objects, it carries the potential for exploitation and manipulation by deceptive groups with their own hidden agenda.

I believe that UFOs are physically real. They represent a fantastic technology controlled by an unknown form of consciousness. But I also believe that it would be dangerous to jump to premature conclusions about their origin and nature, because the phenomenon serves as the vehicle for images that can be manipulated to promote belief systems tending to the long-term transformation of human society.

"Give me the superstitions of a nation, and I care not who makes their laws, or writes their songs!" Mark Twain

From later in the book:
 

If we are not dealing with space visitors at all, but with powerful imagery projected in order to alter individual belief systems, then the dream-like, hallucinatory nature of the experience begins to make more sense. We could even imagine that the object is a form of natural energy; that close exposure to it triggered the vision; and that the most important question to ask is, what effect do such visions have on the society around the witnesses? Let us not forget that the society in question is badly in need of "space brothers," and has lost much of its faith in the scientific genius of mankind.

Such is the social matrix within we must consider an experience like Helen's abduction. Certain factors combine to suggest we should believe that she was interviewed by space creatures, but all the facts taken together suggest a different, more subtle interpretation: what she thought was a "contact" may have been a symbolic manifestation or a trap. Her "spacemen" may have been messengers of deception.

Witnesses to close encounters with UFOs give reports similar to this one in case after case. The phenomenon involves more than a simple craft using an advanced form of propulsion; it involves a technology that can distort the observer's sense of reality.

Psychic Technologies

We already have human technologies that are both physical and "psychic" (in the sense of influencing the consciousness of an observer). An example of such a technology is given, very simply, by your television set. There is no question that it is physical. You can talk about its size, volume, weight and temperature. But if you turn it on, it will begin to control your awareness in peculiar ways. You will observe scenes that, as far as you can tell, could be either "real" or faked. You may be a witness to an actual crime committed right now, or to something that happened years ago. You may also believe a scene to be absolutely real, when in fact it is actually staged in a studio in Hollywood. Based on what you can observe, you have no way to know the truth, even if you have a nobel prize in physics. Besides, your television set influences you in other ways. It determines what toothpaste you use, how you shave, who you go to bed with, and how you will vote in the next election.

In some respects I think UFOs are similar to television sets. They are physical objects, the products of a technology, bu tthey are also something else: the tools of a major cultural change. I think UFOs are perpetrating a deception by presenting their so-called "occupants" as being messengers from outer space, and I suspect there are groups of people on Earth exploiting this deception. I have written this book because I am concerned with the changes which would be triggered by the belief in an outer-space invasion, real or simulated. In the words of a Brookings Institute report on the cultural impact of extraterrestrial life:

The consequences of such a discovery are presently unpredictable because of our limited knowledge of behavior under even an approximation of such dramatic circumstances. The fundamentalist (and anti-science) sects are growing apace... For them, the discovery of other life would be electrifying.

update: Check out CaM's excellent remarks in the comments section.

Jacques Vallée - Messengers of Deception - hypnotic regression

"The fear that drives our alien belief" by hack Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post

Mike Clelland at Hidden Experience sums up what I think about this:

The Washington Post published an article not on the UFO phenomenon titled The fear that drives our alien belief (by Caitlin Dewey), but instead on the deluded people who believe in something so obviously silly. Well, that's my interpretation of her article. I am posting this because it comes on the heels of such an even-keeled article about John Mack (linked below), here's a quote:

Vanity Fair this month published a lengthy profile of Harvard psychiatrist John Edward Mack—a man who believed, implausibly, in alien abduction.

Then the author goes on to pose a question, and then answers it in a way that shows that she hadn't done any meaningful research:

What is it about UFOs that drive so many people to believe they exist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

The idea that there is any evidence to the contrary, let alone overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is an assumption. Even a cursory glance at the literature reveals a superabundance of reports.

Anyway, this stuff really bothers me.

It bothers me too but at least the comments on this article also are overwhelmingly negative towards the ignorant author. Pretty soon all you'll see in the mainstream media is articles being ripped apart in the comments section until they start policing them or stop printing this bullshit. By the way, Caitlin Dewey covers social media, Internet culture, and other disparate topics for the Washington Post. What an expert on the topic then... lol. I hope she enjoyed that paycheck because I'm sure a few million people will remember her name.

Christopher Knowles from the Secret Sun sums it up perfectly:

This is exactly what I am talking about in my new essay. There are so many delusional people in the UFO field who think they can somehow make peace with the mainstream media, that somehow if they present enough evidence the media will see the light. They should know that the only people who get anywhere with alternative viewpoints are people who openly wage war on the media. That the public now holds the mainstream media to a slightly lower esteem than circus clowns and child molesters, though I realize that is a bit redundant. Bassett should have held a separate hearing kicking the the media's pointy heads in and holding particularly loathesome hacks up to ridicule and scorn. Stop trying to compromise with these idiots and set about putting them all out of business. 

Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?

A prestigious Harvard psychiatrist, John Edward Mack, thought so. His sudden death leaves behind many mysteries. Interesting article at Vanity Fair of all magazines.

To be or not to be

astraldouble.com

Alien Encounters - pilot with Whitley Shrieber & Audrey Hewins

I found this on a torrent site but apparently can't find a decent official webpage about it. This page on the Biography Channel's website (here it's called Alien Intent though) has a little summary but the links in the menu on the left are not related to the show.

"For those who feel that they've survived a close encounter with an extraterrestrial, questions linger and torment them long after the incident has ended: Who were these things? Where did they come from? Am I losing my mind? Why was I chosen? In this special, world-renowned UFO expert Whitley Strieber attempts to answer these questions, by helping those who are struggling to find closure from their haunting and seemingly very real personal encounters. Strieber, along with a network of leading scientists and researchers, tackle the UFO phenomenon on a human level, reaching out to those who have had paranormal experiences with an objective mindset and a determination to find the truth."

I thought it was pretty scary stuff, Strieber and Hewins recounting their alleged experiences. Aliens abducting humans to alter their DNA, and seeing an alien-human hybrid child is just a little of what you'll see re-enacted on this show...

Joe Rogan Experience #331 Steven Greer

Joe Rogan dot com
http://siriusdisclosure.com/

Thanks Cam for the link! I'm gonna check out more of Joe Rogan's podcasts, I really enjoyed that. Even though I've no idea how much Greer can be believed about anything. I'm not really impressed with their tiny alien either. Btw if anyone can find the evidence Greer mentions on that sirius disclosure site please tell me where cause I'm not finding anything.

Terence McKenna - Evolving Times 1995

What's fascinating and disturbing is that McKenna's thoughts are still a great indication of how we probably should evolve as a society.

NOTE: The ending is cut a couple minutes short because the camera ran out of film.

Thrive - What on Earth will it take

Must see documentary about the world conspiracy of how the few control the many and how free energy is a way out.

http://www.thrivemovement.com/

THRIVE is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's REALLY going on in our world by following the money upstream -- uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.

Thrive on Reality Sandwich

Dark Side of the Moon: V Style

from V - The TV Series - 1x01 - Liberation Day

Google pimps Crop Circles

Stuck in a culture that needs to settle on one way to look at things

"Just because we have been taught to assign UFO phenomena to aliens coming from other planets does not make it so. (Actually, it might, but that's another ontological can of worms.)

We are stuck in a culture that needs to settle on one way to look at things, and uncomfortable with ambiguity, for the most part. Any non-human intelligence who wanted to "conquer" us, or at least make limited contact would do well to exploit this tendency, as well as our reliance on conscious sensory input to make their presence as subtle as a light breeze on our collective consciousness. No flying saucers, death rays, or even handshakes with the President needed." Greg Bishop

Hat tip Posthuman Blues

The Industry part 4

Can't embed but check it out here: Industry 4: Madonna & Beyonce Ritual

Garu Numan Cars. "Here in my car I feel safest of all I can lock all my doors It's the only way to live In Cars" He sings in his illuminated pyramid.
Incubus Anna Molly video, Gap Posterboy Brandon Boyd's All Seeying Eye Tattoo.
Robin Thicke Magic, stargate Nexus Door with Triangle.
Like a Virgin: Britney Spears & Xtina veiled initiates masonic performance, Madonna High Priestess: Everybody comes to Hollywood, wanna make it in the neighborhood,... couldn't hurt you when it looks so good... Hollywood, Hollywood, how could it hurt you if it looks so good? - Music stations always play the same song - we're bored with the conflict of right and wrong...
Rihanna VMA performance pyramid stargate entrance. Britney Circus, with Madonna's given top hat.

Buzz Aldrin & the Mars Monolith

Buzz Aldrin reveals Monolith on Moon of Mars

"We should go boldly where man has not gone before... Visit the moon... of Mars ;)"

"The Universe put it there, if you choose, God put it there."

Also check out this from Cabinet of Wonders:


Former Astronaut and US Senator John Glenn's fictional(?) alien disclosure on Frasier

Hat tips to Secret Sun (check out this post) & Posthuman Blues

Earth 1947, Little Green Men & a Shapeshifter

Three Ferengi, called Martians first by the humans, and Odo the Founder and Shapeshifter stumble on 1947 Earth due to an accident in the Star Trek DS9 episode 4x08 Little Green Men. Which has not one, but two Weather Balloon jokes!

Ferengi are like the Orange Strivedrivers of Spiral Dynamics, from the wiki: They and their culture are characterized by a mercantile obsession with profit and trade and their constant efforts to swindle people into bad deals. They are also known for their business acumen and for exploiting females. Like most of their culture, their religion is also based on the principles of capitalism: they offer prayers and monetary offerings to a "Blessed Exchequer" in hopes of entering the "Divine Treasury" upon death, and fear an afterlife spent in the "Vault of Eternal Destitution".

Full episode summary here: They awaken in a laboratory. A human male in the next room exhales cigarette smoke, and calmly summons a General Denning on a telephone. "Tell him one of the Martians is awake," he says. The calendar reads July, 1947.

the humans mimic Quark's movements
"I'd always heard primitive hew-mons lacked intelligence,
but I never thought they were this stupid."
Quark

As Rom and Nog awaken, they argue with Quark about what happened, and whether they died in the crash and this is the afterlife. In the next room, several humans have gathered to observe the behavior of the Martians. They activate the speaker and hear a bizarre, otherworldly language being spoken by the aliens. Quark is annoyed he cannot understand what the humans are saying, and surmises their universal translators are malfunctioning. Rom thinks it may be due to nuclear fission radiation in the atmosphere.
When Nog agrees, pointing out that twentieth-century humans actually made weapons that utilized nuclear fission and detonated them on the planet's surface, Quark is horrified. He becomes progressively more disgusted when he notes that the humans all seem to have a habit of inhaling the smoke of a burning tobacco plant, a behavior he finds almost as vile as imbibing root beer. He insists they get off the planet as soon as possible to get away from these "savages."

"If they'll buy poison, they'll buy anything!" Quark

First Ferengi contact!

Nog tries to fool Wainwright into thinking the Ferengi are going to invade Earth, which doesn't work...
Nog: "The first landing parties will arrive here."
Wainwright: "Where?" (on the map)
Nog: "Here, right by this blue blob."
Wainwright: "You mean your people are going to invade... Cleveland?"

But guess who came along for the ride, Founder and Shapeshifter Odo transforms from a sirius Dog(star) of the German Shepherd kind:

Looks kinda lizzy

When Rom hears that there will be a nuclear test in the desert, he comes up with an idea. They fly the ship directly into the blast and jettison the remaining kemocite, which reacts with the bomb to throw them ahead in time to where they started. Back on the base, General Denning thoughtfully chews his cigar and muses on the "crashed weather balloon" they found in nearby Roswell, New Mexico.

Robert Anton Wilson - TSOG Maybe

Robert Anton Wilson - TSOG Maybe

From the vid info: Perhaps instead of thinking of things changing, it may be more accurate to think of change as 'thinging'. Change 'thinging' in a process-oriented universe. The universe we are living in today is not the same universe we were living in yesterday. Scenario Universe consists of non-simultaneously apprehended events. I seem to be a verb. I have never met a noun.

"The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything."
- George Santayana

"Learning to un-learn to learn, for me, best describes the process of learning the discipline theoretically (verbally) and organismically."
M. Kendig

"Teaching and learning that lead to no significant change in behavior are practically worthless."
Irving Lee

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: Namely, to believe everything, or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking."
- Alfred Korzybski

"A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it."
- Alfred Korzybski

"You can't step into the same river twice."
- Heraclitus

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
- Albert Einstein

"We see the world as 'we' are, not as 'it' is; because it is the "I" behind the 'eye' that does the seeing."
- Anais Nin

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."
- Leonardo da Vinci

"Who rules our symbols, rules us."
- Alfred Korzybski

"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"
- Henry David Thoreau

RAW: The New Inquisition

RAW's hilarious tirade against fundamental materialism and the social, political and religious attempts to limit freedom. Featuring follow-the-white-rabbit lepufology!

Alien Sex 101, The Antonio Villas Boas Account

"Without speaking or kissing, they had sex, during which she growled like a dog."

"Whatever the genesis of such reports, we have to consider that folk have reported sexual contact with all manner of supernatural beings throughout history. Either the aliens have been conducting their beastly experiments for millennia, or such stories meet some deep-seated socio-psychological need. Until any solid medical evidence is provided, the latter hypothesis seems the more likely."

by Nigel Watson from Fortean Times at UFOcaseook.com (thanks skyblue101!)

Lincolnshire Windmill UFO Mystery

Also check out UFOs in New Jersey at Secret Sun