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Rikard's avatar

Make that "memetic societies" and Luca Dellana is bang on, since that name was used in the early nineties in the fringes of political science studies here in Sweden; bureaucracy becoming ritual being a well-known and well-studied problem even before Parkinson wrote about the phenomenon.

It was argued that thanks to increasing speed of communication and corresponding increases in pace in careers and society, messages would become more and more akin to shorthand and pictographic symbolism than actual intelligence, meaning or debate - memes. As we know, the hypothesis was self-fulfilling and correct.

(Also suggested by others, f.e. Bradbury in 'Fahrenheit 451', where he used TV-walls, bookburnings and 60 yards wide billboards next to the motorways as visual examples of the same trend.)

Look at FB, Twitter, and even Substack. This little reply, barely longer than a footnote in an academic journal of the pre-internet age (the age of greater freedom too, but that's different text), would by most be considered too long to read. And while brevity may be the soul of wit, it is by no means the voice of clarity.

Finally, a ruling caste does not need creatives. What you talk about above and as Dellana notes, societies who become fully mimetic (or memetic, or as I'd like to call it emetic) dies. Aztecs. China before communism. The caliphates of islam. The British Empire. Many more - not just because of this but the pre-eminence of following ritual in all situations and on all levels makes stasis the ideal, and also makes everything more expensive to achieve, measured in resources used.

The danger now is that this will achieved on the global level, stopping the cycle of civilisations competing for dominance and instead causing a regressive rot rationalised as "climate saviourism" but in reality intended to maintain the capitalist-authoritarian status quo.

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TOB's avatar

Fall into line, Chris, or Jones will come back. Also polio.

Seriously, though, if you read "the science was moving incredibly fast" and have a reaction other than <snarf> and <delete>... well, don't say I didn't warn you. We already know these people need to be disempowered. (How's that for a word?) Intelligent people refusing to send their kids to universities with mandates is a nice first step. Too bad there are only about three of us.

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