FRONT COVER

a
BACK COVER

b
GOD WANTS
YOU DEAD
SEAN HASTINGS
PAUL ROSENBERG

www.veraverba.com

i
Copyright © 1996-2007 Sean Hastings and Paul Rosenberg

SOME RIGHTS RESERVED

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5

www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/

ISBN: 978-0-9796011-1-8
First Edition

Published by Vera verba, Inc.

www.veraverba.com

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 SEAN’S DEDICATION
After ten years of talking and thinking and jotting down notes, three people stand
out in my mind as having made this book a reality instead of being just a project
that I sincerely planned to do someday but never actually finished. It is to them
that I dedicate this book:

To my wife, Jo, who contributed ideas, offered encouragement, and most

importantly, hardly complained at all about me spending half a year writing full
time, rather than doing any “real” work.

To my best friend, Alex, who kept saying that he really wanted to read this book
that I had been talking about for so long, and finally said that if I actually sat
down and wrote the damn thing, he would do me any favor I asked – anything
up to shooting someone in the leg – he only drew the line at cold blooded
murder.

To my co-author, Paul, who agreed that my ideas were worth publishing, had
many of his own that fit well with mine to improve the book immensely, and put
up with my mood swings and general levels of insanity long enough to see this
project through to completion.

PAUL’S DEDICATION
I almost never write dedications, but this time it seems like a nice thing to do.

I’ll start by thanking my wife, Ceci, who not only makes me happy, but makes me
better. (And from thence making everything I do better.)

I’d also like to thank the many, many people who contributed to my voyage
toward a clear mind. Some of you worked hard to get good ideas into my head,
and others just happened to be who they were at the right time. Some of you
didn’t even realize that you contributed. Thank you all.

Finally, thank you to Sean, for inviting me on this journey. Wow. It has not only
been fun, but it really has clarified my mind. Beside, working with Sean really
isn’t quite as bad as he makes it sound. :)

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 A Note Concerning Digital Copying
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To find out how to contribute, please visit: www.veraverba.com/donations.html

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 CONTENTS

AUTHOR INTRODUCTIONS ................................................................................. 1

SEAN'S INTRODUCTION – JUDGING BY THE COVER .............................................. 1
PAUL'S INTRODUCTION – OWNING YOUR MIND .................................................... 3

0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..................................................................................... 5
0.1 FAITH................................................................................................................ 5
0.2 HIGHER POWERS ............................................................................................. 7
0.3 SELF SACRIFICE ............................................................................................ 11
0.4 PICKING ON GOD ........................................................................................... 15
0.5 GOD W ANTS YOU DEAD ................................................................................ 20

1 EVOLUTION OF HIGHER POWERS............................................................. 23

1.1 BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ................................................................................ 25
1.2 IDEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION .............................................................................. 28
1.3 IDENTITIES AND ICONS ................................................................................... 42
1.4 THE HIGHER POWERS ................................................................................... 55
1.5 TAKE A BREATH ............................................................................................. 71

2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF CRIME........................................................................ 73

2.1 DOWN FROM THE TREES ............................................................................... 74
2.2 HUNTER GATHERERS .................................................................................... 83
2.3 FARMERS, W ARRIORS, AND GOD KINGS ...................................................... 88
2.4 DEMOCRACY AND EMPIRE ............................................................................. 93
2.5 CHURCH AND STATE .................................................................................... 101
2.6 EXIT FROM DARKNESS................................................................................. 106
2.7 INTERESTING TIMES..................................................................................... 116

3 YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE .................................................................... 133

3.1 KILLING THE GOOSE .................................................................................... 135
3.2 CONTROLLING THE MARKET ........................................................................ 139
3.3 GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT W ORK ................................................ 153
3.4 HOW BAD LAWS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE.............................................. 158
3.5 PRAXEOLOGY AND OTHER BIG W ORDS ...................................................... 166

4 FINDING YOURSELF...................................................................................... 173

4.1 GENETIC AND MEMETIC ............................................................................... 174
4.2 THE ULTIMATE QUESTION ........................................................................... 181
4.3 THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY........................................................................ 185
4.4 YOUR IDEAL SELF ........................................................................................ 195

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5 THE ART OF THOUGHT ................................................................................ 209
5.1 FREE YOUR MIND ......................................................................................... 211
5.2 CLEANING HOUSE ........................................................................................ 216
5.3 LOGICAL THOUGHT ...................................................................................... 229
5.4 FALLACIES .................................................................................................... 236
5.5 BIAS OF OUR CULTURE ............................................................................... 246

6 BEHEADING LEVIATHAN ............................................................................. 251

6.1 W HO SHOULD I VOTE FOR? ........................................................................ 253
6.2 FIGHTING FOR A FREE MARKET .................................................................. 258
6.3 ENGINEERING FREEDOM ............................................................................. 261
6.4 ROLLING BACK ............................................................................................. 278
6.5 NEW FRONTIERS .......................................................................................... 285

7 PLAYING GOD ................................................................................................. 291

7.1 SUSPENDED ANIMATION .............................................................................. 293
7.2 NANOTECHNOLOGY ..................................................................................... 305
7.3 AUGMENTED OR ARTIFICIAL? ...................................................................... 310
7.4 LIFE EXTENSION........................................................................................... 316
7.5 W HERE IS MY FLYING CAR?........................................................................ 326

8 FINAL THOUGHTS.......................................................................................... 329

8.1 THE LAST GENERATION ............................................................................... 330
8.2 RETHINKING ATHEISM AND ANARCHY ......................................................... 333
8.3 SPREADING THE W ORD ............................................................................... 339
8.4 THE HERO/COWARD CHOICE ...................................................................... 343

CREDITS............................................................................................................... 345
CONTRIBUTORS .................................................................................................. 345
PICTURES ........................................................................................................... 346
READING LIST ..................................................................................................... 349

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 Author Introductions
Sean's Introduction – Judging by the Cover
Holding this book in your hands, do you find yourself worried that people around
you might see what you are reading?
If so, why should that be? Reading a book is in no way an endorsement of the
contents of that book. Reading is a quest for knowledge. There should be nothing
wrong with wanting to learn why other people think differently than you, or
differently than the group in which you find yourself. You don’t have to already
agree with everything you read – in fact it would be boring if you did.
If you are the type of person who is not intimidated by the opinions of those
around you, and could bravely walk into a church carrying a copy of this book,
then you will enjoy reading it. But if you are a person who would be afraid to be
seen with this book, then you really should read it. It just might help you
understand why you feel pressure to conform to the ideas of those around you.
The cover of this book was designed to attract attention – a parody of a well-
known image, a shocking title, and some nudity. These elements were all meant
to increase the book’s fame (or infamy). However, the cover also communicates
the book's central theme: Beware of Higher Powers.

Michelangelo painted the original picture on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It depicts
God’s creation of Adam, the first human. In our version, God aims a gun at
Adam, clearly intending to revoke that earlier gift of life.
Adam, however, has learned a trick from Bugs Bunny cartoons. He plugs the
barrel of God’s gun with his finger. Symbolically, this represents the human will to
survive despite being born under a death sentence—and even suggests that
such survival is possible.
1
The title of this book, "God Wants You Dead" seems hostile and blasphemous at
first glance. However, it is not a statement with which the faithful can easily
argue.
Western religions generally hold that though Man has tasted the fruit of the Tree
of Knowledge, God has prevented us from eating from the Tree of Eternal Life.
So from a theological standpoint, it seems that God does want us dead or at
least wants mankind to earn immortality. And this then leads to the theological
question, "When does God want you to die?"
Suicide is prohibited by most religions. But some "true believers" (Christian
Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others) decline modern medical treatments.
They believe that such treatments are against God’s will. Although they would
probably bristle at the suggestion that this as a form of suicide, they still decline
certain medical help, even when the choice is clearly treatment or death.
Some people seem to think that medical science can be "too good." They feel
that current research directed at extending the human life span is unnatural.
They will often say that it is not good to be "playing God."
So we wonder, at just what point should the faithful believe that trying to stay
alive messes up God’s plan?
An even more important question this book will address is why people believe the
things they do. Why do some people believe that taking penicillin will thwart
God’s will, while others would gladly accept an artificial heart? Why do some
religions require a strictly regulated healthy diet, while others mandate the
drinking of poisoned fruit punch?
We believe the answers to these and other questions can be found in
understanding why and how people believe in Higher Powers. Our book explains
how these Higher Powers operate and why their goals are rarely aligned with
your best interests.
Please note that God is only one of many “Higher Powers” that affect people’s
lives. We choose to pick on God in the title, because God makes claim to being
the highest of all Higher Powers. We think this makes God worthy of special
attention. However, we will also examine nations, corporations, racial groups,
and other Higher Powers to which individuals sometimes surrender their minds.
The title focuses on the threat of death, because it's the most extreme price that
anyone can pay for faith in a Higher Power. And we maintain that an adherent's
willingness to choose death is a very good indicator that something is wrong with
a belief system. However, we also address the other common costs of having
faith in any Higher Power.
The faithful pay a price, not just with their lives, but also with their liberty and
property.

Sean Hastings
New York, New York
2007

2
Paul's Introduction – Owning Your Mind

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
-- Winston Churchill

As you pass from the earlier to the later chapters of this book, you will see that it
is ultimately about restoration; about restoring control of your mind to your inner
self, and about restoring control of society to free individuals.
This may at first sound strange to you, but most people have limited control of
their own minds. Outside influences seem to control people more than the other
way around. It is also true that much greater control is both possible and greatly
preferable. Unfortunately, there are many strong forces standing against this.
Please don’t think of "ownership of your mind" as a trivial thing, or something that
everyone would automatically want to have. It isn’t easy, and some folks would
rather kill than take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions.
This may affect you as well; many people experience a genuine terror when they
think about having no outsider to blame for their mistakes. So, start getting used
to the idea now. Giving up control of your mind doesn’t remove responsibility.
You can hide your head in the sand as much as you wish, but it doesn’t make
you innocent. You are still responsible for your actions – the things that you do,
and to a lesser degree also, the things that you could have prevented.
Hopefully, you are one of the people who want to improve themselves. On one
hand, we’re going to make it as easy for you as we can. But on the other, we are
not offering you a free lunch. If you want to regain control of your mind, you’re
going to have to work for it…hard. Sure, it’ll be worth it, but it won’t be easy.
Now, a few additional words on our seemingly blasphemous title: God Wants
You Dead. The "God" in our title is not the big guy on the heavenly throne. It is
the idea of God we are talking about – an idea that exists, almost as an
independent entity, in the minds of billions. We call these shared mental patterns
Distributed Identities and describe them as idea-organisms. (We’ll explain this in
detail in the next chapter.) These ideas are what stand in the place of the big guy
on the throne, at least in the minds of most people. To make the point, please
consider the following:
The guy on the throne, at least according to the Bible, is strongly in favor of
human immortality. Now, what if (and this is not quite as "sci-fi" as you might
think) researchers figured out how to insert an immortality gene into humans, and
we suddenly attained the ability to live forever? How does that make you feel? Is
it a stupid idea? Is it something to ridicule? Maybe something that is plainly
wrong, against God, or maybe just against the established order of the universe?
Consider this: Such feelings are evidence of something in your mind that:
A. Is against your own self-interest. (Dying is not good for you.)
B. Is contrary to the recorded will of God.

3
The generally accepted record of the Big Guy on the Throne’s words is dripping
with references to Him not only wanting immortality for men, but of Him sending
His only son to suffer and die in order to obtain this gift for us. We can argue
about exactly when the Bible says this will or should happen, but immortality itself
is plainly held as the highest gift of the God of the New Testament.
So, given that being immortal is both in your self-interest, and it is the stated
desire of God, why wouldn’t you leap immediately at the possibility? The obvious
reason is this: There is an idea in your head that says that actual immortality may
not (or should not) be achieved, and this idea feels more important to you than
actually living forever.
So how did this idea, that dying is a good thing, get into your head? You see,
immortality is not a problem to the guy on the throne, but it is a big problem to the
God idea in billions of minds – The God Distributed Identity. This is the thing our
cover refers to – the thing that wants you dead. And even if you don't believe in
God, a similar higher concept of universal order, such as Nature, may give you
similar ideas.
The Distributed Identities that we will refer to in this book have a strong presence
in your thoughts, as the example above may have illustrated to you. In fact, you
may still be deeply uncomfortable with this subject and may feel like pushing it
out of your mind as expeditiously as possible. And, of course, that is your choice
to make, even if it is a gutless one. If you aren't ready to take a look at your
beliefs – why you believe the things you do – you might just want to put this book
down now; it’s going to make you uncomfortable.
Throughout our book, we will explain to you exactly what these idea-organisms
are, how to identify them, and how to remove their influence over you. If you do
indeed re-landscape your mind, you can achieve much more than you would
otherwise. But it will always be easier if you want to just go with the flow and be
average. What you do with all this information will be your choice; we have
neither the ability nor the need to make you fight for control of your mind, though
we do recommend it. And we have some information that we hope will help.

Paul Rosenberg
Chicago, Illinois
2007

4
 0
Executive Summary

WARNING: Although this book can be funny and light-hearted in

many places, we start with a fairly serious summary of our ideas. If
you are in a mood for a laugh rather than a lecture, feel free to skip
this introductory chapter. (Come back and read it later, when you
are in the mood for more serious fare.)
In fact, feel free to skip any part of this book where you are not
feeling it. Each section is very different, so the next one might well
be more to your liking. Or just flip through and look at all the
pictures and cartoons….
They are your eyes, use them as you choose.

This book is about the past, present, and future evolution of human ideas. Its
primary emphasis is on parasitic collectivist ideologies. It examines where such
ideas come from, how they harm us, and how we can remove them from our
own minds and from the culture around us. Finally, it tells us the amazing things
that will become possible for humanity when they are gone. Not only religions,
but also nation states, racial groups, corporations and other collectives are
targeted for observation and criticism.
This book will probably offend you, if you hold any icons to be sacred or are a
believer in any ideology that encourages group loyalty and action. When you get
to a part criticizing your favorite ideology, please just try to remember that we are
actually trying to be helpful. We are absolutely sure that many of your ideas are
very good and can create more value in the world. However, we are equally sure
that when you allow your good ideas to be bound up into an icon and used as a
source of social approval, that it becomes difficult to evaluate them properly and
you create a home in your mind for many bad ideas to also take up residence.
This book may also bother you if you have any strong ideas about the genres
that books should fit into. It has a lot of academic knowledge in it, but it is not an
academic book with footnotes or endnotes. It contains some very serious and
unsettling ideas, but it also contains some stupid jokes and amusing cartoons.
Its chapters and sections are numbered quite oddly and written in many different
styles. The primary goal of this book is to encourage readers to step outside the
patterns of thought that have been impressed upon them by their social groups;
to do this we have deliberately avoided conforming to any of the patterns
deemed normal or acceptable for publication in any given genre. In fact, the very
idea of “genre” is somewhat of an anathema to the ideas contained in this book.
This book offers a way to look at the world that explains why even well meaning
group-think so often produces bad results, and shows how better results can be
achieved when people identify themselves and others as free thinking individuals
rather than devotees to any icon or members of any group.

5
0.1 Faith
A young girl gets onto a bus. She has layers of dynamite and nails taped below
her breasts. She wears a bulky coat to hide their shape. She tries to remain calm
until the bus is full and reaches the center of town. She is having second
thoughts. But as the bus arrives at its most crowded stop, she begins reciting the
words of a Higher Power, assuring herself one last time that this is the right thing
to do. Then she pulls a cord… and flies apart in a blast that instantly ends the
lives of almost everyone else on the bus and even several people on the curb,
along with her own.
In your language, her name translates as “Faith.”
It may be almost impossible for you to understand what is going through this girl's
mind when she commits this act of murder/suicide. How can she end her own
young life? How can she kill strangers she has never met – people who have
never done anything to harm her directly?
As incomprehensible as her actions may seem, they are just an extreme case of
a type of behavior that is common to almost everyone. You probably do things
that, while not nearly as extreme, are just as incomprehensible from a viewpoint
of rational self-interest. Just like this girl, and just like almost every other human
being on the planet, at some time you will almost certainly allow your actions to
be directed by a collective ideology that has little care for individual human lives.
Two of the questions that we will explore with you in this book are:
1. How are you different from a suicide bomber?
2. How can you become even more different from a suicide bomber?

The simple answer to the first question is not particularly comforting:

The only real difference between you and the suicide bomber is the extent
to which you allow yourself to make the same kind of mental errors.
More specifically, it is a question of how willing you are to accept a large number
of ideas, represented by a single name or flashy icon. Can you question the
individual ideas separately, once they are grouped together into an ideology, or
do you feel that any given philosophy must be either all good or all bad?
This makes the simple answer to the second question a more useful one:
The less you deny your own mind, the less you believe in voices of
authority without question, the less you substitute faith for reason; the less
of yourself you will sacrifice to any Higher Power.
The suicide bomber is probably the most extreme example of sacrifice to a
Higher Power, and as such it may be an example that does not strike home as
having any lesson to teach you personally. After all, your own behavior is almost
certainly not this extreme, and the Higher Powers to whom you feel loyalty may
never ask for such a sacrifice. But consider that the smaller sacrifices you do
make may be just as unnecessary and ill-considered, even if less overtly harmful.
It is even possible that you do not acknowledge loyalty to any Higher Powers, but
before you become confident of that, please explore with us the many things that
can qualify as such.
6
0.2 Higher Powers
We are defining "Higher Powers" as: Icons to which people grant greater
authority than they would to any individual human being.
Such icons may be religious, such as "God" or "The Prophet." They may be
historical, such as "Our Founding Fathers" or "Honorable Ancestors." They may
be geographical, such as the "Voice of the Nation" or "Law of the Land.” They
may be natural forces, such as "Mother Nature.” They may even be deliberate
man-made constructs, such as a corporation. They can take many forms.
What they have in common is that none of them have any physical existence that
you can touch. Even the ones that might have been real things at one time are
not real, physical, things now. They are only ideas in people's heads.
It is also part of our definition that we may not speak directly with Higher Powers
in the way we can speak to another human being. People may attempt to talk to
Higher Powers, but few ever claim to receive answers, and we are never able to
verify such claims. Any entity that verifiably talks back to you is something
different than the Higher Powers we are discussing throughout this book.

0.2.1 Indirect Communication

In order to receive guidance from the Higher Powers, we must either decide that
we know deep in our hearts what they are telling us, accept the word of some
other individual who claims to know, or read writings which we believe contain
their wisdom. In all of these cases the actual communication comes from an
individual human being. Either it originates in our own thoughts (we are talking to
ourselves), is presented to us by another individual, or is in the words that were
written by the hand of another individual human being. It cannot be demonstrated
that these communications really do originate from the Higher Power.
Such Higher Powers have great authority in the minds of the people who believe
in them. When many people believe in such an entity, it can have a vast
influence over our lives, though we have no direct recourse to confront it for its
misdeeds.
When we surrender our thoughts to the alleged greater wisdom of a Higher
Power, it becomes easy for unscrupulous individuals to manipulate us. (History
certainly bears out that statement!) They can easily supply us with guidance that
furthers their own ends, in the guise of words from on high. It can’t be denied that
this occurs continuously and wherever such Higher Powers are being given
authority over individual thought and action.
Even when no individual is manipulating the voice of a Higher Power, blind
obedience is still a problem. Once we give up our right to question, no
improvement in our thinking on the subject is permitted. We have given up on our
own judgment and adopted the judgment of another. Bear in mind that an actual
powerful entity wouldn’t need to be protected from examination. On the other
hand, an ephemeral impostor would certainly desire such protection.
Which is worse, the commandments of a Higher Power coming from the
will of an unscrupulous individual, or the commandments of a Higher
Power coming from the spontaneous mutation of ideas within a group?

7
The first is more malicious, but it can eventually be exposed. (Think of a
disgraced preacher.) But in the second case there is no identifiable source, and
bad ideas that slip in are far less likely to ever be questioned.
The idea of a Higher Power, mutating like a living system, can produce bizarre
commandments that no leader or individual would ever have invented.

0.2.2 Living Ideas

In this book – and we think accurately – we will be viewing ideas as living
organisms; organisms that survive inside individual human minds and multiply
themselves by communication to new minds. Give us a chance and we think we
can demonstrate this behavior convincingly.
No, ideas are not actually living things. At least not in precisely the same way
biological entities are. But these widely distributed ideas act in a very similar way,
so we find the analogy to living organisms useful – even factually accurate by
some broader definition of life.
Consider your ideas as living things that inhabit your mind – idea-organisms.
When these ideas help you achieve your individual goals of survival and growth,
they are symbiotic organisms. When they do not, they are parasitic organisms.
Blind acceptance of an unseen authority creates a fertile environment in which
parasitic ideas can thrive. In such an environment, they are separated from
reality, and are not held to an objective examination. This is precisely how every
seemingly insane mania works, from Nazism to suicide cults.
In such an environment, the ideas that grow best are not those that align
themselves with their human host’s self interests, but those that direct human
actions according to the survival and reproductive goals of the ideas themselves.
The most successful ideas will be those that make the host’s actions (that
is, your actions) subservient to the idea – an ideological Higher Power.
You become a tool to be used by an invisible authority that cannot be verified,
and your actions become those which help that Higher Power survive and grow.
Like any living organism, these ideas must reproduce or they will die out.
Because of this, they cause their hosts (people) to take actions that will increase
the idea’s chances of survival and reproduction, even to the detriment of the
survival of the individual human hosts.
Get that again: These ideas can cause a person to do things that are against
their own best interests – perhaps even things that will directly result in a
person's own death.
People influenced by complex idea-organisms will labor to infect others with
these ideas. They will try hard to make sure that their children have the same
beliefs. They will donate money to organizations that spread the word. They will
stand on street corners handing out pamphlets.
They also act to oppose competing ideas. They tend to be closed-minded and
unwilling to listen to logical arguments. They will often become uncomfortable or
angry when their beliefs are questioned. They sometimes ban or burn books
containing competing ideas. They will even engage in bloody warfare to destroy
other large groups of people who hold different beliefs.

8
Since Higher Powers exist on a different level than the individual, their wants and
needs are based on different things. This often puts them at cross-purposes with
the values and needs of peaceful individuals, which makes them dangerous to
individual survival. Sometimes they will even interfere with new ideas and actions
that would only serve to make all human life better.
It is important to these idea-organisms to maintain the status quo where the
powers of individual humans are concerned. The environment in which they
evolved included many human limitations. And it is not clear that they can
continue to survive in a world in which individual human beings gain more power
– a world in which certain human limitations are overcome.
Think of a field of crops that is growing well, then someone changes the
composure of the soil. Will the crops continue to grow properly? Probably not –
they were suited to the original soil mix. New knowledge can be like an
environmental change to the idea-organisms growing in your mind. Therefore,
these idea-organisms resist both personal learning and overall cultural advances
in knowledge, even when this is contrary to the survival interests of individual
human beings.
It seems quite likely that idea-organisms would be particularly upset about
knowledge of their true natures. However, if we wish to remain true to ourselves
(despite the best efforts of Higher Powers to bend us to their wills) we must try to
understand the nature of these idea-organisms.

0.2.3 The Making of a Higher Power

The key factor that allows the growth of a complex parasitic ideological organism
(as opposed to symbiotic ideas), is a common flaw in the way people tend to
think. The problem stems from our tendency to want to categorize things. We do
this in an effort to simplify our thinking and lives.
While mental categorization is a very useful tool, its miss-application is at
the root of the growth of the ideological entities we call Higher Powers.
Categorization makes life a lot easier. For example, if you find out you are
allergic to citrus fruits; it is very useful to recognize a pattern. You learn not to eat
any fruit with a thick, waxy, brightly colored skin. It is likely to be a citrus fruit, and
it could hurt you. It is useful for you to label all citrus fruits as "BAD" and to not
bother trying each new one that comes along. There might be exceptions, but it
is probably not worth finding out.
In the world of idea-organisms, this sort of thinking is encouraged, even beyond
what is appropriate or useful.
If you read a sheet of paper with ten ideas on it, you can easily go down the list,
evaluating each one. You can decide if you think each is true or not, based on its
own merits.
However, if there is an impressive title that groups the ten ideas into a seemingly
inseparable list, it may no longer be easy to think of each idea as separate
proposition. It does not matter if the list is entitled "The Code of Gozer the
Gozerian" or the "Ten Commandments of God.” Once the list has such a title, it is
now being presented as a single unit of thought, rather than ten separate
thoughts.

9
There is no logical reason why the ten ideas should be grouped as one in your
mind, but in order for idea-organisms to function, they must encourage this kind
of grouping. For an idea-organism to thrive, its various ideas must interact and
support each other. Complex idea-organisms can not exist unless your mind is
willing to let many ideas work together as a single system of beliefs.
If someone asked you, "What did you think of that list of ideas I sent you?" you
could easily say:
"I liked numbers five through ten all right, especially six, eight, and nine. They
were my favorites. But I thought those first four were pretty weak. Maybe you
should think about getting rid of those?"
On the other hand, if someone asks you what you think of "The Ten
Commandments," there is more of a feeling of inseparability. You will probably
feel ideological pressure to answer, "I think they are pretty good" rather than go
into specific details about which of The Commandments are good and which of
The Commandments could use some improvement. They are grouped together
in a way that makes it hard to separate them. Logically they should be individual
ideas that can each receive separate consideration. But the title of the list makes
that a very hard thing to do.
This bundling of ideas is how bad information can slip in along with good.
It is how complex ideological life forms, such as the Higher Powers we
have described, become possible.
Complex ideologies are built of simpler ideas. In order to act as a whole unit, they
must convince you that they must either be accepted or rejected as a whole unit.
If you start examining the individual ideas that are its parts, the complex idea-
organism falls apart. If everyone could learn to remember that they are always
free to pick and choose the simple ideas that work, from any given set of ideas,
while rejecting the bad ones, large parasitic idea-organisms could never survive
or continue to evolve.
Remember our suicide bomber? This is exactly how she got suckered into
triggering a bomb strapped to her chest. All the good ideas in her world; ideas
about family, loyalty, justice, etc, got packaged together with some very bad
ideas. She did not have the intellectual tools to separate the good ideas from the
bad ones, so she ended up acting on bad ideas that went against her own best
interests. Such bad ideas go against the interests of all individuals and are only
useful to the reproduction of certain larger idea-organisms.
In this book we will try to show you how to recognize the influences of such
parasitic ideas. We will discuss the dangers that occur when these kinds of ideas
saturate a group and how all Higher Powers stem from collective belief systems.
We will explain the strategies that these ideas use to convince you to believe in
them, how to avoid them, and how to rid your mind of them.
Finally, we will show how all the rewards that Higher Powers promise (even
God’s offer of immortality) may be obtainable without sacrificing yourself to the
cause.

10
0.3 Self Sacrifice
Thinking as an individual, the actions of the suicide bomber seem truly
inexplicable. However, when you understand the driving forces of Idea-
organisms, her behavior makes perfect sense. From the point of view of the idea-
organism in her head, her sacrifice is a small one for a greater gain; a small price
to pay for "the greater good."

0.3.1 The Ultimate Sacrifice

Suicide is obviously not an action promoted by our biology. It ends the ability for
the genes to reproduce themselves, and is therefore something your genes
would not have you do. The only possible time that suicide can be good for the
genes is when the act of death is a sacrifice that vastly increases the survival
chances of a large number of related creatures such as children. Related
creatures carry a lot of the same genes, so the sacrifice of an individual animal
can still be in the best self interest of its genes.
The same benefit of self-sacrifice can be seen in the world of ideas. It is in the
best self interest of an ideology to cause a person to sacrifice her life in order to
save the lives of many other people who are also hosting the same idea-
organism. And in the world of ideas, a suicidal act might do more than just save
other people who have those ideas in their heads. It might also actually aid in the
reproduction of those ideas by calling greater attention to an idea. If the suicidal
act seems noble and heroic, it can help spread the idea that initiated the suicide.
In the case of the suicide bomber, this is part of the story. However, something
even more insidious is going on. Such acts are part of an ongoing war of
ideologies between people worshiping different Higher Powers. However, there is
actually a hidden friendly relationship between the two apparently rival powers.
By demonizing each other, they actually help each other convert new followers.

0.3.2 Violence Begets Violence

The extremist aspects of two warring Higher Powers are intensified with each act
of violence. One act of violence provokes retaliation, which provokes counter
retaliation, until it is almost impossible to sort out who started what. The
aggressive nature of ideas on each side is thus increased, and moderate ideas
within each population are silenced.
As more innocent people are dragged into the violence, more ill will is created in
people who would otherwise have never chosen to participate in such a conflict.
Thus many additional fertile minds, ripe for infection by these violent idea-
organisms, are cultivated. Suicide bombing lends itself particularly well to this
process.
When the person who commits a violent act is removed from the equation,
it almost guarantees that retaliation will be escalated above the level of
personal vengeance, to the impersonal level of competing ideologies.
If the bomber were still alive, she could be located, captured, tried, and executed.
This would give some closure to the friends and families of the victims. However,
since the culprit "escapes" by dying in the act, the natural desire for some
retribution becomes more widely directed towards some larger group that
11
included the bomber. There is also a tendency for people to feel victimized if they
identify with the same group as the victims. When a violent act is ideological
rather than personal, people tend to feel involved, even if they do not actually
know any of the people hurt. This inflation of a personal act of hatred to the level
of larger groups can occur on both sides simultaneously.
One can imagine a Samoan living on the island of Hawaii in the late summer of
2001, who on September 10th was complaining about all the non-native
Hawaiians on the island and telling his friends that Hawaii would be better off if it
were independent from the United States. A couple days later, after the violent
actions of September 11th, he might have been proudly flying a US flag, and
telling his friends how he would punch out the next Arab he saw. Maybe he even
joined the army. The suicide attacks on September 11th, served to strengthen
the hold of the group identity, even over those in whom it was fairly weak.
Patriotic anger inspires misdirected violent retaliation that furthers the
cause of violent factions on both sides of the ideological conflict.
When a Higher Power inspires a member of a group to sacrifice herself in this
way, it may gain far more than it loses. The loss of one faithful believer is likely to
be compensated by greater faith in many of the previously less faithful. This cycle
of "violence begets violence" strengthens and furthers the goals of two Higher
Powers at war. They are secret allies, helping each other enslave more minds.

0.3.3 Ants and Men

It has been said that only ants and men fight their own kind to the death or go to
war. When two stags clash antlers over territory, rarely is either injured, and even
more rarely is either killed. They test their relative strengths and give ground
accordingly without mortal peril coming into the picture. Even where species do
go to war in groups, again these clashes rarely result in serious injury or death.
Most animals will not readily lay down their lives for others of their kind, no matter
how large a group they are protecting.
There are some notable exceptions. One of which is that the parents of many
species, especially the mother, will protect their young, sometimes even to the
death. To understand why it makes sense for them to do so, one must
understand that every animal is an expression of a genetic pattern, and that
these genes are at the root of all behavior. So when you observe behavior in
animals, no matter how bizarre it may seem to you, it usually makes sense from
the point of view of the genes contained within that animal.
The genetic relationship between parents and young is easily understood. Half of
the genes of each parent will be expressed in each of the offspring. Also, a
mother animal will know, with almost 100% certainty, which offspring are her
own. This makes the odds easy to calculate. From a gene's point of view it
makes sense for a mother to lay down her life for more than two of her own
offspring, or risk her life for just one, if the risk is less than a 50% chance of
death.
So a mother sacrificing her life for a child or children makes good genetic sense,
but how does this explain the behavior of two ant colonies fighting each other?
Truly a war between two colonies of social insects is the only sight in nature
comparable to rows of human soldiers killing each other en mass. For the ants'
12
part, they are still just playing the roles that their genes have encoded into them.
And from the genes' point of view, once again, it all makes sense.
Most ants do not reproduce. Only the Queen ant and a select few male ants ever
breed. The worker and soldier ants are sterile, and will not pass along their
genes, except through the copies of those genes that are contained in the
Queen. So, when a soldier ant sacrifices its life for Queen and Colony, the way
human soldiers will sacrifice their lives for King and Country, its behavior is
benefiting the genes inside of it by helping ensure the safety of the few ants that
actually reproduce those genes.
In fact, because each ant colony only reproduces through the Queen, all the
other worker and soldier ants in the colony can be viewed as extensions of the
Queen ant. From this point of view, when two ant colonies of the same species
are fighting over territory, it is really no different than two stags locking horns.
The ants that die in the conflict mean as little to the whole colony organism as the
occasional splinter of lost antler means to the whole stag.
So then the question remains, why do men go to war?
Human beings are not colony insects breeding through a single Queen. It is not
in our genes best interest to sacrifice ourselves for our leader’s whims. Certainly
our individual deaths mean more than the splintered antlers of a larger animal...
The answer to this question is found in the nature of our ideas. Ideological
replicators, rather than our biological replicators, often influence human behavior.
Collective idea-organisms are the higher animals of the idea world. Copies of a
collection of ideas (an ideology), inside the heads of each of its members, are
what defines a group. These ideas act together to create group behavior and turn
us into parts of a collective organism. Such a Collective will sacrifice us as
quickly as the colony will sacrifice worker and soldier ants, or the stag will
sacrifice the cells that make up its hooves and antlers.
When human soldiers go to war, it is because the group idea-organism that
causes this behavior is defending its physical or ideological territory.
Since the idea exists in all the members of the group, it makes sense to sacrifice
the warrior carrying one copy, for the many copies of the idea left in the minds at
home. When two ideological organisms clash, they use human beings the way
the ant colony uses soldier ants, or the stag uses its antlers. They are tools that
have been specially created for just this purpose.
Collective idea-organisms turn men into tools to be used for the survival and
growth of the Collective. This explains why people, who would not normally hurt a
fly in their own homes, can be made to travel half way around the world, to risk
death, and to kill people they have never met, in defense of their "way of life."

0.3.4 Personal Sacrifice

While you have never died for a cause (at least the fact that you are reading this,
and the current level of technology as we are writing it, makes that seem
unlikely), you have probably sacrificed yourself for a group in many ways, and at
many times.
If you have ever done something just because you felt it was expected of you,
you have sacrificed something to a Higher Power. Maybe this involved serving in
13
the military or on jury duty, or maybe just paying taxes. Whatever it was, if you
did it out of a sense of obligation rather than because of a reasoned calculation,
you sacrificed to a Higher Power.
Do you tend to behave the way that is expected of you in a group? When
watching a performance, do you clap when everyone else does, not necessarily
because you liked the show, but because you would feel weird not clapping while
everyone else is? Do you feel constant pressure to conform? Worse yet, do you
pressure other people to conform?
Some people seem to have a problem fitting into groups. They are socially
awkward and never seem to know how to act. They are geeky. Perhaps you
know the type. Perhaps you even are one. If you are, then you lack the ability to
blend into a group. This might be seen as a natural resistance to the group-think
caused by Higher Powers – or as some sort of a lack of social skills. Both ways
of looking at the situation are probably somewhat true. Being a geek is both a
blessing and a curse. Being able to see the world in unapproved ways can be an
advantage, but not sending out the right social cues can make you a target.
If you do have social skills, then you have probably made fun of such people.
Maybe not recently, but what about when you were younger? Did you ever apply
hurtful pressure to anyone who just wouldn't fit in? Even if you have always been
nice about it, helpfully coaching people on how to better fit into a group is also a
service to the Collective. Even if you have just spent some of your time talking
about the virtues of some group, you have done work for an idea-organism.
Not all idea-organisms are necessarily the worst possible kind, but if you are
accepting ideas without analysis, just because it’s what everyone else around
you also believes, then you well may end up as host to one of the very bad ones.
While you may not pay with your Life, paying in terms of your time or money is
also sacrificing something of yourself.
While our discussions will be relevant to all collective Higher Powers, we target
God for special attention because God makes the claim of being the highest of all
possible powers. This allows God to offer the most fantastic rewards in return for
an individual’s intellectual surrender. Believers are promised purpose in life and
immortality in exchange for belief.
If you have trouble seeing that other things we call Higher Powers – the Nation
State for example – are really the same sort of ideological constructs as God, ask
yourself what the differences are between the following two propositions:
1. The "Chosen People" should not live among, nor should they ever do
business with the "Infidels"
2. People born on different sides of an imaginary “border line” should not be
able to move to live near each other, nor to do business freely.

The prohibitions that the Nation State places on free movement and trade, based
on imaginary lines on a map, can be just as damaging as the results of any ideas
concerning the "Will of God.”
While other Higher Powers like Nation States and Corporations can't make
the kinds of promises that God does by laying claim to the highest possible
authority, they can still demand some truly significant sacrifices.

14
0.4 Picking on God
Religions, governments, corporations, and other "Higher Powers" that cause
people to act as a group are all examples of collective idea-organisms.
Collectives arise from the way human beings create mental identities for things in
the world around them and assign icons to represent complex groups of ideas.
God and Country are merely icons for such collective idea-organisms.
These idea-organisms influence large numbers of people to behave as a group.
Copies in the minds of individual human beings work together the way a higher
animal's component cells do, producing unified behavior. In addition, these idea-
organisms may act in ways that are harmful to their human hosts, encouraging
them to sacrifice themselves for the good of the Collective.
In defense of ourselves against charges of blasphemy (not that it will help), we
do not believe that any true GOD would object to this line of discussion. No true
GOD would need to fear examination or inquiring minds. The Big Guy on The
Throne does not require protection from a couple of little guys who are just
examining life on Earth and trying to find answers to problems.
In fact, we think that any god worthy of the name would have to smile upon our
efforts to understand the reasons why people think the way they do.

0.4.1 The Word "God"

All the words in the title “God Wants You Dead” are highly charged. They are
often misunderstood, ill defined, and/or filled with emotional response. The word
"wants" is directly related to the concepts of self interest, values, and the market
forces that make modern human life possible. The word "you" points directly to
the concept of identity or "the self," and this is a concept that philosophers have
been trying to unravel for as long as there have been philosophers. The word
"dead" draws a line between existence and nonexistence, and the idea of
nonexistence is one of the scariest things that a person ever has to face.
However, the first word of our title, "God,” is very likely the most powerful of the
lot. It may be that more people have been killed because of the idea of GOD or
gods than as a result of any other idea that was ever invented. On the other
hand, monotheism is also a part of the history of mankind's growth of ideas – a
process that has taken us from a global population of millions to that of billions of
living human beings.
So Who Is This God Person Anyway?
There are as many different answers to that question as there are people –
though many of the answers are very similar.
Some people think they know God from books they’ve read. Others have been
introduced to God by their friends and relatives. Many people talk to God on a
regular basis, though only a small number of people find that God actually talks
back to them. Only a very small number of people claim to have actually met
GOD face to face, and for the most part, even the strongest believers in God
don't believe most of those claims.
Our use of the word "god" falls into three categories. The first is "god" – a being
with godlike powers. The second is "GOD" – the instance of a Supreme Being.
15
The third is "God" – the concept of a Supreme Being as it exists in the minds of
human beings.
The first usage usually relates to belief in polytheism. Some religions past and
present detail the existence of many different gods. Some belief systems even
hold that it is possible for a human being to become a god, or at least possess
god-like powers. We will use the word "god" to mean any being who is worshiped
by those who believe in its divine powers.
The second usage refers to "THE GOD" rather than "a god.” GOD is the supreme
entity in a monotheistic belief system. Even in a polytheistic belief system, we
might logically attribute the title of "GOD" to the most powerful god. Many such
belief systems have some central figure that is the strongest, wisest, etc. We will
use the word "GOD" to mean the omnipotent being that is believed to have
created the universe. This is the being that we also call "The Big Guy On The
Throne.” If it amuses you to do so, you can think of the word "GOD" as an
acronym for "Generic Omnipotent Deity.”
The third usage, which is the way we use it in the title of this book, is the most
interesting to us. We will use the word "God" to mean the shared concept of an
omnipotent deity, as it exists in the minds of many human beings.
Even if you don’t believe in the existence of GOD or gods, you certainly
recognize the existence of God. The idea of a supreme being is something
that demonstrably exists and has an effect on our lives. It inhabits many
human minds and is capable of producing collective actions. God is an
icon representing a collection of ideas with its own agenda – an agenda
quite separate from the best interests of the individual human minds that
host it.
In the next section we will explore the nature of the God concept as it exists in
the minds of both believers and non-believers. We will show how this concept
causes collective actions, and examine it as an example of a Distributed Identity.

0.4.2 The Idea of God

If you’re not one of those people who really know God well, but you’d like to get
to understand, perhaps the best way to do so is to look at the history of gods and
godhood.
In the early days of recorded history, there were a lot of gods around. Every
nation, clan, or valley had at least one, and many had several. Some people
thought, "the more gods the better" and tried to get into the graces of many. If
you had a good relationship with several gods, then there was a better chance
that at least one of those gods would keep your interests in mind while working
out things divine. This would be similar to your representatives in a modern
political system. (And you know how well that works for you!) In fact, gods and
political systems were once very much linked – they still are sometimes – even in
some modern states. (And you probably know how well that works too...)
In those days, the leader of a nation might be closely linked to their god, often
acting as the god’s physical embodiment in the real world, or perhaps as the
chosen conduit between men and the gods. When nations went to war with each
other, their gods were also fighting, and the winners were thought to have the
strongest god. Whether the winning nation’s strength made its god the greatest,
16
or the winning god’s strength made its nation the greatest, was purely a matter of
semantics.
In early times, the god was combined with the nation, and both were
embodied in the leader.
Since the leader of a nation could be strongly associated with the god of a nation,
and nations weren’t as big as we grow them these days, there was a much
greater range of upward mobility. If you worked hard and had a lot of good ideas,
it might just be possible to become a god back then. And having achieved
godhood, your descendants could often get in on the "god gig" just by right of
birth. Therefore it was both possible to earn or inherit divinity.
A few thousand years ago, the god of the Jews (who later became the god of the
Christians and the Muslims too when those religions evolved from Judaism), was
promoted to being "THE GOD." This particular god had no single human being
attached, but did have a priesthood who shared in the benefits of being the only
people who really knew this god well.
This worked out well for everyone, as having a living divine entity on Earth
belching and farting like any other human can be very embarrassing to a religion.
It worked so well, that this particular "THE GOD,” is now the GOD that over half
of the people in the world are talking about when they talk about GOD. (Although
there is sometimes violent disagreement about whether Yahweh, Jehovah, and
Allah are the same "person.")
Not being seen allows a god to have much greater powers without the human
analog constantly being bothered to perform miracles. The Priests still get
bothered some, but they can simply promise to "put in a good word.” They can
also much more plausibly ask for money than can someone claiming to be
omnipotent.
In the case of this particular god, this growth of extra powers went so far as to
make him the best and greatest of all the gods. In fact he became such a strong
god that many people came to believe that he was the creator and controller of
everything. (OK, there were some advantages that came from monotheism, but
we’re having fun here, so please don’t interject!)
God started out by just wanting his people to "have no other gods" before him,
and ended up as "the Alpha and the Omega,” the beginning and the end of
everything. As "THE GOD,” he was so impressive that he did not even lose face
when the nation that believed in him was destroyed, scattered, and enslaved.
Wherever they found themselves, and however bad life got, believers in God
knew that they were the chosen people and that all was for the best.
One way that belief in God ensured this was by promising a next life in which
everything would be good for the believers. This was not a new promise. Many
gods had offered immortality to believers. God, however, was the big guy and
could control the afterlife for everyone, even those who didn’t believe in him.
Whereas the garden variety god could only reward or torture his own people in
the next life, THE GOD could claim that power over everyone.
Therefore, he could offer his people the consolation of knowing that not only
would the next life be great for them, but also that the assholes who had
persecuted and enslaved them would all be totally screwed. This was a big

17
seller, as people like their revenge even when served that cold. It kept faith in
God alive through some very troubled times.
Later, such punishment was extended, not just to those who harmed the chosen
people, but to everyone who was not among the chosen. Not only did this make
people very happy with their chosen status but it was also a big help in any
recruiting effort by the chosen people. The original chosen people were not so
interested in this. They actually set up difficult and painful barriers to recruitment,
like having to learn a new language and having delicate pieces of one's anatomy
snipped off. But the whole "eternal damnation for non-believers" concept lent
itself so well to a recruiting drive that it was probably the major reason for the
appearance of many new factions. (This lead to the birth of Christianity, and later
Islam)
The other strength that this God had when it came to recruiting was that since he
was the only god, if another culture already believed in a supreme being, then
they must really believe in the same GOD. Thus a culture could be converted by
being told that they were worshiping the same GOD as always, that they had just
gotten the name wrong, and would have to change some of their methods of
worship. If the culture had more than one god, invariably there was one which
was the most good, most wise, and most powerful, to fit the bill.
This was much easier than the previous method of completely converting another
culture. The old method seems to have required killing every last adult male and
raping all the women. The new method just involved stealing and renaming a
culture's holidays.
This omnipotent and omnibenevolent (all powerful and all good) being, who
would eternally torture anyone who did not believe in him, was such a big hit that
he was soon the centerpiece of the biggest selling religious concept in the
western world. The only real competition persisted in the east where the general
belief was that when you died, you came back again as someone or something
else. This belief in reincarnation satisfies what appears to be a general human
need for some sort of immortality, but doesn’t fit well with God’s eternal reward or
eternal torture carrot and stick combination.
To be clear: This book is about how ideas survive and reproduce, so throughout
this book we are, in almost all cases, using the word "God" in reference to the
idea of a Supreme Being as it exists in the minds of people around the world, not
in reference to any actual deity.
God is a concept existing in many human minds that is capable of producing
collective actions. God is an idea-organism with its own agenda, separate from
the interests of the individual human minds that host it. Where "GOD" and "gods"
are the intangible things of faith and/or myth that deny proof, God is something
that demonstrably exists and has an ongoing visible effect on our lives.
You may or may not believe in GOD, but you definitely experience the effects of
God (the idea-organism) on a daily basis.

0.4.3 The Power of God

Although God is the highest of all Higher Powers conceptually, he does not have
the real world clout that he once had. At one time, in most human societies,
defiance of the local belief in GOD or gods would be met with a punishment of
18
torture and death. God no longer commands that kind of power in most parts of
the world.
For various reasons (some good and some bad) the authority to use violent force
has almost always been centralized to a single organization that is generally
called "The government." Where the government used to be controlled by
religion, recently (historically speaking) a new Higher Power has risen to this
peak position.
The new Higher Power we speak of is Geography. It sounds odd, when you put it
that way. Geography was a boring subject you studied in school. Geography is
about drawing lines on maps, and naming the areas inside the drawn borders. It
seems silly that writing names on maps could give rise to a Higher Power. Silly or
not, names are powerful things in the world of ideas.
Where Religion may play on people's instinctive and powerful fear of death,
Nation States based on geographic borders play on our likewise powerful
territorial instincts.
So the ideological power structure of the world has changed somewhat in the last
several hundred years. World leaders used to claim to be speaking the will of
God, or even be to a god on Earth. Now most of them claim to be speaking with
the voice of the "fatherland" or sometimes "motherland.” (But never "brotherland"
or "sisterland," as a Higher Power will never claim to just be your conceptual
equal.) Geography also calls for sacrifices from us. They are somewhat different
ones than those that God would want us to make, but possibly just as damaging.
And God is still around. He is down but not out. He can still affect the decisions of
most Geography-based government, even where he can no longer directly make
those decisions. So when we talk about the sacrifices that God wants us to make
in his name, we will also be talking about the avenues through secular
government that God must use if he wants his will enforced. We will discuss how
reducing the power that our governments have over us would help avoid having
them used by idea-organisms against our best interests. We will also discuss
other Higher Powers that use these same strategies to try to bend us to their will.
So, despite this book's title, we will not just be picking on God.

19
0.5 God Wants You Dead
The concept of God has evolved over several thousands of years. (That is quite
a lot of evolutionary time for an idea, as ideological evolution moves a LOT faster
than the biological equivalent.) During all that time, death has been one of the
biggest and most constant facts of life.
Humans have a lot of limitations that make us who we are. All of these limitations
have been part of the environment that the idea-organism called God has grown
and thrived in. Remember that we are talking about a living idea with its own
agenda – with its own environmental needs for survival and replication. So
changing any part of its regular environment could be dangerous to God's
continued existence.
Idea-organisms are creatures of culture. To protect themselves, idea-
organisms must resist cultural change. One of the ways they do this is to
suppress new technologies that might cause serious changes.
As interesting evidence of this, consider the fact that the people who always
seem to invent new technology are the geeky types – the types that do not fit into
the Collective. Earlier we talked about the fact that geeks are less in touch with
the group-think of idea organisms. This makes them stand out as outsiders,
unable to blend into any group. However, this also leaves their minds free of the
influences of idea-organisms.
The history of technological innovation is a history of strangely geeky outsiders
as the innovators. Idea-organisms suppress the creation of new ideas in the
minds that host them. It takes a mind free from such idea-organisms to come up
with brilliant new ideas.
To see why idea-organisms feel the need to suppress new technology, let’s
consider the impact that certain new technologies might have on various Higher
Powers:
First, we want you to imagine what would happen to national governments,
based on geographic boundaries, if a teleportation device (like a Star Trek
transporter) was ever invented. Imagine a world where individuals had access to
a device that allowed instant travel from place to place.
How could it not be a huge plus to human progress to eliminate travel time and
shipping time for goods? Yet the idea of national borders – and hence nation
states – would be threatened by this technology. You can not have a cohesive
national identity, based on geographical location, when people are empowered to
move freely and instantly from one side of the world to the other. We can pretty
much guarantee that governments would do anything they could to suppress and
control a new technology that would change or remove our concept of territory.
Your Geography-based government is already keenly interested in controlling
travel. It issues travel papers to allow you to cross imaginary lines drawn on
maps. It wants to make sure that you are not traveling across these lines with
any personal property it would rather keep inside or outside those lines. The
idea-organism of the geography-based Nation State can not allow total freedom
of movement and still survive. Therefore it must strongly regulate all

20
transportation technology, and any advances of such technology will tend to
frighten it into action.
Next, imagine what would happen to the idea of Race if a technology that
allowed us to instantly rewrite our genetic code was invented. You could wake up
in the morning, and choose if you wanted to be Asian, Black, Caucasian,
Hispanic, or even blue with purple polka dots. The leadership of groups based on
racial identity would decry such technology. They would do everything in their
power to stop people from using it. Such a technology would remove stupid
prejudices that have long divided us from viewing each other as all just members
of the same species. But those prejudices are at the core of the concept of racial
identity. Those seriously infected with the idea of Race, no matter what their
actual specific race, would all denounce such technology as a great evil.
If the idea of Race happened to be the highest ideological power and was
currently controlling the government when such technology was developed, you
can bet that the government would quickly criminalize the new technology. If the
influence of Race on government was less, but still strong, the government might
just strictly control the use of race changing technology. The idea-organism of
Race could not survive the wide use of a technology that allowed people such
freedom of control over their bodies.
Now think about the way in which Corporations are also constantly threatened by
new technology. Old business models are often invalidated by new technology
that gives people the power to get along without goods or services previously
provided by a Corporation. When this happens, if the Corporation can not adapt
quickly, it must try to influence the government to make the new technology
illegal, or gain the legal right to stifle such technology for a period of time so it
can adapt.
All the above examples point to exactly the sort of resistance that Religion will
put up against revolutionary new medical technologies.
If human beings ever found a way to survive without eating, or breathing, this
would upset the environment for all the ideas that human beings have – it would
cause a lot of ideological changes. While clearly this would be something that
would make human life less fragile and easier, it would shake things up a lot in
the world of our ideas. So we could also say "God Wants You Breathing," which
sounds a lot nicer than "God Wants You Dead." However, if human beings ever
found a way to stop dying, it would be an even more serious blow to the God
Idea. God has evolved in such a way as to be linked with an idea of immortality –
of not actually dying when you die.
The invention of real immortality will be a bigger shake-up for the idea of
God than all the previous scientific progress that humanity has ever made.
In the name of God, true believers will fight against technology that can make us
all healthy and young for as long as we choose. What could be a greater boon to
humanity than complete health without any infirmity or ailment? Yet the idea of
God, fighting for its very survival, will resist any technology that might hurt its old
business model. It will resist such technology with all its available power. Religion
may not be the idea-organism currently controlling most national governments,
but it will use what influence it has to fight the acceptance of anti-aging medicine.

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God would certainly rather have you dead than give up a monopoly on
selling immortality.
Now, think again for a moment about the question we considered at the
beginning of the chapter: "How are you different from a suicide bomber?"
Does some feeling of duty to a Higher Power make you think that having
advanced medical technology that could give us physical immortality would be a
bad thing? Would you reject using that technology for yourself? Would you try to
prevent others from using it?
If your beliefs would cause you to oppose the development or use of new life-
saving technologies, for yourself and others, how different are you from those
who are inspired by some Higher Power to commit suicide and murder?

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 1
Evolution of Higher Powers
In this chapter we will take a detailed look at what Higher Powers are, where they
come from, and how they act as icons for complex idea-organisms.
In the introductory summary, we touched briefly on the idea that such complex
idea-organisms could not exist if people did not commit the logical error of
bundling many simpler ideas into a larger construct – a construct that requires
you to accept or reject the set of ideas as a single unit. We also talked about how
attaching a label or title to such a collection of ideas made it hard for people to
separately consider the various smaller concepts, and to spot the bad ideas. This
is exactly what an icon does, only more so.
A Higher Power is an icon that stands for a group of ideas. It lends a face, a
personality, and a voice to a set of ideas. It not only helps bind an ideology
together, but it also strengthens the ideas by playing the role of a very
authoritative source for the ideas.
It is a logical "Error of Source" to accept ideas from authority, without examining
them, just as much as it is to attack ideas you don't like by criticizing the source.
However, it is still a very common fallacy, and seems to be part of the way we
tend to think when we are not being very careful. (See our chapter "The Art of
Thought" for more information on logical thinking and common fallacies.)
A higher power can present an icon of seemingly unchallengeable authority.
Such an icon does not just pop into existence, wholly formed. The icon and the
ideas that it represents are shaped by an evolutionary process. Over time, the
Icon may be described in slightly different ways. The ideas change slightly, as
they pass from one human being to another.
Historically, this changing with each telling would have occurred easily in ideas
passed down through an oral tradition. Once the ideas were committed to writing,
such changes would have occurred less frequently. But major changes could still
have happened in translations to other languages, or in new revised additions
authorized by some authority figure.

The most famous example of a possible ideological mutation through translation error is
the translation of the Isaiah 7:14 in which the Hebrew word "almah" was translated to
mean "virgin,” thus describing the miracle of a virgin giving birth. There is much debate on
both sides of this, and probably for all the wrong reasons – that is, the debaters are not
really interested in the truth of what was meant in the original passage, but only making
their own religious or anti-religious points.
The word "almah" can certainly mean either "virgin" or "young woman,” much like the word
"maiden" in English. And one might think that on such an important point, the author of the
text would have been clearer. However, in the context that this child's birth is given as
being a sign from GOD, a virgin birth is certainly more likely to have been seen as a
miraculous sign.
In any case, whether or not this is a valid example, there can be little doubt that such
mutations can occur in written texts as they are translated into different languages.

23
Even when the words of a philosophy or religion are written in stone, if they are
many and complicated, they are open to interpretation. This interpretation then
becomes the equivalent of a new oral tradition, with different preachers saying
different things about their favorite bits from their favorite holy texts.
Where such small changes in ideas are allowed, evolution can occur. The stories
that impress people the most continue, and those that don't fade away. The icon
attributed as the source of those stories takes on whatever aspect conveys the
most authority. The more people who believe the ideas and pass them on, the
more authoritative the Icon becomes. The more authoritative the Icon is the more
people will pass the associated ideas on to others. The end product of this
evolutionary cycle will be a unified set of ideas that act together to be as
convincing as possible, represented by an icon of the most convincing possible
aspect.
The evolved icon will always be one that can convincingly claim higher
authority than anything you could personally hope to refute, perhaps even
the highest authority you could possibly imagine.

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1.1 Biological Evolution
In this book we will discuss at length the processes by which ideologies and
icons are formed and how they survive. This book is all about evolution, but for
the most part, not the biological kind. In this section we will touch on the "Theory
of Evolution" as it applies to biological life forms, but only to gain some
understanding of how the same process applies to ideas.
Since 1859 when Charles Darwin published "Origin of Species," the idea of
evolution has raised quite a bit of fuss among folks who believe that man was
created in God’s physical image. (They apparently believe that God has less
body hair than the typical ape, yet more than the typical woman.) However,
evolution is more than just the idea that we all have distant ancestors who had a
lot more fur on them than we do now, and it applies to more than just biological
animals.
Evolution is the observation that any set of replicating patterns will tend to
adapt to outside forces.
Evolution is a very simple idea, but it is surprisingly powerful in allowing us to
explain the world we observe. This is why it is not popular with organized
religions. It competes with another quite simple and powerful explanation,
“Things are the way they are because God wills it.”
But there is nothing about the idea of evolution that really denies the existence of
GOD or gods, it only implies that if GOD had specifically wanted to create a
certain animal, the process of creation started a lot further back and involved a
lot more time than just molding it out of clay and breathing life into it. The idea of
evolution doesn’t even deny the existence of one or more beings with the power
to instantly turn clay into flesh, it just points to another possible path by which this
can happen (albeit a lot more slowly).
Evolution isn’t really even a theory, so much as an observed fact of life. There is
good strong evidence that evolution does happen. You can even do experiments
yourself to see it happen. But be prepared to wait a while for results – such
experiments will take many generations of animals to show obvious results.
(Bacteria and insects breed fast, so it is in these species that evolution can be
most directly observed.)

1.1.1 Dogs and Rabbits

If you put a fence around a yard full of rabbits, and you put a hungry dog in the
yard, quite soon the average speed of the rabbits will be somewhat faster. (There
will soon be one less slow rabbit in the yard.)
If you leave the dog in with the rabbits long enough, and the rabbits are allowed
to breed, the offspring of the faster rabbits will tend to be faster rabbits. This is
direct evidence of evolution at work. Even the most faithful evolution-denying
creationist will agree that these remaining fast rabbits will indeed produce fast
offspring. In doing so, they are agreeing to an example of evolution in action.
If this experiment goes on long enough, eventually our hypothetical dog will not
be able to catch any of the rabbits because they are too fast, and he will starve to
death. But if you had a large enough yard and even more rabbits, you could also

25
keep enough dogs that they could breed too. Over many years, some rabbits
would become dog dinner and some dogs would be too slow to catch food and
would starve. Over time, both rabbits and dogs would become, on average, a lot
faster.
But something additional and surprising will also happen. Wait a very long while,
and some dogs and rabbits will develop new ways to eat and avoid being eaten.
Some rabbits will burrow into the ground to hide from the dogs, and some dogs
will lie very still and wait for a nearsighted rabbit to walk close by, rather than
chase after those very fast rabbits. They will become very good at hiding quietly,
and the fur of some dogs might even start to look like the grass they hide in. Wait
even longer and some of the dogs will be going down the holes to catch those
rabbits that are hiding, and some of the rabbits will be climbing trees. Wait long
enough, and some of the dogs will be eating grass, and some of the rabbits will
be chasing and eating dogs.

Of course these kinds of highly significant evolutionary changes would take

longer than your lifetime to observe – in fact they would take many, many human
lifetimes.
The initial observation, that the rabbit population gets faster (on average) when
the slower rabbits are getting eaten, seems ordinary and obvious. The idea that
this can eventually produce rabbits that eat dogs, however, is quite extraordinary
and counter-intuitive.

1.1.2 Unexpected Consequences

What happens is that the same sort of variance in the inherited traits of the
rabbits – that makes some rabbits faster than others – can also lead to

26
unexpected consequences: Better jumping ability to avoid dogs can lead to
reaching the lower limbs of trees to escape. Longer claws for catching those
branches and climbing those trees can also be used to defend against and
maybe even sometimes kill dogs. Once the rabbits are sometimes killing dogs,
learning to eat the bodies can provide more food for the new killer rabbits. Within
perhaps as little as tens of thousands of years, there could be saber-tooth rabbits
that have learned to seek out dogs as food rather than avoid them as a threat.
Each increase of a given trait by the evolutionary pressure of one survival
strategy, can lead to a new, unexpected and unplanned, survival strategy. Each
change to the population is caused by the death of many individuals. In this way
the collection of animals "learns" new abilities over time – but this learning is very
slow. Each noticeable stage requires many generations of breeding to improve
the animal. It takes many generations of increasing survival traits and reducing
counter-survival traits before any perceivable advance in survival behavior is
noticed.
Genetic learning is the origin of instinctive behavior as well as body design. But
this sort of learning is very slow compared to the kind humans are used to.

1.1.3 Human Learning

If a human touches something and burns his fingers, he can tell his friend that it
is hot, and his friend can then exhibit avoidance behavior. Within seconds of that
first human being’s encounter with the dangerous object, other human beings
can learn of the danger, and they can communicate it to other people who were
not there to see it happen, who can communicate it to still others, and so on.
Let’s compare human communication and learning to the genetic method of
learning.
Suppose a new dangerous thing, like fire, appears in the environment. Through
random genetic variance, some animals would be attracted to fire, and some
would avoid it. Those attracted to the fire, or not sufficiently wary of it, would
sometimes burn themselves. This injury might sometimes be fatal, or it might just
slow them down enough that something else kills them sooner than they would
have otherwise died. Over many generations of this kind of natural selection, the
species would then "learn" to avoid fire.
Lower orders of life, like bacteria, have less complicated bodies and can more
directly exchange genetic information. They are observed to swap genes directly.
This ability, combined with a very fast rate of reproduction, allows them to adapt
to changes in the environment much more quickly than higher animals can. If you
drop a small amount of penicillin into a dish full of bacteria – not enough to kill all
of them immediately – within a few days you will have a culture of penicillin-
resistant bacteria.
The direct gene exchange and fast reproduction of bacteria demonstrates the
very best learning speed that genetic information can manage. However, it still
doesn’t compare to the speed at which a group of human beings can adapt to
their environment. Human learning can be measured in fractions of a second, not
generations. It is no wonder that this amazing ability allows us to rule the planet.
So, just what is it that we are doing differently, and how did we start doing it?

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1.2 Ideological Evolution
I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this
very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still
drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is
achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene
panting far behind.
-- Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"
In his book "The Selfish Gene,” biologist Richard Dawkins pointed out that the
human ideas are replicators much like genes and coined the term "meme" as an
analog to the biological concept of "gene.” Although the actual physical structure
for the encoding of ideas has not yet been fully understood (unlike the well
understood DNA molecule that records the genetic code), the analogy between
biology and ideology that Dawkins made is a useful one. Ideas are certainly
replicators, reproducing themselves from mind to mind. They fit many of the
normal definitions of living things.

1.2.1 The Jesus Fish

Here is an amusing case of evolution at the memetic level: The fish became a
symbol for Jesus for various theological reasons. Christians who wanted to
display their faith while driving made a fish logo to put on the back of their cars:

Some people believe that the need for God (and his son the fish) was eliminated
by the understanding of evolution. In the 1980s, some believers in evolution
created a parody of the Jesus Fish image depicting a fish with legs:

Someone else credited Charles Darwin as the man who first published the idea
of species evolution, by putting his name inside the evolved fish logo:

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1.2.1.1 Fishier Mutations
This started a whole slew of fish mutations, including devil fish, sharks, and this
peculiar looking specimen:

This might need some explanation if you are not already familiar with the "Church
of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." The church of the FSM was the invention of
concerned citizen Bob Henderson in an open letter to the Kansas School Board:
www.venganza.org
At the time, the school board was considering the adoption of curriculum based
on the theories of intelligent design. The argument was that students should be
exposed to all theories equally. Bob’s point was that if all theories should indeed
be taught then any idea, up to and including Flyingspaghettimonsterism (his
personal religious belief) would also need to be seriously considered by the
board for possible inclusion in the curriculum.

1.2.1.2 Fish or Cut Bait

So now, thanks to a fishy idea that evolved into many different forms, if you want
to proclaim your religious beliefs, your taste in food, or some combination of
those two ideas like Flyingspaghettimonsterism, you can do so on the back of
your car in the form of a plastic fish.
You can purchase all the standard fish at www.evolvefish.com and if you think up
a new one, they might make it for you. Or you could learn how to make plastic
fish for yourself. (Give a man a plastic fish and he has something to put on his
car. Teach a man to make plastic fish and he can start a web business?)
Here is a fish that Sean came up with many years ago:

If you believe that Richard Dawkins contributed greatly to our understanding of

replicating information systems with his introduction of the meme analogy, then
perhaps you should decorate your bumper with this "Dawkins Fish" mutation. As
you can see it is in the legged evolution family, but has developed a bigger brain
for carrying around memes.

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1.2.1.3 Family Tree
Here is a possible family tree arrangement of car bumper fish, much the way a
biologist might classify existing animals based on theorized evolutionary
relationships:

The "fish" in the example above seems to evolve in much the same way that
animals on this planet have. You can clearly see three families, one religious,
one evolutionary, and one related to food. This is an illusion. The Darwin fish is
not a descendant of the Jesus fish so much as a competing idea borrowing
memetic code from its competition. Believers in evolution borrowed the idea of a
car bumper fish and cleverly added legs to make their point.
In the religious family you might find return salvos, including one with the Truth
Fish eating the Darwin Fish. This is not normal biological evolution in the sense
that animals of different species do not reproduce.
But it is a form of evolution. The existence of the “food fish” sub family highlights
the typical evolutionary occurrence of unexpected consequences. The link
between the Jesus Fish and the Food Fish family is the Gefilte Fish. This fish
was clearly intended as a Jewish response to the Christian Jesus Fish. However,
where Christ is linked in biblical scholarship to the symbol of the fish, the only
well known fish in Judaism is an actual food dish that many Jewish people
commonly eat.
Rather than continuing the religious battle of the religious fishes, this fish caused
other fans of various fishy food dishes to devise their own emblems. Just like
biological evolution, evolved ideological traits that come into being in response to
one survival threat, often lead to new survival strategies and further evolution in
totally unexpected directions.
It is important to note that many people who believe in Jesus, and might even
have an IXOYE fish on their car, would also agree that evolution is a valid theory.
30
A whole range of ideas with constant back and forth exchange and competition
exist in the world of ideology. The process by which ideological organisms evolve
is more akin to bacteria than to any higher biological animal.
As previously mentioned, bacteria exchange genetic information directly and
reproduce by dividing, rather than through sexual combination as higher animals
do. Ideological organisms are even more fluid creatures – able to separate and
recombine in whole or in parts. They do compete for ideological territory in the
brains of human beings, but even that analogy isn’t completely valid – as any
brain is capable of holding contradictory information. What they are really
competing for is not simply storage space, but ongoing thoughts and actions.
Ideas compete to cause human beings to expend their resources (time, money,
etc.) doing things to promote the ideas. Sometimes this means doing relatively
harmless things like buying a plastic logo and attaching it to the back of your car.
Sometimes it means torturing and killing the non-believers.

1.2.2 Survival and Replication Strategies

Your mind is a memetic structure, and your memes have certain reproductive
goals. If you've ever wondered why everyone seems to want to tell you what to
do, but no one ever listens to your advice, this is the reason. Your memes are
trying to copy themselves into other minds, and their memes are trying to do the
same. They resist your ideas (which would displace theirs) and you do the same.
Memes have evolved to resist competition from other memes. When people
communicate, they are trying to put their ideas into someone else's head. People
get into arguments when they have different ideas already occupying the same
evolutionary niches in their minds. Seen this way, an argument is simply an
attempt by the memes on each side to colonize each other's mental territory.
In addition to explaining why it's so hard to get people to change their ideas
(even when it seems quite obvious to you that their ideas are SO totally stupid),
looking at ideas as organisms explains a lot of other things.
For example, since your memetic reproductive strategies are different than the
goals of your genes, there are often conflicts between mental and physical
desires. This explains the mind/body duality that most people feel. Other
conflicts, purely mental, may be described as conflicts between memes
competing internally for the same resources.
Brains evolved to allow animals to react to changes in their environment. When
communication of information between brains became possible, ideas began to
reproduce themselves. That is, they became replicators of a new sort.
All replicators, genetic or memetic, are affected by natural selection, and this,
combined with any inexactness in the replication process, is what allows
evolution to happen.
For genes, sexual intercourse is the means of replication. For memes,
communication between human beings is the method of replication. Memetic
organisms have evolved ways of making them more likely to be communicated to
other hosts.

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Memes exist on top of the biological platform (without it they could not exist), but
they have their own reproductive strategies. They may have a separate agenda
from the body in which they reside, even though they still need that body to exist.
Idea-organisms cannot survive without minds to hold them. It is therefore not at
all surprising that ideological survival and replication strategies are often (but not
always) closely linked with the survival and replication of their hosts. In order to
continue to survive and replicate, an idea-organism must influence its host to
exhibit behavior that favors its replication.
The Idea-organism may adopt one or more replication strategies. It might offer its
host some direct additional survival advantage. It might help its hosts get along
and work together better as a team. Or it might just trick its host into spreading
the idea, even where it is not in the host’s biological interest to do so. We identify
three classifications of memes based on their general replication strategy. They
are called: Symbiotic, Altruistic, and Parasitic.

1.2.2.1 Symbiotic
The word symbiotic is used in biology to describe a relationship between two
species that is mutually beneficial. Symbiotic memes are beneficial to the
individual. They survive by making themselves useful to their hosts.
Because these ideas produce results that the biological platform identifies as
beneficial, they are more likely to be remembered and passed on to others. And
because they do, in fact, benefit the biological organism, the host lives longer.
This gives the ideological organism more time for replication to other hosts. It is a
symbiotic relationship.

Examples of Symbiotic memes:

• “Always look both ways before crossing the street."

• "Don’t use lead pipes for your drinking water."

• "Make sure that doctors wash their hands before performing surgery."

Symbiotic memes can be very simple ideas. Since they provide human beings
with direct benefit, they do not need to be bundled with other ideas into more
complicated idea-organisms that try to hold themselves out as inseparable
collections of ideas.
Symbiotic ideas can be considered individually, and are not afraid of the light of
logical inspection. In fact, they welcome a chance to show that they are indeed
useful. Thus they do not need any complex defense mechanisms.
People rarely get angry when someone disagrees with a simple symbiotic idea.
There is usually no emotional reaction, simply logical discourse. A person might
be puzzled that another is resisting a logically beneficial idea, but will not get
angry about it.

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If there is emotional reaction, this indicates that the idea has probably become
bundled into some larger idea-organism, and is now a belief, rather than just a
simple idea.

1.2.2.2 Altruistic
Whereas the symbiotic memes benefit their host directly, altruistic memes can be
beneficial to a group of hosts.
These memes survive by increasing the availability of other susceptible hosts for
communication. They ensure group stability at the expense of limiting individual
actions – but do so in such a way that everyone is better off on average.
It is notable that these memes, as part of their replication strategy, will often call
for special treatment of those who are guaranteed to be strongholds for copies of
the same meme – such as the respected elders of the group. Special attention is
also made to those who are most likely to be more susceptible to conversion,
such as very young children.
All moral and ethical codes fall into this category.

Examples of Altruistic memes:

• "Thou shalt not kill."

• "Thou shalt not steal."

• "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

• "An innocent child's life is more valuable than a cynical adult's life."

• "It is better to give than to receive."

Although altruistic memes can cause individuals to behave in ways that are not
necessarily to their immediate advantage, they can still be considered useful to
individuals. This apparent contradiction arises from the existence of certain
classical problems of economic game theory. Two such classic problems are "the
tragedy of the commons" and "the prisoner's dilemma." We will not go into a very
detailed description of such problems here, but we do suggest that you look them
up if you are unfamiliar with these concepts.
The basic idea behind problems of this type is that there are often situations in
which greater total value is gained by cooperation than through the expression of
individual self interest. Or perhaps we should say greater good is achieved
through cooperation than "unenlightened" or "short term" self interest. So,
adopting such memes can still be in one's rational self interest, even if they
sometimes limit an individual from taking actions of short term benefit.
To make this clearer – consider the first two items on the list of examples above.
A society in which people do not kill each other or steal from each other, but
instead engage in peaceful production and trade, will soon far surpass a society
in which people do not adopt these memes. While any given individual might find
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short term benefit in killing another person and stealing their property, a society
in which people commit theft and/or murder on a regular basis will never have the
same quality of life as one where they refrain from such behavior. Living in a
peaceful society is a huge benefit to all the individuals in it, the sacrifice of giving
up certain opportunities for immediate gain is a small price to pay for peace.
The simpler an altruistic idea is, the easier the benefit of group agreement on a
matter can usually be seen logically, and need not be taken of faith. This again is
manifest in the fact that arguments against simple altruistic memes do not usually
provoke anger or fear, only logical argument.
For example, if someone suggested to you that you could improve your diet by
eating human flesh, you would probably not be angry. You would just point out
that a lot of the benefits that people receive from being able to live in close
proximity to each other would not be possible if people went around eating other
people. Thus it is a benefit to you to refrain from eating other people, with the
understanding that they should also refrain from eating you. (Compare this to
trying to convince a Jew, Muslim, or Vegan that pork is good for them – you may
well spark some hostility.)
Altruistic ideas are not quite as open to inspection as symbiotic ideas. It is often
possible to logically understand that, although they may limit potentially beneficial
individual actions, the collective benefit they can provide outweighs some loss of
freedom. However, such ideas do sometimes tie themselves into emotional
responses of loyalty and kinship. When this happens, altruistic memes can act as
an anchor to start bundling ideas into a collective idea-organism, and this is when
parasitic memes start to make their appearance.
While there is great overall benefit for each individual to be found in the adoption
of a proper set of group altruistic memes, there is also great danger here for the
group to take on a life of its own that has no care for individual values.

1.2.2.3 Parasitic
Parasitic memes are not beneficial and may even be harmful. They survive
without regard to the needs of host or group. They will often attach themselves to
more beneficial memes as part of an ideology. They can offer themselves as
solutions to problems that have no other answer to compete with them, or they
can find flaws in other biological or ideological systems to exploit.

Examples of Parasitic memes:

• "If you believe this ideology you will never die."

• "We must kill the enemy to protect our way of life."

• "Use our product and you will be more sexually attractive."

It is important to note that a parasite can produce results that look beneficial.
There exist species of fluke (small flatworms) that parasitically inhabit snails.
When a snail is infected it grows a thicker shell than it might otherwise. While the

34
shell is a good defense mechanism, it has already been tuned evolutionarily to
optimal thickness for the snail’s survival and replication. The fluke, however,
does not care about the snail’s genetic goals, that might actually be easier to
fulfill with a thinner shell; it influences the snail to produce a thicker shell to
protect its own goals. If the snail starts to strain under the weight of the new shell,
the fluke can always find other snails to infect.
Somewhat similarly, a country infected with Strong Nationalism may arm itself to
the teeth, well beyond its real need for defense. This forces other countries to do
the same, thus replicating the idea. If surrounding countries do not also arm
themselves, when the strong nationalistic country's economy is straining under
the weight of the additional defense, the nation can easily turn outward to
enslave and steal from its neighbors. If all the neighboring countries are likewise
infected with nationalism, bloody war ensues. The additional weapons might look
like an advantage to any given country – but if nobody had them, everyone would
be much better off.
Parasitic memes almost always need to hide inside a larger idea-organism to
survive. When taken on their own, as a simple idea, they will be destroyed by
logic. They must therefore surround themselves with a bundle of other ideas in
order to survive. Sometimes they are even useful to the replication of such an
idea-organism, but sometimes they just exist as a parasite inside an ideology.
The less directly harmful they are, the better they can get away with being carried
along inside a bundled idea-organism. They become the equivalent of junk-DNA
if they are not too harmful. They might be dead weight but it would be dangerous
for any complex idea-organism to allow its component ideas to be individually
considered, and this is exactly what would be required to root out the parasite.
The concept of "hype" is also a clue into the nature of parasitic memes. Ideas
that sell the package without offering any true content are hype. About 50% of
everything you hear is hype – this is because bullshit sells an idea and the more
an idea is sold, the more you will hear about it.
Imagine two schools of martial arts. Both schools teach equally good self
defense, and are equally good exercise. However, one of them claims that when
you attain the highest levels (which only the master in Asia and a few of his
closest disciples have ever supposedly achieved) you can do things that seem
impossible. The other school makes only mundane claims about its uses. Of the
two arts, the one you are most likely to hear about is the one with the extra hype
attached. It’s interesting. It makes people talk. Thus it does better in the market
of ideas. In fact, it can actually be a worse martial art (containing fewer symbiotic
memes) but still do better in the market than the more realistic discipline.
Parasitic ideas need to be helpful, or at least not too harmful, to the idea-
organism in which they reside, but they can be very harmful to individual human
beings. So long as they help (or do not badly harm) the idea-organism's chances
for survival and reproduction, they can cause all sorts of pain and death to their
hosts. Since pain and death can be good motivators for people to believe things,
this can be exactly the way they are helpful to the idea-organism in reproducing
itself.
In fact, as human beings have gotten better at taking care of their physical
bodies, protecting them from biological diseases and parasites, the blame for

35
most of the pain and suffering in the world has shifted to such parasitic memes
residing inside complex idea-organisms.

1.2.3 Evolved Ideologies

While most memes behave like quasi-living replicating chemicals, they have also
made steps towards evolving into higher ideological animals. These higher-level
memetic organisms are sometimes known as ideologies. An ideology is a
collection of ideas that work together for mutual advantage in survival and
replication.

Some people, extending Richard Dawkins' meme analogy, use the word "memeplex" to
describe a collection of ideas that work together. However, this is not as linguistically cute
as the meme=gene thing, because very few people are ever heard to refer to a biological
organism as a "geneplex." Perhaps a better term for a memetic organism would be
"morganism,” but that sounds too much like a religion started by a guy named Morgan.
Anyway, throughout the book, we will be using the term "Ideology" or "idea-organism" to
describe ideological (memetic) organisms. We know that there is no cute linguistic parallel
for this word either, as no one refers to a biological organism as a "biology" or "bio-
organism,” but these at least have the advantage of being words that are actually in
common usage, meaning roughly the same thing that we are using them to mean.

An ideology may also be sometimes called a system of beliefs. The word

"system" is entirely accurate in this context – it is a functioning system tuned by
evolutionary pressures. It is not a case of biological evolution affecting the
structure of the brain (although memes can exert some evolutionary pressure in
that direction as well), but a case of evolution of ideas, caused by their
competition with other ideas. A "belief" differs from an "idea" only because it is
included in this type of memetic system.
Any successful ideology will have evolved defenses that make it resistant to
competing beliefs. It is easy to openly discuss the validity of people’s ideas, and
sometimes even change their minds about them; however, questioning other
people’s beliefs can get you killed. Conversions from one ideology to another are
actually pretty rare, despite the MASSIVE amount of effort that some people
spend trying to convert others to their way of thinking. (For example, we have
spent a lot of time and energy writing this book.)
Again, ideas or memes are individual posits – mental possibilities that may or
may not stand-alone. Beliefs are ideas that act as sub-parts of an ideology.
Depending on the level at which an idea operates as part of an ideological
organism; and depending upon the specific survival and replication strategies of
that ideology; a given idea will be more or less resistant to change.
Evolution is a process that weeds out creatures that fail to survive long enough to
reproduce themselves. In the biological sphere, this has lead to quite an array of
survival strategies. The ideological world is no different.
Ideologies exhibit a wide array of belief structures that survive and reproduce in
different ways. There are only a few basic ideas that seem common to all
ideologies. They are, as might be expected, those most closely related to
requirements for survival and replication of any set of ideas as a cohesive group.
There are three basic component ideas that all ideologies contain:
36
 1. Identity. The ideology is (and should stay) a complete unaltered and
inseparable whole.
2. Morality. The ideology is the right thing to believe – that not believing in it
is wrong.
3. Recruitment. The ideology should be taught to other people.
1.2.3.1 Identity
Instead of being a collection of individual ideas, each of which may be separately
evaluated for truth or falsehood, an ideology must maintain a single cohesive
identity. This is such a common component of all ideologies that it has made its
way into the thinking of almost every human being. It is the source of much
erroneous thinking. The damage that this does to individuals is incalculable, but
from the point of view of the idea-organisms, it is an absolute necessity.
If the human mind does not label a collection of ideas and treat it as a unit, the
ideology cannot replicate itself as a unit. If the average human mind could pick
and choose useful pieces from a set of presented beliefs, then no system of
beliefs could ever evolve into a combined replicating entity, except where it
directly benefited all its believers.
In biology, when two replicators work together for their combined benefit of
survival, this is known as symbiosis. When the symbiotic relationship becomes
close enough that the replication path for both creatures is the same, they can be
labeled as one organism. The cells of a human being (or any animal) show an
excellent example of this:
The mitochondria are an organ of the cell that has its own separate DNA. It
seems that, several billion years ago, they entered another single cell life form,
probably initially as parasites. Eventually they developed a symbiotic relationship,
providing the vital function of supplying energy to the rest of the cell.
When this combination cell, called a eukaryotic cell, evolved into multi-cellular life
forms with sexual reproduction, the reproduction path of mitochondria became so
closely linked with the larger cell that it is considered to be part of the same
organism. We can still see that in some ways the mitochondria are hitchhiking
inside another creature, in that they still reproduce separately and make the jump
to the offspring animal only inside the egg cell. They share the larger cell's
reproductive path, but do not share the sexual combination of the host cell. This
means that the genes of the mitochondria in your cells are inherited only from the
mitochondria of your mother.
The example of the mitochondria is a good one to see how replicators can and
do end up bundled together into one organism. It is a good example because the
reproductive pathway is not quite completely merged, and we can still see some
separation of the two replicating systems.
Something similar probably happened earlier when multiple strands of DNA
(chromosomes) joined together to form the first single celled life forms. Each
chromosome undergoes its own separate replication; however, they are all acting
using the same cell wall for protection. They stick together as a group and divide
the whole cell with them, thus giving them combined paths for replication, and
allowing us to consider all the chromosomes together as a single replicating
system – a single animal.
37
The way that human minds lump a number of ideas under one name, then reject
or accept them as a whole, acts as the ideological equivalent of a cell wall. It
allows groups of ideas that are self-reinforcing to become a system of beliefs that
replicate as a unit – an ideology.
One might at first assume that a human mind labeling a group of things and
treating it as an indivisible unit is just mental laziness; that humans just do this
only to simplify the thinking process. However, it is more likely a factor of
ideological evolution.
This concept of identity, acting as the cell wall around an ideological organism, is
directly linked to the survival of such organisms. It is therefore plausible to
believe that it is also spread by such organisms. It is certainly not an absolutely
required part of the human thought process. Indeed, some human beings can be
seen to exhibit it less than others, having the mental fortitude to break belief
structures up into their component parts and examine these component ideas
individually. (This is always the right thing to do.) However, this mental tendency
to think in larger groups of ideas is reinforced by ideological organisms. It has
grown along with their evolution until it has, to at least some degree, infected
almost all human minds.

1.2.3.2 Morality
The second idea found in almost every ideology is linked to both the survival and
reproduction of its collection of ideas. An idea-organism becomes resistant to
outside attack when its host believes that the ideology is good or right – that
competing ideas must be bad or evil. This also leads to behavior that is either
approving or disapproving of others based on whether they exhibit belief or
disbelief in the ideology. In this way, morality acts as both a shield and a sword –
both protecting the idea-organism and making survival harder for competing
ideas.
Morality also reinforces the concept of inseparable cultural ideas. Those who try
to think a little deeper – to analyze each of the component parts of an ideology
for their symbiotic value – will often feel like an outcast, with pressure from
society to conform. They will give themselves away by not feeling a need to do
the things that have no obvious purpose but are merely signal flags for the
ideology: Wearing the right clothes, eating the right foods, singing the right
songs, to name but a few examples of how idea-organisms have their hosts
signal membership in the group.
Like the concept of identity, the idea of Morality has been carried into nearly
every human mind. Nearly every human being has some concept of good and
evil, and knows that their own beliefs are the good ones. But this is not a
detailed, reasoned judgment of the merits of the ideas. Acceptance of any whole
ideology as good, or denying it as evil, is a substitute for analysis. It’s a fast, easy
conclusion – a cheap substitute for real understanding of the merits and failings
of the component ideas.
The idea of Morality can also be seen as an “on/off” switch for each ideology. It is
possible for a human mind to hold all of the information of a system of beliefs
without actually being a believer. The flip side of morality is immorality; one or the
other is almost always present along with the information about any given
ideology. It is rare for people not to have strong feelings about ideas – their own
38
and those of other people. Rarely do people hold feelings of neutrality about any
ideology.
Few people manage to ignore the higher level structure and consider the
component ideas. This means that you can usually consider someone who
despises a philosophy as a whole to be just as brainwashed as someone who
embraces it completely. A person may know all the dogma of a certain ideology
and still reject it in its entirety. It is the rarer person who can dislike a given idea-
organism but is still able pick out the few good and useful ideas it has.
For example, an environmentalist might study the economics of capitalism but
will see the underlying self-interest that drives commerce as being evil. He will
understand capitalism but will not be a believer. The businessman may likewise
understand the environmentalist argument but is not a believer. He could tell you
what things the environmentalist will be for or against, and even understand why,
but he would tell you that putting the interests of plants and animals above those
of human beings is an evil thing to do.
In each case, all of the information of an ideology can be present, except for one
idea – that the given ideology is correct – right – just – good – holy. And this idea
makes all competing ideologies incorrect – wrong – unjust – evil – unholy. Once
that idea is also accepted as part of the ideology, the information becomes active
in controlling the behavior of the host. The host then believes the information,
rather than just knowing the information. The idea of Morality is what activates an
Ideology, bringing it alive, and turning a "set of ideas" into a "system of beliefs."

1.2.3.3 Recruitment
The third idea that is included in most ideologies is the desire to convert others to
the ideology. The evolutionary benefits of the recruitment drive are obvious, as is
the analogy to the sex drive in biological creatures. And here again, this idea has
found its way into almost every human mind.
Recognizing this desire as an ideology trying to reproduce makes the world more
understandable. It explains why people always seem to be trying to tell each
other how to live and act. It explains why human history is one of violence
towards, and torture of, people with different ideas.
The minimal level of the recruitment scheme is just that the ideology should be
taught to one's children and passed on to the next generation. The maximal level
is that one should go out into the world, convert as many as possible, torture
people as necessary, and kill the ones who cannot be changed.
It is interesting to note that where an ideology has a weaker recruitment strategy,
it often compensates with stronger identity and/or Morality. This makes absolute
sense from an evolutionary standpoint. The ideology that engages in less
recruitment must also lose less of its followers to outside recruitment if it is to
survive. It must believe that its members are the "chosen people" and that its
sacred texts must never be changed. It must strongly favor believers over non-
believers. In this way, stronger concepts of identity and Morality can compensate
for a lower level of Recruitment. This can allow it to survive, despite making its
hosts a target for the violence that more strongly recruiting ideologies will often
instigate.

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1.2.4 Collective Ideologies
Once the right elements (detailed above) were in place for Ideological Organisms
to hold themselves together and reproduce like simple one-celled organisms, the
next step they took was one that had already been discovered by their biological
cousins. They learned to work together in groups.
The multi-celled animal was an evolutionary leap made when individual cells –
sharing the same DNA – learned to do different jobs for the good of a whole
multi-cellular animal. This required that some cells be protected by other cells,
who must lay down their lives for the good of the whole organism.

Unfortunately, in the world of ideologies, those insignificant cells that will sacrifice
themselves for the good of the larger organism are actually individual people. For

40
collective ideological systems to perpetuate themselves, people have to believe
in the ideology enough to kill, suffer, or even die for the cause.
The pressure of collective thought processes is nearly always with us. Sports
teams do measurably better at home with the crowds cheering for them than at
away games where the collective pressure is for them to fail. When someone is
upset, it makes those around uncomfortable too. There is a distinct mental
pressure felt to bend to the will of the upset person and do what they want. If a
larger group is upset with you, this feeling that you should give in can be almost
irresistible.
In order to understand how such collective idea-organisms can get into our
heads and make us do things that hurt us, we must consider the nature of our
minds – how we think about things.

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1.3 Identities and Icons
One of the things that human beings do with memetic information is to model the
world around them. They create mental identities for the things they perceive in
the world. They assign names and icons as labels by which to refer, both in their
own minds and in speaking to others, to the things around them. These labels
are used as shorthand to sum up a large amount of data.
Previously, we used the term identity in discussing the evolved survival and
replication strategies of idea-organisms. In this section we will show how these
concepts start out as useful tools for the thought processes of individual humans
and are then hijacked by Higher Powers.

1.3.1 Identities
Identities are predictive models of behavior. If that doesn’t make sense
immediately, we’re about to explain:
Your mind holds identity concepts for yourself, other people, groups, and even
the inanimate objects in your environment. You use these models to help make
sense of the world, to predict what will happen next, and how the world will react
to your actions.
Such predictive models are a major function of the brain – maybe even the main
function.
The lowest forms of life that have two brain cells to rub together use them to
predict cause and effect. For example, a worm can be trained to navigate a
simple T-maze. If it takes the right-hand path it receives an electric shock. If it
takes the left path it finds a reward (or at least no shock if the person running the
experiment is being stingy with the worm treats). Run this experiment enough
times and the worm will choose the left path more often. In its brain it has learned
to identify right as bad, and left as good. When navigating the maze it will have
learned to avoid the sinister right path, having learned that left is right.
Higher animals (including human beings) have evolved huge brains with the
ability to create predictive models for just the same reason that the worms have –
but a lot more of them and a lot better. Creatures that can best predict what
actions will produce which results can avoid punishment and seek out reward
better than the others. This gives them a greater probability of being able to
survive and reproduce, and thus these predictive traits are passed on.
Our world is much more complex than a worm’s, so our identity models are also
much more complex. We store identities in our brain corresponding to all the
things, and people in the world around us. Starting as babies, we build up
concepts of Mother, Father, Pets, Toys, etc. To some of these things we attribute
sentience (the ability to think like ourselves). Some are alive but not intelligent,
others are inanimate objects.

1.3.1.1 Things and Categories

The general concept of "thing" is at the root of the tree of identification. Any
structured pattern of thinking starts with the "thing" concept. In language, the

42
term used is "Noun.” In computer programming, the term is "Object.”
Classification begins with the generic thing, and then divides into categories.
Each branch of classification shares the qualities of the branch from which it
divided, it is just a further narrowing of concept. When a level is reached where a
specific object is uniquely described, the branching ends. For example, consider
a young girl named Anja:
Anja is a little girl; is a human; is a mammal; is an animal; is a
life-form; is a thing.
Working backwards, we have started by dividing “thing” into non-living and living
groups. Then we have divided the living group into a plants and animals group.
Then we split animals into a number of types including primates. Then we split
primates into a number of types, including human. Then we split humans into
adults, adolescents, and children. Finally we note that little Anja is a specific
member of the child group. Bear in mind that we do this pretty much
automatically without ever thinking too much about it.
This example probably makes things seem cleaner than they are. Child, for
example, is a group that could also be shared by other living things, and Little
Anja would actually inherit attributes from multiple other categories such as sex
and cultural origin.
Here is a more complex diagram that shows the idea of multiple inheritances:

The main point however, is that all identity concepts start with the generic “thing”
and move through identity classes that inherit from previous branches of the
identity tree until a specific individual is described.
Everything in the world around us is modeled in pretty much the same way. This
all points to the fact that there is no difference in the way the brain models the
identity of a rock and a politician. The politician just has different modeled
characteristics such as a control fetish and a larger ego. Both are examples of
the generic Thing in our minds and share the same basic mental modeling
structure to get from generic classes to specific instance.
We don’t actually even know that other people have the same sort of intelligence
that we do. In most cases it makes sense to give them the benefit of the doubt as
43
they resemble us closely and exhibit similar behavior. But we cannot logically
prove that they are sentient, since our only example of what it means to be an
intelligent thinking individual has been self-examination.
Therefore, when we build an internal model of another person, we lend them our
own concept of sentience. And if we can do this with our mental models of
people, why not do it with anything?

1.3.1.2 Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human
things. We automatically assume that other people are sentient because we
define human beings as being sentient. However, it is also easy for us to imagine
non human intelligence.
Because the brain models our sense of self as just another instance of a thing, it
is easy for us to project qualities that we only know of from our own minds into
other objects. This allows us to imagine intelligence in a rock, a tree, an animal,
or even a politician. While it may not be logical, accurate, or even useful to
assign personalities to such objects, it is certainly a possibility that the mind has
no trouble exploring. In fact, at least half of our children’s entertainment is based
upon it. We learn to do this from a very early age.
Often, the identities we associate with our pets are almost as complex as the
ones we attribute to other human beings. We even build complex identities for
some inanimate objects. They can seem almost alive to us. The more personal
and specific an object is, the more it seems to have a personality. Does your car
have a name? When it won’t start is it being stubborn? We can lend a sentient
identity to any object – even one that we know does not think. Associating a
certain personality with a non-sentient is a normal way to remember that it might
exhibit unpredictable behavior.
This seems to work, because at some level, sentience is associated with a
degree of unpredictability. If you could accurately predict the behavior of fellow
human beings 100% of the time, you would probably not consider them to be
sentient. You would at least feel superior. You could control them by always
being able to say or do the things you knew pushed their buttons. It would be like
they were robots.
If you think about it, you probably apply the same robot prejudice to yourself. If
you always knew how you would react to any situation, then you could write a set
of rules that exactly depicted your behavior. If you did this, wouldn't you feel like
a robot with no free will? In some ways, our degree of unpredictability is what
makes us sentient. We are all too complex to ever create a simple set of rules, so
we build more complex identity models to do the job. In effect, we lend a piece of
our minds to the model we create – bring it alive with a bit of our own sentience.
You even create such identity models for yourself. In a weird self-referential way,
you create your own self identity the same way you create an identity for other
people and things.

1.3.1.3 Your Self

Just as the identities we create for other people and things help us model their
behavior, the identities we create for ourselves help us model our own behavior.
44
We have a great deal of control over our own behavior, so our predictive models,
in some respects, are also self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think that you are the
type of person who would rush into a burning building to save a child, then there
is a good chance that you will. If you don’t live up to this self-image, you will
either have to change it or continue pretending to be something you are not.
We constantly modify our self-images. How often have you done something and
then said to yourself "That wasn’t like me at all!"? When that happens, you are
faced with the choice of changing your identity model to fit the facts or deciding
that you will not do such a thing again. Alcoholics and drug addicts are told that
the first step is to admit that they have a problem. They come to a "moment of
clarity" when they can see things as they really are. They must be able to modify
their self-image to fit the reality of the situation before they can do anything to
change it. To some degree we are all addicted to certain sets of behavior that
cloud our thinking in a similar way.
We constantly borrow from other people and things to make our own identities.
We have heroes whom we try to emulate. We see people around us who have
qualities that we admire, as well as those who have qualities we despise. We can
imagine ourselves at our worst and at our best. Usually we try to be our best
possible self.
To make matters even more complicated, we may have more than a single self-
identity. Many theories of psychology have included multiple personality
segments as an inherent part of the human psyche. Jung had us split into our
ideal selves and our feared shadow selves. Freud said we all had an id, ego, and
super-ego.
Often the group of people we are with modifies who we are. Have you ever
noticed yourself acting one way around one group of people, and a different way
around another? If you haven’t, then you have almost certainly noticed this sort
of behavior in someone else. This can be caused by a desire to fit into the given
group or by feeling freer to act in certain ways with certain people. Our concept of
the rules and preferences of the group is another sort of identity.

1.3.1.4 Groups
Whenever we think of a group, whether it is an organized religion, a country, a
corporation, a club, or any other gathering of human beings with some common
purpose or identity, we simplify it in our minds. A single human being is so
complex that there is hardly room for more than one complete one in your brain
(and that is you). Therefore, holding a whole group of people in mind, with all the
relationships that exist between the individual members, is a daunting task.
When we think of a large group of people, the task of keeping track of every
individual member quickly becomes impossible. Therefore, we tend to think of
that group as a unit with its own individual personality.
If we are part of that group, the personality we assign the group tends to be like a
part of our own. It is easy for us to think of how we resemble the members of the
group. If we didn't consider ourselves to be members of the group, the group’s
personality would be more like that of a separate individual, and we would be
more likely to note the differences between ourselves and the members of that
group.

45
This sort of simplification is a natural mental process for dealing with higher-level
structures. However, this way of thinking has quite probably either led to, or
allowed to happen, virtually every kind of evil of which mankind is capable.
There would be a lot less war, bigotry, and genocide without first an "Us and
Them" relationship. It would not be possible for people to hate one another based
solely on the color of their skin without first creating a stereotype for people of
that color, and then assigning that stereotype qualities worth hating.
When we meet a person for the first time (sometimes even before we meet
someone) we start to quickly assemble an identity based on exhibited behavior.
In order to do this as quickly as possible, we use ready-made group identities.
We try to recognize what known groups the new person falls into, and use that to
start a new identity model.
As we get to know a person better we continue to refine or even completely
rebuild this model based upon the person’s actions. The better we know a person
and the more we use a specific identity model for them, the less we think about
the groups into which they fit. We start to think of them more in terms of how they
differ from our stereotypes, than how they resemble them. Finally they become
an individual to us, rather than just a member of a group.
Separate identity models even allow a person to feel hatred for a certain ethnic
group but still have friends from that same ethnic group. For example:
John White may automatically dislike and distrust any Mexican he sees, but at
the same time, he might be fond of Julio Estrada, who lives next door. The
reason is simple: John holds a negative model for "Mexican" but use a separate
identity model for "Julio,” acknowledging his positive characteristics.
The first time John met Julio, he probably started off using his "Mexican"
stereotype when he thought of him. But as he got to know him better, a separate
"Julio" identity grew and split off from that model. Mentally separated from the
racial stereotype, soon none of the negative “Mexican” qualities remained
connected to the "Julio" identity model.
If you asked John, he would probably tell you that he still does not like Mexicans,
but if you ask him about his good friend and neighbor, he would say something
like “Oh, that’s Julio – he is totally cool.” He might even use the fact that he has a
Mexican friend to tell himself and others that he is not really a racist.

1.3.1.5 How You Use Identities

Imagine you are at a party, and you hear your friend Pat in the next room
addressing someone as Sandy.
Your brain quickly creates an internal identity model of the thing your friend is
talking to. But what is it? Is Sandy a dog? A computer? A person? Because the
context is a party and there are many people there, you assume Sandy is a
person.
But what kind of person? The name Sandy could be either male or female. So
what do you know about this person?
Since Sandy is at the same party as you, it actually tells you quite a bit. Sandy
was invited to the party, as were you. This indicates that you share a common
group.
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Your friend Pat is talking to Sandy, so Sandy is probably someone you might
also want to talk to.
For the time being you can assign Sandy an identity based upon the group
identity of "person who would be at this party" and refined by the more personal
knowledge of being a "person who Pat would talk to.”
You make this assessment quickly and without thinking about it.
You step through the door and find that Sandy is middle aged male, below
average height, and with Northern European physical characteristics. You can
now add four new pieces to the identity you are constructing.
If it happens that you hold bad feelings towards people of below average height,
you may find that you already do not like Sandy. Of course you don’t know
Sandy, so what you really dislike is the Group Identity you have for people of
below average height.

1.3.1.6 Echoes
The local identities that you have in your mind can contain their own identities.
You not only store your images of other people but also everything you know
about the images they have in their own heads.
For example, let's say you know two people well – Bo and Jo. Because you know
them both well, you also know that they do not like each other. If each of them
talks to you about the other, then you will have the following identities built up in
your head:
• Jo
• Bo
• Jo’s image of Bo
• Bo's image of Jo

Their dislike of each other is fed by the fact that each person also is sure that the
other holds an unfavorable opinion of them. Of course they tell you all about this.
So there are additional identities that you are exposed to:
• Jo’s image of Bo's image of Jo
• Bo’s image of Jo's image of Bo

Maybe even:
• Jo’s image of Bo's image of Jo's image of Bo
• Bo’s image of Jo's image of Bo's image of Jo

At some point this is just silly, but that doesn't mean that people don't go there.
The fact that you can understand Jo when she says "I know he knows that I think
he's an asshole," shows that your mind is capable of storing many levels of
echoed identity information.

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So, the multiple levels of "he thinks she thinks he thinks..." can go pretty deep.
This is particularly interesting when your own self-image is involved. One way to
assess the accuracy of your self-image is to get an accurate feel for how other
people see you – how they think you see yourself, etc...

1.3.1.7 Spirits
A lot of the ideas about the supernatural are probably based in the way our
brains model the world. We already talked about how it was possible to assign
characteristics like sentience to things that don't have them. It is possible to
create such anthropomorphic mental models for things as abstract as the
seasons, or as unlikely to talk to you as the sun, moon, or stars. People certainly
have. Early religions were all about the idea that inanimate things had some sort
of intelligent spirit.
Once you start thinking this way – ascribing spirit to inanimate objects – it is easy
to relate personally to them. Is a bad storm a case of a weather god being angry
at you? Does the sun rise daily only because you ask it to? Did that politician
pass the bill you wanted because you voted for him?
The idea of spirit, as it relates to our mental identity models, could also account
for some feelings concerning after-life. If you know a person well, and create a
complex mental model for them, that model doesn't die with the person. It is all
too easy to imagine that person still alive.
Perhaps they even speak to you inside your head? That complex model – which
is a little piece of your mind that you have set aside, doesn't have any use any
more. Maybe it gets lonely?
Our mental models are imperfect reflections of the world. Mistakes are made.
This is not surprising and is no cause for shame. The best we can do is to “keep
on keeping on” and try to correct any errors of thought we make.
However, some of the very worst errors of thought are not personal – they move
through the minds of whole groups of people, making them very hard to correct.

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1.3.2 The Distributed Identity
Let’s begin this section by reviewing our progress thus far:
• Some identities you consider to be a part of yourself, representing either
a model of your own actions or those of a group to which you belong.
• Other identities are models of others, representing people you know, or
groups that you know about but do not belong to.
• All of these, however, exist inside your mind.
• Because we hold that other people have minds too (despite occasional
compelling evidence to the contrary), we must allow for another (and
very large) set of the identities: Identities hosted by other minds.

OK, given that, let us continue:

Some people know you well and will have good models of you; others may have
flawed or limited concepts of what you are like. One of the stranger experiences
you can have is to realize that someone you know has a very different concept of
you than you have of yourself.
Some people know each other so well that they can tell what the other person is
thinking. It’s like they share the same thoughts. Often, the better people know
each other, the more they influence each other. They become more alike through
contact. This is because increased exposure allows the ideas in one mind a
better chance to replicate themselves in the other mind.
When you model a friend in your own mind, you give their models extra access to
your own mind. To predict the actions of others, you must understand their ideas.
In understanding their ideas, you become susceptible to accepting them and
incorporating them into your own mind. This is how you learn from other people.
When the ideas are good for you, this is a healthy process. When the other
person has a head full of very bad ideas, it can be dangerous.
Of course, the people around you experience the same sort of interaction with
your ideas. The more people you have exposed to your self-identity, the greater
influence the ideas from your mind have on the population around you.
This extended effect of your mind on the world around you is what we are calling
your Distributed Identity.
Distributed Identities are concepts of identity, shared by multiple persons.
When Distributed Identities do not encourage group action, such Distributed
Identities can be thought of as public opinion or common knowledge.
When Distributed Identities influence individuals to act in the interest of the
group, they create Collectives. Political parties, religions, countries and
corporations are all Collectives represented by Distributed Identities.
Every thing that is known to more than one person has a Distributed Identity.
Since language allows human beings to pass ideas from mind to mind,
Distributed Identities are very common. To get a feel for how Distributed
Identities work, we will first examine the one closest to you. That is your own DI –
the ideas about you that exist in the minds of other people.

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1.3.2.1 A Cloud of You
You exist both as a set of local information in a single brain and as a Distributed
Identity across multiple minds and other information storage media. Every person
who knows you has an identity for you that they have built up in their minds. This
collection of identities is your Distributed Identity. It contains all the information
about yourself that you have conveyed, through your words and actions, to the
people around you.
You serve as a root or anchor for your DI. You are the best source of information
about you, so you can modify people’s concept about you, through your actions
and words.

This Distributed Identity can also have a life of its own. If the people around you
like you and want your approval, they will tend to act in ways that they believe will
please you. In this way, your Distributed Identity can have effects on the behavior
of others and make changes in the world, quite independent of your physical
being.
If you were to die, and those people did not know, they would continue to do
these things in hopes that you would be pleased. Therefore, even without your
continued existence in the world, your Distributed Identity can continue to affect
the world.
In some cases, the Distributed Identity of a person can still be around even when
everyone knows the person is dead. This could be because of a sympathetic
effect on people who knew the deceased. People often say, "She would have
wanted it that way." As we mentioned earlier, this sort of thing may be how the
idea of spirits and afterlife originated.
It could also be that the person’s Distributed Identity has extended well beyond
the set of people that the person actually knew directly. When identity information

50
extends to people that the real life person doesn’t know directly, the Distributed
Identity really starts to take on a life of its own.

1.3.2.2 Fame
A person’s degree of fame can be described as the degree to which that person’s
Distributed Identity has permeated the minds of people outside their immediate
acquaintance. Because of the size of the DI, the famous person who is at its root
becomes less crucial to its content. The public image of a famous person can
often drift widely away from the root self-identity. The DI can almost be seen as
re-rooting itself in other sources of information besides the actual physical person
– hence the spectacle of people who are just "famous for being famous."
The ability of the human species to persistently record information in the form of
written words, and more recently in reproducible sounds and pictures, lends itself
to the existence of the detached DI. Books that a person has written or have
been written about a person are persisting sources of identity information. In the
case of actors who play roles in films, the fictional characters portrayed often
have personalities widely different from the actor playing them. Fans can often
confuse these characters with the actor’s own personality.
The more famous a person is, the less connected their DI is to their physical
existence, and the longer their DI is likely to remain in the society – even after
their biological death. It is even possible for the DI of a famous person to
continue to grow, and for the person to become more famous after their death.
(Think of Vincent Van Gogh, for example.)

It is also possible for a DI to exist that no longer has, or never had, any reference
to a single living or once living person or person. Group identities, as discussed
above, are Distributed Identities. Numerous people share similar information
about a group’s beliefs. Those who identify themselves as members of the group
carry the DI information and usually attempt to spread it. Those who know of the
group but think of themselves as being outside it can also carry the DI
information but they are not interested in spreading it.
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1.3.2.3 Collectives
Some Distributed Identities exist throughout a population without causing any
particular group action. For example, a huge number of people may have a
picture in their minds of what Mount Everest looks like – it is tall, cold, and
dangerous to climb. However, many DIs are about what it means to be part of a
group or actually create a group of the people who have the DI in their heads.

The DI of a famous political leader can invoke collective action. The "If we all
work together we can accomplish my goals" ideas that the politician spreads are
present in the identity of the politician and in all of the followers. These ideas can
cause individuals to put the interests of the group and its leader above their own
interests. Even after The Great Leader dies – the cause can go on in the leader's
name.
A DI creates a Collective when it causes individuals to act as a group.
The parts of the DI within each individual become like cells in a larger organism
that act together. With enough followers, smaller sub groups can form that act
like organs in the body of a larger animal and each individual follower comes to
be considered expendable for the good of the collective organism.

Collectives often present themselves as being necessary to protect us from ourselves.

However, more human death and suffering have been caused throughout history by large
scale conflicts between competing Collectives than could ever have been caused by
conflicts between individuals. People sometimes kill and steal from each other because of
self interest but it is group thinking that leads to theft and murder on a massive scale.

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The simplest Collective is a couple, acting for "us,” while The Nation State is a
large, powerful, and often dangerous Collective acting in the interests of "The
Homeland.”

1.3.3 Icons and Archetypes

We talked at the beginning of this chapter about Higher Powers being icons for
collective belief systems tuned by evolution to express the most possible
authority. Sometimes such an icon starts out as a real human being whose
Distributed Identity survives and grows, even long after the individual human
being has died. Sometimes the identity grows from a general concept into an
icon without ever having been a real thing or person. Regardless, the Icon is fine-
tuned by the environment of human minds into a figure which represents a set of
ideas.
These images might have once been real people. They might be fictional
characters. They can be corporate logos, religious symbols, or flags. They can
even be idealized images of sexual identities. (Think of Barbie and Ken). Identity
images that strike a chord in our minds and command our attention are known as
archetypes. Authors that write fictional works that contain some new memorable
character have stumbled upon an archetype. Religious prophets whose
teachings outlast them are remembered, not as the human beings they were, but
as archetypical icons for their teachings.
When Christians say to themselves, "What Would Jesus Do?”, they are
answered by the identity concept of Jesus that they hold in their minds. This
concept is a very different thing than any man named Jesus, who might have
actually lived a couple of thousand years ago.
The actual Jesus may have had days where he was cranky and did not always
have the right answers. He may have sometimes turned the other cheek and
sometimes got angry and struck
Did you know that Jesus got angry?
back, just like any other human
being. The Jesus Distributed That he told his followers to take up their
Identity, however, has no place for swords? That he dismissed the importance of
human flaws; it is an iconic his mother and his brothers? That he said God
was away in a "far-off country"? That Peter and
archetype for the teachings of most of the Apostles were married and took
Christ. Both the Jesus icon and their wives with them on their travels? That
those teachings have undergone Jesus' brother James ran the church in
an evolutionary process to make Jerusalem rather than Peter?
them better at being part of a All of this is in the New Testament, but it has
successful ongoing religion. proven inconvenient for most versions of the
Jesus has grown into a Higher Christ icon or the Church icon. Hence, you
Power that is an icon for a very probably never heard most of these things...
even though they are clearly recorded!
popular religion. This is nicely
analogous to his ascending to
heaven to join his father as part of the same complex multi-part being. In much
the same way as your memetic/genetic division gives rise to the idea of a
body/soul division, the evolved memetic entity that is a religious icon spawns the
concepts of supernatural beings such as angels, demons, and gods.
A similar concept is at work in the promotion of status of certain human beings
above that of mere mortals. The King or President of a nation is promoted as a
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living icon for that nation. The human being filling that role is still recognized as a
person, but the role itself takes on the status of an icon. Heads of State
throughout the ages have taken to referring to themselves in the third person, in
recognition of this dual role. Heads of religions, such as The Pope, can speak
either as individuals or directly for God. The office is a separate iconic identity.

In political discourse in the United States, you are allowed to have contempt for the man
who is President, but you are always supposed to respect The President Of The United
States. This illogical duality is an effect of the office of the presidency being an icon for the
Nation State and the Nation State demanding higher status and respect than any individual
human being could ever actually deserve.

Elevating a job to an icon representing the Collective can give bad leaders a
huge amount of power. They speak with the weight of authority, and with the
assumption that they speak for a much larger group of people, or for some
supernatural force. Of course, the people who actively seek out such positions of
being able to speak as a Higher Power are often not the type of people you
would want to wield such power. They are probably not even believers – true
believers in the Collective would probably never consider themselves worthy.
People should learn to be wary of all messages that come from such Higher
Powers.

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1.4 The Higher Powers
Religion is by no means the only idea that causes enforced collective behavior
and individual sacrifice. God is not the only icon of such an idea. Countries,
Corporations, Families, and any other sort of group you can think of, are all
Collectives held together by commonly shared ideas. Such groups invariably
have flags, symbols, coats of arms, and living figureheads as icons.
All such Higher Powers share a common nature: They exist as ideas in multiple
minds and cause individuals to act like cells of a larger organism. They are
evolved entities with their own agendas that do not necessarily coincide with
what is best for the individual members of the group. They influence large
numbers of people to behave as a group, and sometimes that influence can be
hijacked by unscrupulous individuals.
In this chapter we have been discussing the Distributed Identities that arise from
the models people create to understand the world around them. In many cases,
these DIs correspond to things that are popularly considered real, in other cases
they correspond to things that most people consider imaginary, and some fall in a
gray area, with debate on both sides of the issue. Real or symbolic, DIs can
become Higher Power type icons for a collective idea-organism and can
sometimes incite violence against those with conflicting ideas.

1.4.1 The Lineup

Here are some of the Higher Powers that exist as icons for ideologies that
survive and reproduce by co-opting human mind-space:
• God
• Country
• The People
• Class
• The Isms
• Science
• Conspiracies
• Race
• Corporations
• Family
• Couple

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1.4.1.1 God
GOD (or a collection of gods) is an icon for a set of religious beliefs. God is the
top level icon for a monotheistic religion. However, even a monotheistic religion
will sometimes have additional faces for the same God, and usually also have
many additional icons (devil, angels, demons, saints, and so on). A religion can
also have an existing human leader as an icon, such as the Catholic Pope.
The collective idea-organism here is the religion, with God as the top level icon
acting as the face of the Higher Power. God makes claim to the highest authority,
the best rewards, and the most terrible punishments. However, those rewards
and punishments are put off until after death. This makes God conceptually more
motivating than any secular force, but with the weakness of being less immediate
in that motivation.

1.4.1.2 Country
This has a dual application, to both your geographical nation and its government.
The idea-organism, however, folds those both together into one semi-
mythological entity. The loyalty we are inspired to feel towards our home Nation
State is based on territorial and clan instincts. This loyalty is then co-opted by the
government. (Think of God and Country as analogous icons, with church and
government as analogous institutions, and clergy and politicians as the
analogous leadership)
The Nation State has become very powerful over the past couple of centuries as
geographical boundaries have replaced loyalty to royal families. At one time the
leader of a nation stood as an icon of divine right of rule as a member of a royal
family – now the leader of a nation is more of an icon for a geographic region.
Another icon of Country is the nation's Flag (Hence the big uproar over flag
burning in the United States, which is often used by politicians to create a
distraction issue.)
Like all Collectives, your country thrives on the feeling of group – of belonging – a
sense that everyone born on the inside of a certain set of lines on a map is
somehow one of the gang – one of us. But think about this for a moment. How
many people do you even know? One hundred? One Thousand? Certainly not
ten thousand. So how can a group of people that numbers in the hundreds of
millions be “us”? For each person you know in a group that size, there are
hundreds of thousands of strangers. Can you really identify with a group when
you have only met 0.001% of the members?

1.4.1.3 The People

The icon of The People is different from the Icon of the State, but is somewhat
related to the Icon of a racial group. The "Chinese People" includes people of
Chinese descent, wherever they may live, whether in the political China or not.
Setting the People of a nation up as an icon apart from the existing structure of
the Nation State is a first step for any revolutionary change of government. This
"People" icon was one of the primary factors leading to the First World War, and
motivated Hitler going into the Second World War as well. It was also a major
icon in the communist states of the 20th Century.

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In the United States, if you are ever on trial for a crime, the case against you will
read as "The people of ___ versus you.” Unlike a civil case where some specific
entity is against you, in a criminal case it is conceptually everyone in some
geographic region that is out to get you. This must seem quite frightening to a
defendant – having everyone out for their blood. Even being charged with a
crime must be psychologically traumatizing, let alone being convicted and thus
being put into the separate class of Criminal – an enemy of The People.

1.4.1.4 Class
This refers to social and economic classes. Such distinctions arise everywhere
and at all times, as a result of people comparing themselves with others. The
harshness of the lines of separation between classes has varied greatly from
place to place and from time to time. An example of strong lines of distinction
would be the Hindu Caste system.
In the Middle Ages, a strong class system made it impossible for a poor serf to
rise to the class of nobility. Commoners were subject to one set of laws and
nobility another. The United States specifically rejected the idea of nobility at its
founding. However, more recently, different laws have been passed protecting
politicians and policemen more than common citizens – the trend is for those
who are part of the government to be treated as a separate class of people.
Marxism and its socialist variants also made much of the idea of class. In the
midst of a time where upward mobility was becoming ever more possible,
Communism still managed to spark many conflicts between the “haves” and the
“have-nots.” Thankfully the influence of Communism has waned in the wake of a
couple of hundred million deaths it caused in the 20th Century.

1.4.1.5 The "Isms"

That is, communism, socialism, environmentalism, fascism, and so on. Isms are
actually crosses between wannabe states and replacement religions. When they
reach their goals, as in the 20th Century cases of socialism and fascism, they
replace both church and state in one package.
Seldom do they last very long, but they are prone to causing huge destruction
while they do exist. The isms tend to operate on the "revolution" model,
endeavoring to take over and change the existing system rather than to birth
something entirely new.
The "isms" also tend to flourish where religion has been dethroned and an
ideological vacuum of sorts exists. In that respect, these are substitutes or
replacements for the previous religion. People have a strong desire to believe in
something. Wherever a large collective ideology has been toppled, you will find
lots of new Isms rising up to try and replace it.

1.4.1.6 Science
It is particularly disturbing that Science can also become an icon for a Collective
– a Higher Power. The basic idea behind the scientific method is that every idea
is open to question, and that new ideas should always be given a fair hearing
based on the evidence. This should make group-think impossible. However,
human beings are so susceptible to collective mindsets that even the "scientific

57
community" can succumb. This is why it has been said that scientific progress
requires old scientists to die. It is also why the faithful followers of other Higher
Powers will sometimes accuse Science of being just another religion – and they
are not always wrong about this.
When science is being practiced correctly, it tears apart collective ideologies,
keeping the symbiotic memes and tossing away the parasitic ones. But when
Science is viewed as a single organism, and the scientists fall for this trap, it
starts to be a Collective in its own right. Then it will start to make friends and
enemies among the other Collectives, and the scientific method is thrown out the
window.
In the past this has happened many times. Science has offered its support to
many an "Ism."

1.4.1.7 Conspiracies
We might also call these "the enthusiasms.” Devotion to any particular pursuit
may qualify in this category – such as a belief in UFOs, mysterious old religious
beliefs, conspiracy theories, and so on. These tend to operate much like the
isms, but without any hope of rising to statehood and without requiring the
overthrow of anything too large. One common part of Conspiracies is the idea of
secret suppressed knowledge that is being hidden by more powerful Collectives.
Since the defining idea for membership in the Collective is often more an idea of
being opposed to those hiding the truth, Conspiracy theories get along quite well
with each other. Many of them can be hosted inside the same individual, and
individuals with different conspiracy ideas can bond in their hatred of those other
Collectives that are "hiding the truth.”

Psssst! The government is in league with the Heinz Ketchup Corporation. They are hiding
the truth about United States Defense Department experiments in focusing Chi (martial
arts internal energy) using a design for the Ketchup bottle based on alien technology. The
Defense Department is trying to breed a race of American super warriors, and every time a
child shakes that frustrating ketchup bottle to get the sauce out, he or she is actually
becoming a better and more aggressive potential soldier. We know that the prescription
drug and oil companies are in on it somehow too... Don't tell anyone you heard it from us!

1.4.1.8 Race
Race can be a specialized group of "The People.” It is based, firstly, upon
specific external characteristics (usually skin color), and secondly upon a set of
behaviors or characteristics presumed to be shared by the racial group. Race-
based groups sometimes rise to the status of states and sometimes function as
political pressure groups or to provide local enforcement or protection. They work
very hard at compelling conformity to the group characteristics on the part of all
individuals who share the race's external characteristics. This explains the
American spectacle of blacks who are criticized for not acting "black.”
The Race idea-organism is a good example of a Collective Identity that can
reinforce itself across multiple, supposedly different, and perhaps even hostile
groups. Hatred on the part of one racial group towards another race naturally
creates a competing feeling of group identity to return that hate.

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Collective Identities on each side encourage active hatred of the other race. They
seem to be at odds with each other, but they are actually acting as weird sort of
allies by helping each other recruit from a population that might otherwise be
more cool-headed – less prone to racially motivated hatred or violence. One
Collective Identity gives rise to the other. They actually need each other to
survive and grow.

Pinks who espouse hatred of Browns serve to increase the Collective Identity of Browns.
This stronger Collective Identity in turn serves to isolate Browns from any larger culture
they deem to be dominated by Pinks. This happens even if that larger culture is not, for the
most part, made up of pink people with ideas of racial hatred. This cultural isolation only
makes it easier for Pink power groups to convince other Pinks that Browns are somehow
different, and to be feared. It is a disturbing cycle – and the only benefit is seen by the
Collective Identity of Race with all its many different colored faces.

Two groups playing off hatred of each other for mutual benefit to the idea-
organisms is not unique to the Collective Identity of race. Religions and nations
that go to war with each other receive the same recruitment benefit. Geographic
nations are very similar to race, in that we cannot change our place of birth
anymore than we can change which skin color we are born with.

Using unchangeable personal attributes to divide people into groups, and then
having these groups bond together in mistrust of each other, is an old trick that
collective idea-organisms, under many names, have used again and again to
survive and grow strong.

1.4.1.9 Corporations
Corporations are an interesting study. Depending upon a number of external
factors, corporations function more or less as Higher Powers. The more open the
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general culture and the marketplace, the less corporations act as Higher Powers.
But in closed markets and/or less-open cultures, corporations can have powerful
identities. In Japan, for example, many people feel privileged to work for their
corporations and attribute a great deal of identity and benevolence to them. In
the United States, large corporations will also contain many people who treat "the
corporation" as a specific entity, capable of rewarding or punishing them. Just
like Religious and Racial groups, Corporations will do their best to influence the
government for their own ends.

1.4.1.10 Family
The large extended family is called “The Clan” and until modern times it was a
fundamental unit of humanity. Combined with ancestor worship, the Clan
becomes a half-real, half-mythical entity with specific and unique virtues. As
such, it can be a powerful Higher Power, even if only to a relatively small number
of people. Clan-centered life is more or less opposed to the modern age, with
huge markets and nearly infinite information, but clan groupings still work very
well in isolated locations with small population densities.
Individual families can very occasionally reach the level of influence that the
larger Higher Powers have on their members, but only with heavy doses of
shame, guilt, superiority, or intimidation. The head of a family can become a
powerful icon for members of the group, like a President or Pope. The size of a
group does not always make the leader any less impressive to group members.

1.4.1.11 Sexual Identity

There is a Collective Identity associated with even such a broad category as sex.
Biologically there are the primary sexual characteristics of the physiology of our
actual reproductive systems and secondary characteristics of things like body
hair, tone of voice, bone density, etc. caused by differences between XX and XY
chromosomes; there are even brain chemical differences that may cause
different behaviors.
These genetic differences certainly divide humans into two groups but this is only
the starting point for entirely ideological Distributed Identities about what it means
to be male or female. Anything non-biological that we attribute to sexual identity
is part of such an ideological construct, be it the idea that boys have shorter hair,
or that only girls wear dresses, jewelry, makeup, etc...
This would probably be the only example of a Collective Identity that split the
entire human population into two almost equally sized camps, except that
different cultures often contain completely different ideas about sexual identity.
There are also some smaller Sexual identity groups that are not strictly male or
female. Some of these are well known and tolerated in many cultures – while
other cultures try hard to allow just two sexual groups.
As evidence that this is the same sort of Collective Identity that causes all sorts
of trouble in the world, consider the reaction in some cultures to someone whose
Sexual identity does not fall into one of the acceptable types. "Straights,” in some
cultures, use physical violence against "Queers" because their victims'
expression of sexual identity threatens their own definitions of correct sexual
behavior.

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In Nazi Germany, people of all sorts of alternative sexual identities were rounded
up and sent to camps along side those of racial groups deemed "inferior,” people
who held to opposing political ideologies, and those with religions deemed
unacceptable by the Totalitarian Collective. This is decent evidence that Sexual
identity is in the same category as Race, Religion, or Political Belief. All of them
are considered to be competition by any Collective Identity that wants complete
control, because they are all examples of the same sort of ideological animal.

1.4.1.12 Couple
The Couple is the smallest possible Collective Identity. Any relationship can
share behaviors that are only expressed between two people. The longer you are
with someone, the more of your behavior gets defined by the parameters of what
is accepted in the relationship. Sometimes you might want private time just to
reclaim who you are for a while. When a relationship is ending, a lot of the
trauma that you feel may be caused by this ideological construct fighting for its
life.

1.4.1.13 Sub Groups

Most Higher Powers have sub-groups that specialize in one or more ways. Inside
the God group are many sub-specialties and associations. Inside The State are
many groups that focus on some particular aspect of The State. As noted in a
few of the descriptions above, some groups that appear to be at war with each
other are really aspects of a shared set of information that need each other for
survival. For example, where there are only two common Sexual Identities, one
for men and one for women, they are really just a part of one set of Sexual
identity rules.
Each sub group, like the larger group, uses our tribal or clan instinct to make us
feel better about life. Membership in additional sub groups can give us feeling of
greater support. It can also make us feel better about ourselves by making us
feel special.

1.4.2 The Self-Esteem Factor

All humans seek happiness – especially happiness with themselves. Probably
the most attractive aspect of any Higher Power is that it offers its hosts (that’s
you and me) cheap and potent doses of self-esteem. If you are a Believer, then
you are special. "Many are called, but few are chosen." You are one of the few,
the proud.
Beyond the obvious God issues, nations always sell the idea that they have
some special virtue that sets them apart. Many Italians think they are especially
artistic. The French think their language makes them culturally superior. And so
on…
Every political party has some provision of self-esteem to grant to their faithful.
Most people hold to their political allegiance more for the self-esteem than any
sort of rational conviction. In fact, if you feel a flush of anger when someone says
that they’re a member of the opposing party, then you can be sure that you’re
hosting an offended Collective Identity. Otherwise you’d simply note that you’ll
likely disagree with that person on some specific issues.

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Once the self-esteem provision of the Higher Power is established, fear of losing
that self-esteem becomes paramount. Externally-provided self-esteem operates
much like an addictive drug. Not only do people become addicted to external
sources of self-esteem, but they also displace other means of self-esteem. (The
healthiest of which would be a reasoned conclusion – based on actual facts –
that you are a capable good person.)
Once people accept the external valuation of a Higher Power, they are highly
unlikely to go cold turkey. They may however, switch drugs, converting from one
Higher Power to another, provided that they do it with intensity. In religion, it is a
common observation that converts are always the most observant and faithful.
It is harder to build authentic self-esteem. People who accept the fast and easy
esteem of the Higher Power are quickly addicted to it and will seldom go back to
the beginning and start over. They feel they would be giving up too much. And
not only is there the fear of lost self-esteem, but they also fear members of the
old Higher Power becoming their enemies. (Often with cause)

1.4.3 Cooperation and Competition

Collective Identities exhibit various degrees of competition and cooperation with
each other. Many of these ideological organisms can exist inside the same brain,
and at the same time. They can sometimes make deals with each other that
allow them to peacefully coexist, even as they compete for mind share. In fact,
belief in more than one Higher Power often allows individuals to act more freely
than they might if they were only host to one such entity. People with only one
such idea in their heads can be very dangerous, as they do not act as individual,
but rather as avatars for the Collective.

1.4.3.1 The Hierarchy

There seems to be a necessary hierarchy among ideological organisms. Come
what may, one of them is always the "big one.” Normally God is unassailable at
the top but when one of the isms takes over completely, religion is likely to be
outlawed and suppressed. Nonetheless, God usually reasserts itself over time,
bringing down the new "ism" and reestablishing a more enduring God-State,
Senior-Junior partnership.
Why must these idea-organisms be in a hierarchy? We see two primary reasons:
• 1. The surface reason is that these organisms compete. They are
"programmed" to become dominant, in an effort to reproduce prolifically.
They may also form partnerships with other idea-organisms, as in the
usual God-State partnership, but only when that partnership is superior
at maintaining a larger and more fertile population of hosts.
• 2. The deeper reason is that human minds operate on the
"categorization" model. People tend to categorize every major data field
and tag it with some sort of descriptor. They also tend to archive these
data fields in a hierarchy of importance. (We again question whether this
is an inherent or optimal condition, but it is the way humans currently
operate.)

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The lower collective organisms tend to struggle toward the top and to form
alliances to get them there. God and Country (Geographic region) rule the roost
now, and have for some time. However, both "God" and "Country" have changed
dramatically over the years, to the point where the modern versions of Church
and State would be almost unrecognizable to their devotees of several centuries
ago. So, give the Higher Powers credit, they do adapt!
Also note that the hierarchy we are talking about can be different for different
people. Any given person can host more than one Higher Power, especially
where those Higher Powers do not compete too directly. For example: in the
case of a church that mostly feeds on fear of death and a Nation State that
mostly feeds on territorial instinct, a person can be both a patriotic member of
their country and a faithful follower of their God. The hierarchy in this case is
personal – if God and Country were sending contradictory messages, different
individuals would have different top loyalties.

1.4.3.2 God and Country

The common relationship between God and Country is actually a very good
example of how Collective Identities can both cooperate and compete
simultaneously. In a market economy, people with similar wants and needs are
competitors, and people with different wants and needs can trade for mutual
benefit. In this same way, God and Country can actually coexist because of their
differences, not because of their similarities. Similarities actually get in the way of
cooperation between Collective Identities. (For example, governments and
Mafias do not coexist peacefully because they both claim similar powers.) Even
though God and Country seem to work in very similar ways, they can generally
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combine for maximum benefit to both because there are significant differences
between the two.
Ideologies often use biological desires as handles to control us. The three basic
bio-drivers used by geographic based government (Country) and religious group
(God) are: Fear, Hunger, and Sex Drive. Refer to the table below to see the ways
these handles are used. We are not saying that all of these are devoid of any
legitimacy, only that these are the handles that God and Country have to use,
aside from the self-esteem mechanisms discussed earlier.

Note that both God and Country tend to reach for the same handles. The
government differs in occupying a single physical territory. Why? Because that is
another basic biological instinct we have, and another biological need – we all
have to sleep somewhere! National government has attached itself to our
territorial instincts and needs. Religion, on the other hand, leaves off Earthly
territory and claims heavenly territory. It offers life after death to gain our survival
instinct as its ally.
Because of this, governments tend to focus more on man’s external life and
circumstances, and religion tends to focus more on man’s internal life and
circumstances. And, since heaven is generally considered the higher realm (even
by 99% of politicians), God is much harder to destroy than Country.
And this is why God and Country tend to cooperate: The Nation State is better at
the physical, God at the non-physical. When physical concerns are the greatest,
the State takes the fore and is supported by God. At other times, God takes the
fore and legitimizes the State – preserving it for future necessities.
When your religious and national identities conflict with each other, the resolution
is uncertain. However, this can be good, as this conflict limits the actions that
either Collective can require of you. You probably wouldn't let your government
order you to kill your religious leader or brothers of the faith, nor would you allow
your church to tell you to kill the head of your nation or fellow citizens.
However, infidels from another country... well it might not be so hard to get you to
kill them.

1.4.3.3 Internal Strife

It is not uncommon for biologists to talk about the "wants" or "fears" of a
particular gene. However, they are always apologetic about this, being quick to
point out that this is just shorthand for saying, "The effects of the gene’s
expression are those which have evolved towards increasing the gene’s chances
for further survival and replication."
In other words, the biologists make sure to point out that the gene doesn’t really
"want" to cause a behavior in the same way that you or I might want to go get a

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slice of pizza, but that it simply causes a survival-oriented behavior because it
has evolved to do so.
These biologists are wrong to apologize. Although the more familiar idea of what
we mean by "wants" and "fears" is that of a human mind exhibiting desires, these
mental desires are also the result of an evolutionary process.
The difference between a human and any other animal is that we contain
ideological replicators. However, our ideas about what we want are no less the
evolved effect of replicators than the desires produced by our genes. All "wants"
and "fears,” indeed all values that human beings have, are the product of evolved
replicators. Some are biological and some ideological but the basic concept is
the same.
There is certainly a semantic difference between saying an idea wants you to do
something, and you wanting to do something because you have an idea. But if
you have to choose between the two ways of looking at it, ascribing the
motivation to the idea is actually a better way to examine the system logically.
This is especially true because your "wants" and "fears" come, not just from your
ideas, but also from your genes. Your desires arise from both biological and
ideological replicators and the interactions between both types of replicators.
After all, we still observe the effect of genes driving our behavior, sometimes
even against our ideological wishes.
Economists have generally taken the individual as the smallest unit from which
values arise, but once you see that every value is the result of an evolved
replicator, the individual human being stops being an indivisible unit. If you look
inside, you see a whole economy thriving inside of each human brain.
Values are expressed by two different types of replicators: Biological and
Ideological. Genes and memes struggle and bargain with each other for use of
resources – and the outcome of these internal economic interactions become the
behavior of the individual human being.
There is also a large factor of "previous choice" which is partially biological and
partly ideological. Your biology has evolved to reduce such internal conflict by
"hard wiring" neural pathways representing the winner of previous conflicts.
However, in the interest of clarity we will leave that out for the moment.
Conflict between multiple ideologies and our biology explains why people are
often conflicted. Humans, unlike animals, can very easily want contradictory
things simultaneously. We have all experienced this, but few of us have
understood the reasons as it was happening. This happens when different
replicators exhibit different conflicting replication strategies, and compete for
dominance.
Genes, for the most part, play nicely with each other. They are packaged
together, and share the same path for replication. The ideas in a human mind,
however, are not all bundled up into a single package, reproducing as a group.
They can each be communicated to another mind separately, and this
communication can be through our words or our deeds.
So, all of these ideological organisms are fighting and bargaining all the time for
control of our words and our actions. This explains both the inner conflicts that
people regularly feel and also the hypocrisy that people regularly exhibit.
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1.4.3.4 Hypocrisy
When the replicators that govern your behavior are in conflict, and the behavior
that you exhibit to the world is important to both, then the only choice for these
memetic organisms is to fight it out inside your head. However, if one of them
has a different reproductive path, then they can come to an agreement to behave
one way in public, and another way in private.
Hypocrisy is most often seen exhibited in conflicts between biological drives and
ideological organisms. Any number of ideological replicators can work together to
set an example of a code of behavior that may go against the interests of
biological reproduction. Codes of sexual abstinence or monogamy certainly work
against the interests of our genes and produce significant personal conflict.
However, both replication paths can be preserved if a person loudly espouses
these ideas in public, while secretly following their biological instincts in private.
Hypocrisy is a fine economic bargain between two sets of replicators to divide
time and resources between their respective values. It is a market solution to the
conflicting desires of the replicators that inhabit a person.
Ideological replicators are probably always going to be hostile to each other in
terms of public airing, and are seldom able to come to the kind of public/private
bargain that ideologies make with the biological. However, private and
anonymous communications do allow for hypocrisy in different communication
forums. For example, a person who sings the praises of the Collective in public
may secretly write nasty things about current leaders under a pen name.

1.4.4 Privacy
Without privacy, we would lose the benefits of the efficient solution that
hypocritical behavior provides. Things that people do in private – and that they
would not want to be seen doing in public – are the result of a compromise
between replicators – ideological replicators that use a "teach by example" model
for their reproduction and those that do not require that reproductive path.
Unapproved ideas use privacy to hide from dominating ideas and people often
spread ideas in public that they do not really believe internally. It is part of the
power of coercion that if you drive competing ideas underground, they cannot
reproduce as effectively. Private communications, however, do allow the
unapproved ideas some chance to continue to exist and reproduce in secret.
Such unproved ideas may actually turn out to be better ideas, so to degrade
private communication is to degrade progress.
All new ideas begin as threats to one of the dominant Collective Identities.
Without private communication, many good ideas would be destroyed before
they could prove their benefit to us. Private and/or anonymous communications
are inherently necessary so long as collective force is being used to suppress
new ideas.
This also points out something very interesting – it is always in the best interest
for the ideas that have the best access to coercion to try to eliminate privacy.
Those ideologies that are vulnerable to being destroyed by coercion will support
privacy. But, they will always be in a weaker position than a user of coercion.
That is, unless they can strike a public/private bargain with a biological necessity.

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Then, since no ideological organism can win an all-out war against biological
necessity, they must allow the public/private bargain to continue to exist – this
means allowing privacy to exist.

1.4.4.1 Ideas versus Biology

One really interesting question is: Why are so many ideas contrary to our
biological desires? What is the evolutionary advantage? Obviously, some
advantage must exist, or the situation wouldn't be so prevalent.
One possibility is that Ideas that block our Biology, to some degree, take time
away from pursuit of biological reproduction and yields more time for the creation
of new and better ideas.
Or, perhaps such Ideas take hold during biological down time. Perhaps while
waiting for the product of biology (that is, a baby) to make its appearance. The
baby wasn’t going to come for a while, so the brain may as well do something
until then. Expecting parents who have said, "This baby will never come!" know
what we mean here. Ideas evolve fast, and can gain considerable strength during
relatively small periods of time as seen from a biological frame of reference.
Another possibility is that by controlling biological desires, idea-organisms coerce
the acceptance of ideas. For example, if a male cannot get a female to mate with
him unless he takes her religion, there will be a lot of converts. This is obviously
an effective way to use biological drives in furthering the ideology. Biological
drives can be used both as carrot and stick to promote belief of an Ideological
Organism.
And, there is yet another possibility: It may be that idea-organisms began when
men began to think abstractly, and that the human decision mechanism has not
yet really been able to control them. (We call this the "inmates running the
asylum" theory.) In this strangely optimistic view, once humans strengthen their
self-reference and decision-making capabilities, the idea-organisms can be
brought under control, and people will use ideas rather than being used by them.

1.4.4.2 Dueling Ideologies

For all of our complaining about religion (which we stand behind), there is one
way in which it has been very useful. That is in overpowering other ideologies,
typically The State, The People, and Isms. In essence, God can often act as a
hedge against even worse secular collectivism. The fact that God is conceptually
higher than any other icon makes it almost impossible to wipe out completely.
While God is around, no other collective ideology can assert complete control.
Even in cases where the God-State alliance is strong – a different flavor of God
than the one in the State alliance can act as a hedge. This works internally for
the individual, making them feel good enough to pursue unapproved areas of
growth and overcome peer pressure against new ideas.
Later on we will talk about how humanity makes more progress during times
when different Collectives are in conflict. We will examine the history of mankind
and show how a religion with a useful set of memes (memes being individual
ideas in the "God" package) can actually make a great deal of progress possible
– but for now let’s just try to get a basic idea how this operates.

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Remember... just because an idea is parasitic in nature doesn’t mean that it
doesn’t have some useful applications. In fact, nature is full of such relationships.
For example, have you ever thought about standing up before a room of people,
alone, and singing to them? To most of us, that is a very frightening idea. There
is a great deal of fear and intimidation involved. What if you sing, and everyone
laughs at you? Maybe it will hurt your chances of finding a good mate. Or, maybe
it will make you less popular, leaving you at a serious disadvantage if a
dangerous situation develops. In any event, very few of us would jump up and
sing. And most of those who would may have a few less-than-great ideas
contributing to their actions as well.
Now, this intimidation against singing is a very bad thing if you happen to have
musical talent or are simply made happy by singing. So, if you are a person in
one of these categories, you need a way around the risks of being laughed at.
What to do?
The usual solution is singing at church. In fact, if you follow the life stories of
American musicians, you will find that this is a huge theme. In the shelter of the
God ideology, you are free to sing. In that situation, it is held as a virtue even if
you are not very good. To laugh at someone "singing to the Lord" would be a sin.
You are safe.
It would probably be fair to say that the majority of American musicians started
this way, simply because it was the best possibility available to them. They start
singing in church, then they move on to other venues once they have some
adulation and some confidence. And once it appears to be a good reproductive
strategy, the way is certain. But to jump right out in front of a crowd, without a
hedge against collective disapproval, on the first day... not many would try and
there would be a lot less good music.
Kind of makes you wonder what might have been if intimidation wasn’t such a
curse upon the planet, doesn’t it?
Using one Higher Power as a hedge against another has been a very useful
method for individuals to transcend intimidation. Transcending intimidation allows
new ideas a chance to prove themselves.

1.4.5 Enforcing Mediocrity

One of the big problems with having the idea-organisms running the show is that
they always prefer conformity. An idea-organism functions best when it is held by
a unified group of hosts. When some of the hosts begin to differ, the organism is
weakened and threatened. Any Higher Power, then, will probably act to enforce
uniformity.
That means that as soon as one of the hosts begins to diverge from the norm,
the Collective will work to assure that he or she is brought back into unison with
the others.
From the human side of the situation this means that mediocrity will be enforced.
It also enhances the sub-ideology of egalitarianism. (Egalitarianism is the idea
that people should all be equal. Radical egalitarianism says that inequality is
evidence of bad or criminal actions.)

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From the aspect of the superior man or woman, the need for conformity means
that ideological forces will push, prod and force them back down to the average
level. Another option is to punish the superior individual by making them pay
higher taxes or other penalties. If that does not work, they are likely to be
shamed, exiled or imprisoned. Under the rule of radical egalitarians, such as
communists, the superior man or woman is frequently killed.
For the sub-standard man or woman, enforced mediocrity generally means that
they are to be the recipients of external support. This may be in the form of
money, special attention, or some other form of support. However, in harsher
situations, the sub-normal may be killed instead. The Nazis did this, as did the
Communists.
Superior and sub-normal in the discussion above mean better or worse than the
average in some respect that is both observable and important to members of
the Collective.
H.L. Mencken famously said, "All government is a conspiracy against the
superior man." You can see from this explanation why Mencken had reason to
say so. All Distributed Identities are opposed to human variation. To a person
with good new ideas this means the frustration and suppression of their talents,
social derision, accusations of arrogance – sometimes even death at the hands
of their neighbors. To the sub-normal, this means free money, pats on the head,
lauding for their spiritual superiority – oh, and also sometimes death at the hands
of their neighbors. (Standing out in a crowd is never totally safe.) But the general
trend is to support weakness over strength.
Further strengthening the prohibitions against superiority is the emotion of envy.
This grows from the human propensity toward comparison and a lack of self-
esteem. Feeling at a disadvantage and lacking comfort in themselves, others
envy the superior man or woman. This contributes greatly to the eventual
punishment or death of a superior person who challenges collective beliefs.
Never underestimate the power of envy.
If you wish to pity someone, pity the superior man. He is the source of all
progress, yet everyone and everything is set in array against him. He is punished
for his virtues.
You may also pity the man who is sub-normal through no fault of his own.
(Those who are mentally damaged,
diseased, physically miss-developed, Organisms want the things that they have
and so on) The born sub-normal man evolved to want and fear the things that they
have evolved to fear. Traits are evolved to fit
is the victim of cruel chance. These, a certain environment. Organisms, therefore,
however, unlike the superior man, like to keep their environments stable.
are usually spared incrimination for Collective ideological organisms only want
their differences. (Though in the bad what is good for the survival and growth of
old days it was not always so.) the collective ideology. They use the wants
and fears of individuals to bend them to
The collective idea-organisms we are collective goals. The person who attempts to
discussing function as barriers to change some collective ideology must be
new and independent thought. They judged as either a prophet or a heretic. A
enforce this by fear-compliance at very risky business indeed, especially since
the borders. If the borders are the designation of prophet is quite often only
crossed, pain-compliance is next. after the person has already been killed.

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History is a long story of the competition between new, innovative, symbiotic
ideas and resistance from existing Ideological Organisms. The Higher Powers
that evolved without these new ideas see them as a threat. Every new step in the
evolution of human society can be viewed as a crime against the previous
culture.

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1.5 Take a Breath
OK, after having gone over all of this, we’d like to summarize briefly. New ideas
need to be repeated to be understood. (Repetition is also a good brain washing
technique – so be careful that you follow the logic. Just because it’s in a book
doesn’t make it true. We are as capable of being wrong as anyone else.)
People often wonder why other people always want to tell them what to do. It
might seem odd that anyone should care how another person chooses to live,
and yet almost everybody seems to have opinions about the lives of other
people, and many are even willing to force their lifestyles upon others.
Once you understand that ideas are a product of evolution, it all makes sense:
• Ideas are patterns of information that exist inside human brains and can
be communicated (copied) into other brains.
• Ideological patterns act as replicators, similar to the biological patterns of
DNA that control the form and behavior of plants and animals.
• The term "meme" (rhymes with seem) was coined by Oxford zoologist
Richard Dawkins to conceptually reframe our understanding of the
beliefs and values commonly accepted by members of a given
community. Memes are cultural genes, the social equivalent of
chromosomal genes.
• A gene is a set of instructions for making (mostly) proteins, stored in the
DNA in people’s cells, and replicated through sexual reproduction. A
meme is a set of instructions for making belief or behavior patterns,
stored in the neuronal pathways in people’s brains, and replicated
through imitation.
• In the same way that animals compete for physical territory, ideas
compete for intellectual territory.
• In the same way that competition between animals leads to the evolution
of teeth and claws, ideological organisms can also become more
successful as they become more forceful.
• Ideas that were successfully forced onto people in the past are more
likely to be around now than those that were not, and since they are
linked to the use of force they continue to use force.
• Single ideas are analogous to very simple living organisms. Multiple
ideas that compliment each other and reproduce as a unit are the
equivalent of one-celled animals of the ideological world. Ideas that
cause group behavior, making human beings behave like individual cells
in a larger animal, are the higher animals of ideology.
• Religions, Nations, Corporations, and all other Collectives of human
beings are the equivalent of multi-cellular ideological animals.
• Icons representing these collective ideologies further remove the
component ideas from consideration or criticism.

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 • Higher Powers such as God, Nation, etc. are icons for collective
ideologies.
• Just as the sum of a species’ genes or genetic information is called its
genome, the sum of a culture’s memes or memetic information is called
its memome. Just as a species has genes that promote its health and
survival, so a culture has memes that do the same. And just as there
can be defective genes, so can there be defective memes.
• Just as the emerging physical science of genetic engineering involves
the identification of a species’ genetic flaws (hopefully removing and
replacing them), a social science of memetic engineering, identifying a
culture’s memetic flaws, removing and replacing them, may be possible.
• Just as a gene can help a species successfully adapt to one
environment, then be maladaptive if the environment changes, the same
applies to memes. A meme for totalitarianism might enable a culture to
succeed in the Middle Ages – and cause its extinction in the 21st
Century. Such a meme might have been tolerated by other cultures in
the cultural environment of the previous centuries, but not now. A gene
or a meme can also appear for one reason and find new ways of being
useful as environments change.
• A genetic flaw can prevent an organism from being healthy, can cause
its death and, if spread across its species, can cause an extinction. A
memetic flaw can do the same for members of a culture and the culture
itself.

One of Christianity’s foundational memes as a social institution is Jesus’ dictum, "Render

unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s" (Matthew 22:17, Luke 20:25).
Such a meme argues against a Christian totalitarianism and allows Christianity and secular
governments to exist in tandem. This coexistence of Higher Powers has left "in-between"
space for a lot more individual freedom than has existed in cultures where governments
are dominated by religion, or by philosophies such as communism that do not make room
for religion.
The United States of America is a country that was founded by many different groups
fleeing religious persecution. This led to the establishment of strict controls to protect
religion from government and also to protect government from the other guy's religion. This
idea of separation of powers was even included inside the government, with different parts
of the government balanced against each other. This resulted in economic benefits on a
scale never before seen. None of this would have been possible without the Christian
meme of the separation of Higher Powers.
Lacking this separation of Higher Powers meme is a memetic flaw of Islam. (At least from
the point of view of the Individual.) Muhammad, in the name of Allah, argues forthrightly for
Islamic totalitarianism. There are no words in classical Arabic allowing a conceptual
distinction between the religious and the secular. For Muhammad as for Lenin, "Nothing is
private." This memetic defect results in Arab culture being suffocated by religious
dictatorships.

With these concepts in mind, we will now take a short look at the history of
mankind with a focus on the evolution of idea-organisms.

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 2
A Brief History of Crime
In a funny sort of way, our thesis in this book confirms an old philosophical theory
called dualism. Dualism said that man's mind and body were opposed to one
another. Some dualists went so far as to say that the body was unchangeably
evil and the mind good. We are not at all authorizing these ideas, but in a
different way we are saying that the body and mind are often opposed. Not that
they have to be, but that they often are.
As we've said (many times at this point), we humans have two separate types of
replicating systems: Our bodies and our ideas. Bodies replicate via sexual
recombination of DNA and ideas replicate via communication. Both are
necessary for us to be the creatures we are but the two forms of replication are
radically different, especially in the speeds at which they are capable of evolving.
Our bodies are very stable. Physical changes to the human animal take place
only over long periods of time. The standard model for body changes is evolution
– very slow, gradual changing. In fact, there have been no identifiable changes to
the human body within recorded history. Biological replication systems evolve
very slowly. There have been many significant functional improvements in the
past hundred years or so (longer life-spans, people growing larger, stronger and
smarter), but these have resulted from better nutrition and medicine, not from
biological evolution.
Our ideas, on the other hand, change very, very rapidly. (Well, maybe not for
Baby Boomers and politicians...) In fact, the history of mankind is really a story of
ideas evolving. The major events of history are clashes between different
collective ideological organisms, under the guise of Higher Powers, struggling to
control the minds of the people.
Ideological organisms do care about human bodies, but only as if they were a
herd of animals. In other words, Distributed Idea-organisms care about
maintaining a functional group of hosts, but care very little about any specific
individual. This would be similar to how a bee-keeper cares about his bees. He
cares a great deal about keeping the hives growing and thriving (that's how he
feeds his family), but not very much about any individual bee. So, when
Distributed Idea-organisms find it necessary to compete, they are willing to
sacrifice their hosts. And since this competition actually occurs in human minds,
people kill each other over ideas.
When a combative idea-organism cannot get people to convert, killing them is
the next choice. After all, their goal is to defeat the contrary ideas that they host.
If a Higher Power can not take over the host bodies of its rivals, it can still destroy
those bodies and take the other available resources – land, food, and other
personal property. From the Collective's point of view, new bodies can always be
created provided there is a place for them to live and food enough to feed them.
In this chapter we will start at the beginning, with theories about how it all started,
and a look at history as it might be told from the viewpoint of Ideological
Evolution.

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2.1 Down from the Trees
We seem to be very unique creatures on the planet Earth, not just currently, but
as far back as we can tell. In the entire history of the planet, archaeologists can
find no evidence of any type of culture, aside from that of human beings and their
ancestral cousins. We find no evidence that any other creature on this planet has
ever been able to deal with ideas as we have. While other creatures operate on
in-born instinct, we are constantly modifying ideas and strategies.
The odd thing is that we have yet to find evidence of Homo sapiens (that's us)
doing these sorts of things more than 30,000 years ago. That's weird because we
have found much older human remains, and they really don't seem much
different than us. There are many possible explanations for this, but we really
can't say for sure.
It is possible that extremely ancient humans were not the same sort of divided –
biological and ideological – creatures that we are today. There were various
human-looking creatures before that time, but no real evidence that they had
capabilities much beyond that of our closest living cousins, the chimpanzees. If
they were completely like us, we would expect to find the same types of things
we create: Tools, dwellings, furniture, monuments, art, and so on.
In any event, it is pretty certain that humans (or near-humans) have been on
Earth for several million years. It may seem strange that human beings only
developed serious mental abilities in the fairly recent past, but that is because we
are so familiar with what we are now. That doesn't mean creatures that looked
like us were always that way. And a couple of million years is not much in terms
of the development of life upon Earth; higher multi-celled animals have existed
for 600 million years.
Not only do we have ancestors, who were not so bright, but we also have close
cousins existing on this planet with us today, and none of them exhibit the same
ability to manipulate ideas that we do. (Well, at least you can pick your friends…)

It is obvious that our thinking and linguistic abilities have given us a huge
competitive advantage over all other species. We must therefore presume that
evolving the biological mechanisms for hosting ideological information is quite a

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difficult leap to make, or it would have happened much sooner in the history of
the planet.
We have only been “doing that voodoo that we do so well” for less than
one ten-thousandth of the time that animals with brains quite similar to our
own have existed.
What allowed us to become so different than our closest cousins and ancestors?
Let’s look at our family history, and see what might have happened.

2.1.1 Tribe Hominini

Early human like creatures stand out from their closest cousins, modern
chimpanzees and their ancestors, in many ways. Many of our current differences
from Chimpanzees and other apes, such as relative hairlessness, breath control,
fat layer under all the skin, slight webbing of the fingers, etc., are shared with
many aquatic mammals. This has caused some to theorize that human beings
had a semi aquatic ancestor. This might also explain our upright posture as an
original adaptation to keep our heads above water with our feet on the ground in
shallow water. However, many other scientists are convinced that the upright gait
was an adaptation to traveling long distances across arid plains and dismiss our
similarities to aquatic animals as coincidence or suggest that these adaptations
appeared later in human evolution.
Whatever the cause, our ancestors' body shape changed to one that allowed
them to walk comfortably on two legs. This may have slowed down our top
running speed, but it increased our ability to cover great distances, increased our
range of vision, freed our front limbs for carrying things, and generally provided
greater evolutionary advantage than the loss of speed over short distances.

The "A" in front of the first two ancestors on the chart stands for
Australopithecines, a type of hominid that developed as early as 5 million years
ago, walked upright and probably carried sticks and rocks for use as tools and
weapons. They were quite similar to humans in body shape, with their skull
shape and brain size being the major difference between their bodies and ours.
Their adult brain size was little bigger than 1/3 of a modern day human brain.

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They may have used found objects as tools, but they probably did not
manufacture tools for specific needs.

2.1.2 Genus Homo

As early as two million years ago, Homo habilis is our first ancestor who is
confirmed to have manufactured tools, rather than just using found objects.
Although there is no reason to believe that these ancestors were very much
smarter than modern day chimpanzees, some would consider this first
manufacturing of primitive tools to be the "dawn of man.” The anthropological
genus (group) "homo" (meaning "like us") indicates thinking along those lines
when the Latin names were being handed out.
This was also the approximate start of the ice ages. It is not clear what early man
did to change the climate. (After all, if the weather changes, it has to be
someone's fault, right?) There is no real evidence that our ancestors had even
yet discovered fire, or the wheel, so the theory that this extreme climate change
was caused by Carbon dioxide emissions from their Sports Utility Vehicles
seems... uh... unlikely. According to many biblical scholars, the universe had not
even been created yet, so it probably wasn't because Genus Homo had done
anything to invoke the wrath of GOD.
Maybe it is just a coincidence that the "dawn of man" happened at the same time
as a massive shift in our global climate, or maybe it was part of the cause for our
development. Whatever the cause, not too long into the cycle of the ongoing
global freezes and thaws, Homo habilis gave way to Homo erectus, and the
hominid brain started to get a lot bigger.

Homo erectus was an even better tool maker than Homo habilis and he quickly
learned how to make stone axes. (There may even still have been a genetic
component to it, like a beaver building a dam.) These axes are not the modern
versions we think of today with a handle and head, but merely certain types of
rocks that could be carefully broken off in flakes that produced a good edge. He
may not have been conscious of why he did it in anything like the way modern
man can evaluate his actions. But, he certainly made a lot of axes, and got very
good at it. In fact he got so good at making stone axes and made so many of
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them that some scientists have concluded that he was doing it to impress chicks.
Seriously. The theory is that the guy who could make the best hand axes would
get the best mates.
According to Dr. Marek Kohn and Dr. Steven Mithen in an essay entitled, “Hand-
axes: Products of sexual selection?” stone hand-axe making became what
biologists call a sexual selection trait:
"We propose that hand-axes functioned not just to butcher
animals or process plants but as Zahavian handicaps, indicating
'good genes'. Those hominids (male or female, see below) who
were able to make fine symmetrical hand-axes may have been
preferentially chosen by the opposite sex as mates. Just as a
peacock's tail may reliably indicate its 'success', so might the
manufacture of a fine symmetrical hand-axe have been a
reliable indicator of the hominid's ability to secure food, find
shelter, escape from predation and compete successfully within
the social group. Such hominids would have been attractive
mates, their abilities indicating 'good genes'."

2.1.2.1 Sexual Selection

The most commonly used example of a sexual selection trait is the peacock's tail.
It is much longer than it needs to be for any useful survival purpose, and it’s a
good bet that many a peacock has been eaten because its tail was long enough
for a predator to catch before it could get away. One would expect natural
selection to shorten the peacock’s tail. However, sexual selection overrides
natural selection. You see the peahen has decided that she will only mate with
males that have a flashy tail (like girls who only date a man if he has a really nice
car). This sexual selection pressure can lead to traits that seem to be counter to
survival, but it can actually be good for the species.
The logic of an annoyingly long tail that lets predators have a better shot at you,
but gets you the babes, is that by growing it you are demonstrating your fitness in
all other respects. To sport the longest tail, you have to be the strongest, fastest,
meanest peacock around to still be alive. This means your offspring will also be
more fit, both the males and females. Only the males take this genetic risk, and
that is ok from the standpoint of the species, as one live male can easily service
the needs of four or five females in a season, giving them all offspring. So if four
out of five males die in this sort of competition, and the one that remains has the
best genes, things still work out well for the species as a whole. (That is, for the
genetic replicators).

2.1.2.2 It Went to their Heads

So, according to this theory, if a male of Species H. Erectus wanted to impress
the ladies, every day he would collect the necessary materials to make a new
axe. What he was demonstrating then was that he was so good at procuring
materials that he could make a new axe anytime and just throw his old one away.
Also, the quality of the axe he made was an indication of how well his brain
worked, which would have demonstrated further superiority.

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Brains grow better with good nutrition, and getting good nutrition means you are
a fitter animal – just the same way the peacock has to eat a lot of the right food to
grow a pretty tail. So what was really being sexually selected for was brain
function. If so, the axes were probably not the only behavior that was
demonstrating good brains; other behaviors such as language and musical ability
are likely to have been indicators of brain function. Even to this day, men write
poetry and sing songs to impress the girls. However, stone axes survive in the
ground, where songs do not, and the major clue we have from this era is the truly
large numbers of carefully created but mostly unused axes that have been found.
Now remember we said that brains have both environmental and genetic factors.
While the female's genes might have been selecting for a trait that they thought
was linked to overall genetic fitness, the males genes were cheating and evolving
better brains. Better brains also seem to have been larger brains – so head size
was increasing. However, a limiting factor on head size of a species tends to be
the size of the skull at birth. Since the females were the ones that had to give
birth to these larger headed babies, if the girls had thought this through, they
might have realized that they were making more work for themselves.
Because the nature of the skull is that it holds the brain inside of it, it is a set of
bones that cannot be both strong and effective for a baby animal, and still grow
as much as other bones do later. Evolution has found a compromise position,
with the skull starting out proportionately larger to the body than it will be in
adulthood, and with the bones that make up the skull not as fully joined or as
tough as they will be in adulthood, leaving some room to grow.
The size a skull can be at birth is limited by the size that a female animal can
manage when giving birth. The weakness of the skull to allow growth is limited by
how ready the baby animal has to be to deal with threats in the world. These both
contribute to a limiting factor on how big an adult animal's brain can be.
Any mutation towards increased intelligence that would help the animal in its
environment is balanced by the increased infant mortality and/or birthing
problems that increased brain size, and therefore skull size, might cause.
Because of this, a level of brain sophistication that might otherwise have been
made hundreds of millions of years earlier, by some other animal, was delayed.
The initial evolutionary moves in this direction turned out not to be beneficial, and
standard natural selection can not cause change in a direction that goes against
survival, even if it would eventually get to something that is very pro-survival.

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However, sexual selection can, to a degree, create traits that are in some ways
counter to survival. So if the theory that the guy with the biggest axe gets the
best chicks is true (even though we think he might just be compensating for
certain other inadequacies), then this sexual selection pressure might have been
the key to pushing Genus Homo past the problem of head size to a higher level –
a level of brain complexity that no other animal on the planet had ever reached.
Certainly something pushed the development of our brain, and therefore our
head size, past the point that natural selection would normally be able to
manage. The resulting animal, virtually identical in all respects to modern human
beings, gave birth to babies with heads so large they could not even lift them for
many months after their birth. Unlike almost every other animal on the planet,
their infants were completely helpless, unable to even move around on their own
for almost a year.
By contrast, a newborn chimpanzee is strong enough to hold its own weight by
clinging to its mother’s fur. When it is born, it is already as fully developed in all
respects as a human baby is at approximately one year of age.
This new variety of larger headed hominid was capable of developing a much
more complex brain, but at a large price in physical survival abilities. In addition
to having to more carefully care for their young, the changes in pelvic structure
required to give birth to larger headed babies made H. Sapiens less well adapted
to running on two legs than early H. Erectus had been – especially in the case of
females.
In the long run, however, a less well adapted physical body was far less of a
disadvantage than the additional survival value of symbiosis with the ideological
capabilities that larger brains made possible. These new hominids had almost
certainly evolved the capability for structured language. They had the ability to
pass new ideas from mind to mind in a more precise manner than any previously
known creature. This gave rise to more complex memetic life forms than any
previous creature had ever been able to host.

2.1.3 Species H. Sapiens

The first Homo sapiens were not modern man (modern man is actually a
particular sub species of Homo sapiens that showed up later) but they were a lot
smarter than those that came previously. Their brain was now approximately the
same size as modern man. Although a bigger brain doesn't always mean smarter
within a species, there is definitely some correlation across different species in
brain to body size ratios. There is also some pretty good evidence that the first
members of species H. Sapiens were the smartest creatures ever seen on the
planet Earth. Whatever the evolutionary hurdle is to evolving our sort of
intelligence, these guys were over it and leaving it far behind.
At almost exactly the same time in the fossil record that Homo Sapiens appears,
there starts to be evidence of fire use, followed quickly (on the scale of time that
things were happening back then, “quickly” means a hundred thousand years
give or take) by advanced weaponry and complex tools like spears and bows.
This growth of technology would certainly seem to be an indication that symbiotic
memes had finally arrived on the scene. The new thing that this new bigger brain

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was doing, was allowing for communications using a complex structured
language. And structured language allowed more complex ideas to evolve.

2.1.3.1 Structured Language

Language of some sort exists in many animal species, and there is no doubt that
our earliest hominid ancestors were communicating with each other on some
level. In fact, modern chimps can be taught vocabularies of hundreds of words,
and are almost certainly also communicating at such a level in the wild through
their own sign languages. Many other species of animal are also seen to possess
some level of language. However, such communication lacks a structured
vocabulary. This is probably the level at which our ancestors had been
communicating up until the brain growth period in which H. Sapiens first evolved.
A higher level of language structure would allow new developments to be spread
and taught more quickly. As early as 200,000 years ago, Neanderthal man was
probably using all the tools that you would be able to make for yourself in the
woods after reading a book on survival. He was probably also able to relate his
daily experiences to the rest of his tribe, much the way you would tell your friends
all about the fun time you had in the woods... trying to make fire and ending up
having to eat raw squirrel meat when it didn't quite work out with the rubbing
sticks together idea.

2.1.4 Sub Species H. Sapiens Sapiens

The Neanderthals were a sub species of H. sapiens – as is modern man.
Neanderthal man is designated as H. sapiens neanderthalensis, while modern
man is known as H. sapiens sapiens.
The first genetically modern man appeared about 130,000 years ago, which was
about 70,000 years after the first Neanderthals. In the past, when a new
evolutionary mutation in the hominids had proved favorable, sometimes it was so
good that our ancestors quickly out-competed all similar creatures living in the
same environment. Other times, the two or more similar hominid species lived
together, side by side in the same environments, for quite a long time. In the
case of Neanderthal and Modern man, they seemed quite evenly matched at
first, and shared the planet side by side for over 100,000 years. Neanderthal man
actually had a somewhat larger brain, and may therefore, have actually been
more intelligent, but they were the species to die out.
The end of Neanderthal man coincides quite closely and perhaps not
coincidently, with the oldest known cave paintings. H. sapiens neanderthalensis
may never have exhibited any sort of art or decoration of any of his artifacts – nor
did H. sapiens sapiens (modern man) for the first 100,000 years that our
ancestors walked the planet. Then, 30,000 years ago, something changed, and
primitive man could suddenly conceptualize markings on a cave wall, or designs
on a tool, or figurines of stone, bone, or wood, as representations of real objects
in the world.
This was the birth of visual art.
There is no evidence that this change was a genetic one. If it was not, this would
be the first evidence of memes finding a new way to transmit themselves, without
the help of genes. While oral and gesture communication is almost certainly an

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evolved trait written into our genes, it is quite likely that nothing in our genes
suggests that pigment on a cave wall could tell the story of hunting a large
animal. This is the first known instance of memetic information being able to
persist outside a brain for longer than the time it takes sound waves to fade
away. This development may have been a product of purely memetic evolution.

It was also such a powerful development that it may well have been the factor
that tipped the balance in the survival struggle between two evenly matched sub-
species. Perhaps paintings helped in the teaching their children. Perhaps they
recorded information about seasonal movements of prey animals – so that
patterns could be figured out. If better communication somehow allowed a
greater survival advantage for one of the two sub species of H. Sapiens, or even
if it came to be used by both but somehow brought about greater competition as
both species did better, it could very well have been the change that put an end
to Neanderthal Man.

2.1.5 Regnum Sententia

(The Kingdom of Thought)
This was the beginning of the explosive growth and evolution of a new category
of life. Memetic life had previously existed at a level that was analogous to pre-
cellular biological creatures – like the replicating chemicals that started to form as
the Earth's surface cooled. A structured language, however, gave it a chance to
start evolving in ways and at speeds the planet had never seen. This is the same
sort of evolutionary development that a DNA-based genetic encoding system
was for biological life.

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How unlikely was this to have happened? Well, consider that from the first
chemical life to the development of the first animal brains took about three billion
years, and that the evolution of a brain capable of acting as a platform for full
replication and evolution of this new type of life took yet another half a billion
years.
This was a spectacularly amazing development that led to some amazingly
spectacular results.

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2.2 Hunter Gatherers
As we approach historical times, our understanding of human living begins to get
a bit less cloudy. We can infer more about early man from the existing
archaeological evidence than we could in the case of his even earlier cousins.
The information we have on the lifestyle of H. sapiens sapiens in primitive
technological conditions is pretty good. It seems certain that humans lived a
nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence. Archaeologists continue to find evidence of
life during these times and many such societies existed recently (such as the
Native Americans); because of this, we have information in the historical written
record to work with, and – very interestingly – a few societies of humans living as
hunter-gatherers still exist in certain parts of the world!
So, between the artifacts we find and the verifiable facts about primitive groups
still living on Earth, we can put together a fairly accurate picture of what hunter-
gatherer life was like. More importantly, we can get a decent picture about the
ideas that guided their existence.
Let's begin by admitting that early humans were very violent. Hunter-gatherers
were not happy, groovy Greenpeace members. Contrary to the popular "Noble
Savage" theories of anthropology, our early ancestors tended to beat each
other’s heads in with axes – a lot! (In fact a lot of the oldest H. sapiens sapiens
remains ever found seem to indicate murder with a stone axe to the head.)
Warfare in pre-state societies was both frequent and important.
If anything, peace was a scarcer commodity for members of
bands, tribes and chiefdoms than for the average citizen of a
civilized state.
It comes as a shock to discover that the proportion of war
casualties in primitive societies almost always exceeds that
suffered by even the most bellicose or war-torn modern states.
-- Lawrence H. Keeley, “War Before Civilization”

2.2.1 First Philosophies

Once men could actually think, they started to think about the world that
surrounded them. After all, it was a mass of contradictions. On one hand, it
provided you with air to breathe and generally with some sort of food and water
nearby. On the other hand, there were a lot of animals that could and would kill
you, some of the 'food' was poisonous, and the weather was often deadly. Add to
this confusion all of the strange reproduction-related things that happen to our
minds and bodies.
So, once highly-functional brains came along, questions came along with them,
requiring people to formulate answers, or at least possible answers. The
questions and answers tended to take shape based upon two primary things:
1. The knowledge available. (Which wasn't much beyond what a bare-
subsistence life in the woods provided)
2. Things that people wanted to know. How to escape fear, pain, and
sorrow. How to increase security, pleasure, and joy. How to realize their
dreams of something better.
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As we continue through this, bear in mind that nothing we say here excludes the
possibility of an actual GOD. We can neither prove nor disprove that idea. We
are just taking a look at the reasons why such an idea can and does arise, and
why people are inclined to pass it along.
The things that the first religious ideas needed to explain were these:
1. Sickness and death. Why did my mother die? Is she just gone forever?
I loved her and needed her, why did this happen? Will I really never see
her again? These are damned difficult questions now – just imagine
answering them for a bereft child. People were more used to death in
those early days, but it seems unlikely that these questions were not
asked universally.
2. The world. Why did water fall from the sky? What caused thunder and
lightning? Why did it get cold? Then, why does it do this in cycles?
Important questions, not just for the sake of curiosity but for survival.
3. Whose fault is it? Shame seems to be almost hard-wired into humanity,
and this is a much larger problem than most of us suppose. There's a lot
to say about this, but suffice it to say that as you look through history,
you see men and women running as fast and far from any possible
blame as they can. Obsessively. Here's a trick for you: Want to get a
huge crowd of people to follow you blindly? Give them someone or
something to blame for whatever makes them feel bad. Salve their
shame by placing it on someone else. If you do it well, it works almost
every time.
4. Fear. Nothing is more instinctively powerful than this. Fear of death is
one of the strongest, but many others exist. Fear itself is seldom the
subject of philosophies, but it is easily the most potent force in driving
the demand for them.
5. Assistance. At moments of extreme peril, it seems a human instinct to
raise our heads to the heavens and ask for help. Even in less tragic
times, people find themselves over-matched by the situations they face,
and wish for help from a real Higher Power. Explaining how and why this
might work – and telling stories about how it did work – is very potent. At
other times, however, people latch on to these ideas simply because
they want something for nothing or are just too lazy to get up and work
for what they want. They want an easy way out.
So, all of these factors, and certainly many others we haven't thought of, led to
the first religions. After all, a religion is just a type of philosophy that focuses on
what philosophers call metaphysics. Metaphysics asks, "What is the nature of
existence?" and it tends to ask questions about what might exist beyond our sight
and analysis. So, because these folks did not know much, their philosophy would
have to include a lot of conjecture on things they couldn't explain.
It is also very easy for people to project intelligence like their own onto creatures
and things that do not really have it. Earlier we discussed how even modern
people think of their pets as almost equal to other people and will do things like
name their cars and talk to them when they won't start. Primitive people live with
fewer barriers between themselves and nature and are far more likely to project

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personalities onto animals and other inanimate things where they have no other
knowledge to predict the behavior of such things.

2.2.2 First Religion

As best we can deduce or guess, the first religions tended to focus on imaginary
beings and powers behind the things in nature that were important to primitive
people. Now, this could have been as 'modern' as saying "The principle of the
sun, which we do not know," rather than saying "the Sun God.” But, as we have
explained earlier, the simplest ideas are the ones that tend to stick, and
projecting intelligence onto things is easy.
Even if the first guy to accurately describe the sun's behavior was so enlightened
as to not imply personality, it would have quickly been changed by others into the
more personal concept of a "Sun God,” and the question became not what the
sun did, but why it did it.
Death was explained as the removal of the life-force from the body. So the
question of just what it was that dead people no longer had, that had previously
made them walk and talk, and where it had gone, became important. The
common belief arose that life force was the same as consciousness, and that the
consciousness of the dead had gone somewhere.
The idea that dear departed relatives were still around somewhere was
comforting. It was even more comforting to believe that they were happier – that
they went to a better place or were still functioning at some higher level. While
this made people feel good, the down side was that it made people devalue the
human body or consider it a sort of trap for the spirit.
Ancestor-reverence (after all, they were higher and better now) fit perfectly with
the human grouping of clan, and combined with ideas about the animism of
trees, animals, and Higher Powers controlling the individual sources of
environmental change (sun, moon, wind, rain, cold, etc.), forming the basis of a
mystical world view that held sway for a long time.

2.2.3 Shamans
Once people believed in higher and more powerful forces, it was natural for them
to want help from those forces. People wanted help from above (and we can
guess that "above" was included because the most mysterious and powerful
forces – wind, rain, sun, etc. – were literally coming from above), but they didn't
know how to ask invisible Higher Powers for help in a way that might be
answered.
Enter the shaman. These guys, no matter what they were called, functioned as
the conduit between the Earth and the great powers above. They had to show
their uniqueness in one way or another, perhaps by knowing the secret magic
words, by knowing complex spells or occasionally by superior knowledge. They
might also prove their unique ability to span heaven and Earth by devoting their
entire lives to this work.
This early form of specialization had another feature – it made it a necessity that
others gave their goods to him. You want to be in touch with the Higher Powers?
You'll have to give the shaman regular food.

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2.2.4 Chieftains
Who Takes Responsibility, May Rule
Tribal leaders seem to have been very common among early man. We tend to
think of the tribe or clan leader as being the biggest and strongest male, and
there is doubtless some truth in that. But once tools of violence were common,
size and strength were not supremely important. Think about it – how would you
feel about allowing a 13 year-old girl to swing a small ax at the back of your head
with all her strength? Not very good, huh? Now imagine that same scenario in a
place where you wouldn’t receive modern medical attention – not even sterile
water or antiseptic cream to prevent infection. Size and strength certainly
mattered, but when even a child is capable of dealing a death blow, it isn't nearly
as crucial to the power structure as you might think.
As mentioned earlier, brains – effective thinking – mattered a lot more. But so did
the courage to command. And it seems likely that people of this time were just as
averse to welcoming responsibility as they are now. In fact, they were probably
worse. In our times, if you screw-up badly you are embarrassed and perhaps
suffer some financial damage. Even in the worst cases, you could go somewhere
else and start over.
In those days, being kicked out of the tribe meant a serious risk of death. Living
alone was far harder than living with the tribe. Even if you are capable enough to
kill an elk, how long can you eat from it before the meat spoils? Not long. In the
tribe, you all share, and the economies work. Plus, hunting in groups is a lot
safer.
It seems that most of the time, the bosses were chosen (or, more likely, just
accepted) more for non-physical reasons. There would doubtless be many strong
physical specimens who lacked the internal strength to assume risk and
responsibility, much as it is today. In the end, it seems to have been the
willingness to assume responsibility that determined who was to lead.
It is a shame that we don't know more about these people, but any writings they
may have had are long gone. Or, more likely, it was the invention of writing that
changed them into something else entirely.

2.2.5 Original Sin?

Since our chapter is entitled “A brief History of Crime” we're probably supposed
to be talking about crime. Well, we haven't yet included much about crime for a
simple reason: There wasn't a whole lot of it in the earliest human societies.
People killed each other a lot, but aside from murders (usually more like tiny
wars), there wasn't a lot of what we think of as crime. Also, it isn't really "crime" in
the sense of some higher concept, until there is some higher concept of law – it
is just stuff that most people don't like to see happen. (What some people call
"Natural Law.”)
Before farming, there just wasn't much to steal and keep. How much valuable
stuff can a perpetually-roving band of a dozen people really take with them? So,
there just wasn’t much pay-off in stealing. And if you did steal something big,
what would you do with it? Food rotted quickly and people didn’t need spring,
summer and winter wardrobes.

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There were revenge killings, fights over women and so on (probably quite a few
of them), but would you really risk your life to steal a half-basket of nuts? After all,
if something goes wrong, you and the other guy (or several guys) are squaring-
off and swinging axes at each other; that’s just not a promising risk/reward ratio.
So the only reason to steal anything back then would be if you were too stupid to
find your own nuts.
Although they might bash each others heads in for many other reasons, and
think that this was quite natural and normal, when it came to personal property,
people were quite probably fairly civil to each other. More civilization, however,
would certainly change this.

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2.3 Farmers, Warriors, and God Kings
Once people invented agriculture, everything changed, and the ideas of laws and
crime were inevitable. Now there were large stores of food (many types of grain),
which didn’t rot quickly. Then came clothing, furs, tools, and so on. (Oh yeah,
and beer – now there’s something worth stealing!) This stuff could be stolen and
traded in the next community in the next valley.
This is when crime really began to pay.
What really made the game work, however, was that farmers were immobile. The
text books like to call them "sedentary,” but that’s just a bit too polite for our
tastes. They were stationary targets – sitting ducks – easy victims – and doubly
so because farming requires special skills. The farmers worked on skills like
plowing, sowing and reaping, and not on things like making bows, slinging rocks,
and proper kill strikes with spears. Sure, they did some of that, but they didn’t
have time to keep those skills at as high a level as someone who specialized in
killing things.
Hunters and herdsmen did specialize in killing, so these guys became the first
serious crooks when marauding became a new viable occupation.

2.3.1 From Thief to Protector

Once there were a lot of farmers around who produced great wealth and were
easy marks, some less-than-nice hunters jumped at the opportunity and began
killing them and stealing their stuff. Of course, this tended to drive the farmers
back into the wilderness. Why stay out there in the open if it’s going to get you
killed? And this wasn’t any good for the hunters either, leaving them nothing to
steal.
Then some early evil genius came up with a very interesting solution: Stop
stealing everything.
However, if he didn’t steal it all, he was just leaving stuff for other thieves like
himself to come and steal. So he had to do something else. He has to start
protecting the farmers from the other thieves. He had to start treating the farmers
as if they were his property – his livestock.
(We should add here that the changeover from gathering to farming was
astonishingly brutal, with various new systems for dealing with production and
protection competing with new systems of pure murder and theft. As late as the
13th Century, a little improvisation in killing technique could result in one culture
overrunning and violently destroying many others. Even today, this memetic
dance of attack and defense technology continues. But, that is not really our
point at the moment.)
The hunters and herdsmen became the warriors and protectors. They learned
that if they refrained from stealing too much, the farmers wouldn’t run away, and
they could steal a lesser amount for ever and ever. They also learned that
protecting an existing group of farmers from people like themselves, was easier
than always finding new unprotected farmers. Regardless of what your history
teacher taught you in the third grade, this is really how the first rulers came into
existence.

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The first criminals were forced to become the first Kings and to enforce the
first laws.
Yes, we know that sounds like a very dangerous statement to make. After all, the
current rulers might not like it. You might get in trouble if you repeat it.
Well, that’s certainly possible, and we probably wouldn’t be so bold as to write
this book if we lived in a country that was less friendly to the free expression of
ideas – but it's the truth anyway. Governance began as persistent theft, with the
guy who led the best band of raiders becoming the boss. It was only after this
point that rulers began to justify themselves as protectors. They were really just
maintaining a monopoly over their human herds.
Farming was so incredibly much better than gathering that the farmers were
willing to accept almost any deal that resulted in some sort of stable situation.
"You want some of my grain or you'll kill me? Go ahead and take some, just be
reasonable about how much, and make sure you are the only one stealing from
me. I can’t afford to pay off everyone who comes along with a spear!”

2.3.2 Thug Kings

At first the life of a Thug King wasn't much better than it had been as the head of
a tribe of hunter gatherers. Being able to tax farmers made life a little easier, but
the business of having to protect them was actual work sometimes, and it could
get you killed. Other guys with spears and bows were much more dangerous
than animals that had no weapons.
The other problem with ruling the farmers was that they knew they were being
robbed and tried to avoid paying the local thug what he wanted. After all, a deal
made at the point of a spear really doesn’t have much moral authority, does it?
So, the farmers quickly became tax cheats.
Remember, the thug Kings of that time couldn’t put a freeze on your bank
account or check your MasterCard records. They might also be away frequently
and they didn’t really have to watch the settlement too closely except at harvest
time. That is when they collected their booty and when the chance of some other
group of thugs trying to steal the loot was greatest. It didn’t take long for the
farmers to figure out how to bury some of their crops, put the beer in a cave, and
so on.
Certainly the bosses tried to find the hidden beer, but they could never be sure
that there wasn’t more loot getting away from them. They could also intimidate
the farmers, but that isn’t as effective as you might think. A bit too much bullying
might get some farmer really mad, and he might sneak up at night and bash the
boss's head. Or a competitor might say, "Help me defeat the boss and I’ll only
take half as much of your crop as he did."
It was obvious, from the Thug King’s point of view, that it would be much better
and easier if the farmers actually liked him and would pay their taxes willingly.
But, it’s difficult to make someone like you when you are a parasite living off of
their work. (Modern political image consultants are specialists in this skill.)
Then, another evil genius came along and invented the Priesthood.

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2.3.3 The Priesthood
One of the curious things about early farmers was that they never developed the
huge, universal god. You might think that this would have come a lot earlier. After
all, a more powerful god is better than a limited one, right?
But if you look at a good map of an early farming city (and there are a few), you'll
see that there were many little shrines throughout the city – a lot like the little
store-front churches that we see now. When the gatherers moved to the farm,
they took their gods with them and held to them. And they had a lot of gods.
Polytheism was the natural state of affairs for a long time among these primitive
farming societies.
Just as the people who had been the hunters in pre-agricultural times had
adapted to the new class of farmers and the wealth they produced (by becoming
thugs and their Chieftains becoming Thug Kings), the Shamans also adapted.
They made a living by talking to the gods, and quickly came up with a story that
said, essentially, that if you please the gods, they will help you have a terrific
harvest. Well, what farmer wouldn’t want a great harvest? And pleasing the gods,
of course meant pleasing the Shamans.
Now it may have been that in some cases the Thug Kings would have been as
superstitious as the farmers, and would fear the Shaman. However, since both
Thug King and Shaman were living off of the efforts of the same people, there
would have been some conflict. Then evil genius number two (whether he was a
Thug King or a Shaman is unknown) figured out how they could work together.
The deal between Shamans and rulers was this: The Shamans would tell the
farmers that the gods would not be pleased unless the King was getting his full
and correct share of their crops. (They were, of course, allowed to continue to
receive tips from the farmers in return for putting in a good word with the gods.)
What evil genius number two had figured out was that the farmers would pay
their taxes far more easily if they were doing it for the gods, rather than for the
King, who was after all, just another man. They had Priests, who did nothing but
serve their gods day and night, telling them what the gods wanted. They must
know what is right!
Over time, it seems that each community combined its gods, and that the ruler –
seeking the advantages of being important to a god, and not having time to
become the important guy for twenty of them – engineered the unification of the
local gods to one; or at least one god was deemed to be the most powerful. This
was not monotheism as such, partially because there were always lesser gods
and spirits, but most importantly because the city over the next hill had a god too.
The gods of other cities were not looked on as being mythical. In those days, the
gods of other cities were just as real as your own; you just liked your god better
because he was looking out for you. This explains why the first of the Ten
Commandments is "You shall have no other gods before me." It doesn't say "I
am the only GOD,” because in the days when God was just starting out,
everyone knew there were lots of gods. So God just said, "I am the jealous type.
Don't you let me catch you worshiping anyone else!"
The God we are familiar with wasn't quite on the scene yet as far as our story
goes.

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Most cities eventually had one most powerful god, from whom both the King and
the Priest derived their power. We should also add that a "city" in that era was a
central safe area where the nearby farmers came to trade and for protection
when threats arose. Most people did not live in the city. It was a market, temple,
and castle. (Though calling any dwelling of this time period a castle would be
stretching definitions a lot; architecture still had a long way to come.) The only
people that lived in the castle were the King, his personal slaves, warriors and
the Priests.
The King and his warriors kept busy practicing fighting, patrolling for rogues, and
hunting wild game. The Priests, however, lived a life of relative leisure, as the job
of keeping the sun rising every day and the rains coming in the rainy season
wasn't too hard on the back. They had a lot of time to think. So it is likely that
most of the ideological advances of the time came from the priesthood – the
most significant being systems of counting and writing that were slowly
developed in independent places around the world from 10,000 to 5,000 years
ago. This association of the priesthood with scholarly pursuits has continued
even to modern times.

2.3.4 God Kings

Not too long after the King's power was legitimized, came the final piece. A clever
theology with the King playing a 'legitimate' role made rebellion against the King
the same as a rebellion against the gods, and this made collecting taxes much,
much easier. The next theological innovation, however, actually elevated the
King to a level above that of other human beings.
Remember we talked about the idea of a spirit and how bodies were not
necessarily thought to be so important. Well the King's body became the host for
the spirit of the local god. Many farmers were probably a bit slow to accept that
the gods loved the King so much that they would be divinely punished for
cheating the King out of his taxes. Now, however, they were trained from
childhood in the idea that the King was in some way the same as the local god.
This made it seem much more likely that cheating the God King would have an
adverse effect on your crops.
This new role as a living god had many additional benefits. Life for the Thug King
meant having to go into battle at the head of his warriors when his farmers were
threatened (or when he wanted to kill the Thug King next door and steal his
farmers) and having to be careful that one of his warriors wasn't trying to kill him
and take his job. The God King, however, as the Earthly vessel of a divine spirit,
was not to be risked in battle and commanded absolute loyalty.
His warriors were much less likely to overthrow him now. How could they? He
was a god and they were not. And if he played it right (seeming imperious and
distant), most couldn't even envision taking over his position. Also, he could now
pass his kingship down to his children rather than it going to the next most clever
and strong guy when he died. Setting up your children for when you die is
something your genes favor.
This new position as God King may have actually made the King more vulnerable
to the priesthood, as they probably suspected he wasn't really a god. If he didn't
do what they wanted, they might arrange to kill him – then raise his divine heir
with a proper education on always doing what the Priests said. So the connection
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between religion and government was about as solid as you can get at this time
in history. But this problem was far outweighed by an additional factor; the
farmers could now be talked into fighting for their God King.
The first God King to figure this one out probably expanded his territory like
wildfire. Farmers may not be the best fighters, but when the odds of the fight
change from "The other guys have a handful of skilled warriors and so do we,” to
"The other side has a handful of skilled warriors, and so do we, plus we have ten
times as many farmers with pointy sticks," this can really tip the odds of the
battle. Taking over a new area and killing their King also proved the superiority of
the God King over the other side's gods. Thus the farmers of the new territory
would naturally convert and become part of the new army too, making the God
King even more powerful.
Being a god on Earth, he did not need to fear setting up new rulers under him in
far away areas, as they would never conceive of themselves as equals. In fact,
he may not even have always had to fight to acquire a new city. The King of that
city might be willing to take a demotion, and give up some of his cut, in order to
stay alive and keep ruling his area. He might not have believed in the superiority
of the God King in his heart, but his sons would be brought to the center of the
kingdom and taught by the Priests, so the next generation would be believers.
Only the Priests of some other god had to actually die in order to acquire a new
area.
The idea of God Kings expanded faster than any one kingdom could, so soon
there were many such God Kings. The mathematics of it was, if you were a
leader, and did not declare yourself to be a god on Earth, your people would not
fight for you as hard and you would lose out to a nearby kingdom that did. Thus
the idea spread itself more strongly across a greater area, through the creation of
supposedly competing cultures that were in fact just replanted cuttings of the
same memetic plant. This growth pattern would be repeated many times.
The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those
who fear it to imitate it.
--Adolph Hitler
OK, now that we’ve insulted almost every serious power base on the planet, we’ll
move on to show you how the situation developed from these ugly beginnings to
the somewhat less-ugly situation that we live with now.

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2.4 Democracy and Empire
The first development of divine leadership, after it was more or less established
and accepted, was simply to get bigger. The same formula could be applied to
multiple settlements, with a few middle-managers thrown into the mix. After all, if
you’re a ruler-thug, what you want is more loot, more adulation, and more power.
Remember, power is addictive, especially to certain personality types. To them,
the purpose of getting power is to obtain more power.
So, kingdoms got larger; one King tried to take over the neighboring King’s
territory, second-in-command leaders tried to break off parts of large kingdoms,
and so on. And this went on for a long, long time. Various religious modifications
came and went, as did taxing strategies, methods of warfare and organizational
structures, but the general pattern was more or less the same: Religiously-
influenced monarchies.
The ideological structure remained quite stable and intact during this time. There
must have been many innovators during these scores of centuries, but the
overall structure was not well-suited to change. Probably the main reason was
that communication was almost nil outside of the village. Ideas didn't get very far.
Perhaps, if the innovator were to become an Emperor, his ideas might spread a
good distance, but not many innovators also wish to kill and conquer.
There were traders during these years, but they seem to have been held in a
near-universal suspicion until the late Middle Ages. They provided some
communication between cultures, but apparently not enough for new ideas to
spread through any other means than conquest.

2.4.1 Enter the Greeks

The Greeks were the first to play with the idea of divided governments. Why the
Greeks? In part because of their geography – their terrain made control by any
massive kingdom a practical military impossibility but the fact that there were
many fishing settlements close to each other by boat made communications
good and kept them culturally in tune. This was a likely spot for the first growth of
better governmental systems. The Greeks really did a lot, and pretty quickly. If
we were to suggest the innate intellectual superiority of any historical group, we'd
probably have to do it here.
Whatever the cause, the Greeks began to modify the standard human collection
of memes. They seem to have started like the rest of the world, with local deities,
Kings and Priests, but as the nearby Greek communities communicated more,
something began to happen: Their respective gods were put into more direct
competition with each other without armies marching against each other to
decide the theological contests.
To prove the importance of their gods, the Greeks began creating myths – stories
about their gods. And – this is the big new thing – the Greeks tried to show the
superiority of their god stories by how well that deity's words and actions touched
and guided the inner life of his followers. Before the Greeks, a god ordered you
around and made your crops grow – all external things. Now, the god addressed
human values, emotions, and virtues. This was huge.

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Once the gods began to compete over men's inner lives, men also were free to
compare ideas. (Of course they were always free to do this to one extent or
another, but they were also likely to face nasty consequences for expressing new
ideas openly.)
This "open space" for ideological development allowed the first big steps into the
modern age. There was no large unified power to enforce an ideological
monopoly, and the gods themselves (through their Priests) were competing for
intellectual superiority. Wow! What a time! People were free to innovate, to
create, and to expand, not just technologically and commercially, but also
intellectually and morally! Double wow!
Men began to take over the control of their own destinies – rather than doing the
"not my job" thing and handing all responsibility to someone else. They
considered themselves worthy of self-rule. If you think about this for a few
moments, this is still a radical and scandalous idea. Self-rule... the moral right to
rule one's self. The moral superiority of self-rule, the base servility of everything
else; these are frightening ideas even today.
The whole development was sloppy, uneven, and flawed (slavery remained a
fact of life, for example) as is always the case as systems evolve, but it was an
astonishing move forward.
Once individual men decided to take over control of their own lives, they began
working on arrangements that allowed it to work with larger numbers of people.
This led to democracy, which has been the leading pattern for self-governance
ever since.
Bear in mind that democracy is not, and never was, an end in itself. It was merely
the best way the Greeks could find to coordinate thousands of self-sovereign
individuals. Without a culture of people who assert control over their own lives –
including taking full responsibility for their own results – democracy will never
really work well.
Democracy is not a magic formula for a society to obtain more than the value of
its individual members.

2.4.2 The Routinization of Charisma

The old Jesuits had a term for something that happened to fresh new
developments and turned them into rigid and legalistic molds: The routinization of
charisma. And this is what happened to the dynamic and vibrant ideas of the
Greeks. The Romans turned the Greek charisma into a routine – a solid
ideological structure.
The Romans started when some very interesting folks from the north of Italy,
called Etruscans, made their way down to Rome and set up a civilization. This is
where they came into contact with the Greeks. Greek superiority was significant,
and over a wide spectrum of human activity. The Romans, to their credit, copied
the Greeks wholesale.
Why did the Romans allow such changes to their ideological structure? Why did
their current memes allow it? We really don't know; knowledge of this time is thin.
It is likely that it had to do with the Etruscans, probably combined with a major
military defeat that led them to question what they had been doing wrong. It may

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also be that a desire for dominance was a primary player in the collective Roman
meme pool and that this allowed them to simply adopt the more useful ways of
the highly successful Greeks. They may have just started trading with the Greeks
and the ideas that came along with the Greek god-myths were highly contagious.
For whatever reason, the Greek ideas of democracy, equally valued citizens, and
limited government powers, were all transferred to the Romans.
However, once the Roman structure began to develop, the charisma of Greece
turned a bit ugly and base. Not all of it, mind you, but some important parts.
For example, self-sovereignty: Being master of yourself implies nothing about the
outside world. It certainly does not imply that you wish to subdue others. In fact,
self-ruling people tend to hold very strongly to the proposition of "live and let live.”
Among the Romans, however, this eventually became "dominate all others.”
In fairness to the Romans we must add that the general philosophy of the ancient
world was focused on scarcity and accepted the fact that there were two classes
of people: dominators and the dominated. So it is not surprising that the Romans
would turn the economic success produced by their governmental system into
outwardly directed military might.
It should also be noted that those who seek power in government do so because
they like to control other people. This makes sense doesn't it? After all, those
who seek other jobs do so because they like doing that sort of work, and the
work of government would seem to be controlling people. If a society allows its
people a lot of freedom and restricts the control that a government can exercise
internally, those government officials who want to exercise more control over
others must look to the outside world.
However it happened, the Romans came to believe that they deserved to rule
and to conquer – and it must be said, they lived up to the challenge quite well.
During the early years they held to this idea in the face of massive defeats.
Where any others would have quit, the Romans persevered, adapted, and
overcame. When enemies surrounded the walls of Rome, no one ever took a
bribe to open the gates. This was an extremely rare showing of patriotism in the
ancient world.
Rome went forth conquering and expanding until the structure could no longer
sustain itself. Then it rotted on the vine.

2.4.3 Republic and Empire

It was the Republic that made Rome what it was. The political structure of the
Republic was similar to the Greek Democracy, but with an added layer. Instead
of the freemen voting directly, the freemen elected representatives to vote for
them. This structure was much better for a large country than the Greek
arrangement, which worked well enough for a city-state but was a bit limited for a
larger nation.
Given the immense variability of human life and the immeasurable foolishness of
politics, the Roman Republic held up amazingly well. But as one government
organization after another grew up, the entire structure became huge and the
votes of the people got further and further away from actually changing anything.
When the Empire took over, the average person had no real hope of helping to
change any law in any substantial way. Everything was done by middle
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structures that remained the same no matter who ran the show. (This might
sound familiar to you today.)
When Julius Caesar declared himself Emperor, only those who had a real
understanding of the principles of Rome were able to see how horrible it was.
The bulk of the people – and their politicians and intellectual leaders – focused
on the concerns of the immediate future. They decided that Caesar wasn't going
to raise the price of grain too much next month, so they went along with it.
The charisma of the Greeks had come full circle and self-rule was, once again,
just a dream in the minds of a few eccentric intellectuals.
Old ideas of the “divinity of the King” had still been circulating in the background,
and Julius Caesar used them to become a God Emperor. Of course he was not
the only god, just one of many, and of course they killed him for it, but that is not
an uncommon thing for people to do to their gods.
The Distributed Identity of Julius Caesar lived on in the idea that the ruler of
Rome was divine. In fact, the name "Caesar" came to be a word for divine ruler.
Later emperors were referred to as "The Caesar." Even today, the word "Czar" is
still sometimes used to describe a strong leader.

2.4.4 Another Cycle Runs Its Course

The Romans seem to be good examples of this routinization of charisma. It is a
universal phenomenon, really, but, for whatever reason, Rome provides several
good examples of it. Our second example is Christianity.
Jesus and all of his first followers lived in the Roman province of Palestine, some
decades after the Empire solidified in Rome. (The name, Palestina, was a
purposeful insult, deriving from the enemies of ancient Israel, the Philistines.)
The religion of these folks, the Jews, was known fairly well throughout the Greco-
Roman world, and it seems that the Jewish holy books were highly regarded as
well. In fact, the books of the Torah (the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were translated into Greek in the 3rd
Century BC, followed not much later by the rest of the Jewish holy books.
Despite the fascinations that many had for this monotheistic religion, not many
became followers of the Jewish religion, at least partly because of the
requirement of circumcision. (Ouch!)
We're not going to tell the entire fascinating and detailed story of Christianity
here, but let us sum up: Christianity began as a reform of Judaism, or at least as
an outgrowth of Judaism, and created a group of people with extreme devotion to
Jesus, to his teachings, and to the original Hebrew Scriptures.
Jesus can be looked at as a powerful personality who conveyed some very
interesting new ideas. He cast such a strong Distributed Identity into the world
that not only did his fame survive his death, and his Distributed Identity become
an icon for his teachings (as is the case with prophets everywhere), but as an
icon, he was actually merged with the deity. Thus Jesus/God became a
combined two part icon for the religion. Father and Son were both somehow
GOD – something only possible in the supernatural world of divine spirit or in the
sphere of memetics. (This was increased to three entities a few hundred years
later, with The Holy Spirit being added to incorporate the understanding that

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GOD is everywhere, as well as being The Big Guy on The Throne, and his son
the martyr/prophet.)
If we had to choose just one group of people in history to whom we would apply
the term "charismatic,” it would be these first Christians. They were deeply
enthralled by their ideas. When conflicts with the dominant memes came (as
they'd have to), they held their ground, died if necessary, and kept spreading
their message even with their last breath. Where the Jewish version of
monotheism had kept to itself, the Christian version was less exclusive. They
began to change the memes of the Roman world by pure ideological force.
The Roman collection of memes was surprisingly open to variable gods and the
Jewish-Christian ideas were attractive and a bit exotic. With the requirement of
circumcision dropped under Christianity, an adult joining up wasn’t as painful.
The rulers of Rome would not likely have had a problem with this. They were
mostly atheists (after all, they probably knew that they themselves were not really
divine) but In order to appeal to a wide range of the population the leaders had to
make the compulsory public offerings to the many gods. The Christians,
however, not only refused to take part in these public offerings at all, but would
also denounce them as worship of false gods. And the earliest Christians leaders
were by all accounts quite impressive folks.
This made them the enemies of The Caesar, the reigning God Emperor, and led
to public persecution of Christians. While this was bad for the individual
Christians who became lion food, for God this was free advertising. Monotheists
can go to their deaths a lot more bravely than polytheists who are not quite sure
which god is going to be juggling their soul in the afterlife. Christian martyrs were
quite an impressive public spectacle. They helped spread their beliefs better by
being violently slain in public than they ever could by living happy peaceful lives.

2.4.5 The Beat Goes On

Over generations, the Christians began to get more of a foothold in the
ideological system of the age. While attempts to slow the growth of Christianity
continued, it became more and more obvious that it was a lost cause. In fact,
driving it underground and slowing communication between Christians probably
enhanced its ability to change and adapt to the selection pressures imposed
upon it. Many brands of Christianity began to spring up, and the Christians kept
making converts. Their resolve, even in the face of death, continued to be most
impressive. In this way, they were surpassing the Romans in their own game of
holding doggedly to their ideals.
But as generations passed and Christianity was more accepted, it came out of
hiding, and controversies arose over the many variations that had evolved. Some
of the old religions, such as Gnosticism, had seized on the vitality of Christianity
and spun-off hybrids. Parts of these older religions were allowed to merge into
Christianity. This, of course, infuriated those who were closer to the first
generation of believers and caused them to break away.
By the time of Constantine (to whom we'll come in a moment), many Christians
had left Rome and were living in Northern Africa. By the end of the 2nd Century
the Christians had lost a lot of the charisma of their first generation and had
started to be absorbed into normal Roman society – or at least this applied to

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some of them. Some held to the original charisma of being rebel outsiders.
Others wanted official respect and privilege. Most were in-between, not knowing
what to do. There were endless doctrinal challenges and feuds between sects.

2.4.6 Constantine
Constantine, as you may or may not recall, was the Emperor who made
Christianity the official religion of Rome. He also moved the capital of the Roman
Empire away from Rome! (Strange as that sounds) It seems that he realized that
European Rome was rotting and that the future lay in the East and with new
ideas.
Constantine decided to unify the beliefs of Christianity within the Roman Empire.
He knew that if Christianity was going to be the official state religion, it would
have to present a single set of unified beliefs. He got all the major Christian
leaders together (at least all those who could be bent rather than broken, and
who did not run away) and he made them all sit down to hash out their
theological differences at the council of Nicea. (Now that would have been an
interesting meeting to attend)
Probably the biggest issue they needed to hash out was that of the divinity of
Jesus Christ. While Christianity had been taking over the Roman Empire's belief
systems, some of Rome's polytheism had also crept into Christianity. Remember
that in Rome the Emperor had been a god on Earth. So, early on, when the
teachings of Jesus had been at odds with the edicts of the reigning Emperor, it
only made sense to some of the early Christians to elevate Jesus to that same
level. However, it was difficult for Jesus to be a god when he was also a prophet
for the one and only monotheistic GOD.
The Council of Nicea resolved this issue by creating the idea of the Holy Trinity.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all aspects of the
same God. This may also have been the result of the influence of eastern
religious thought, as both the ideas of the spirit of a god being part of everyone
and everything and a single god having multiple aspects are often found in the
religions of the Far East. In any case, The Council resolved the dispute over the
divine nature of Jesus and allowed a unified Roman Church to form.
Constantine didn't do the more authentic Christians (the ones more like the first
generations of believers) any favor by merging Christianity into the Empire.
Whatever Charisma remained was wiped out. In fact, one of the first actions of
the official Church was to subdue the Christians in North Africa who had run from
the Roman corruption of their religion. However, some fled still further, or lived in
regions that were not considered worth subduing. So, even with Constantine's
unification, other branches of Christianity continued to split and mutate.
The Church was now a new wing of the Roman Empire. Fortunately, the ideas of
the founders of Christianity were written down and, remarkably for books in those
days, accurate copies of the originals had been distributed far and wide. So,
even though the charisma was effectively gone, a record of it remained. This
proved very useful in the centuries ahead.
By the way, Constantine was entirely correct in his estimations. The European
Empire was overrun and broken less than two centuries later. Only the Church
really continued in Europe. The Eastern Empire lasted another thousand years.

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2.4.7 Other Mutations
In places outside the Roman influence, the mutation of Christianity continued. It
gave rise to many variations that still exist, including Islam, which today is one of
the three major branches of monotheism. Islam can be seen as a linear
descendant of Judaism through Christianity.
Judaism is the religion of the Torah as recorded by Moses. Christianity preserves
this book as the “Old Testament” and Islam preserves it as the "Tawart.”
Christianity added the New Testament concerning the teachings of Jesus Christ
and his apostles. Islam preserves a version of the New Testament as the "Injil.”
Islam further adds the Qura'n and the Haddith which record the recitations and
acts of Muhammad.

These correlations are not exact, as each of these books is a compilation of other
books and parts of books. For example, the Catholic New Testament is the
collection of gospels chosen at the Council Nicea. Some versions of Christianity
still exist which chose to include gospels that were excluded by the Roman
Church at that time. Islam branched off from a version of Christianity that never
adopted the Nicean Creed and therefore does not include the mysterious
"polytheism within monotheism" idea of the Holy Trinity, even though it does
include the teachings of Jesus and his disciples.

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One interesting thing to realize is that historically slow communications due to
long travel times is one of the main reasons why religions tended to break apart
into other religions. The teachings of a new prophet would first take root in the
area where he lived and died and then spread slowly from there.
For example, the Jews who were in the area where Jesus was born and died
were more likely to have become Christians than those living farther away. The
Jews who were farther away and had less connection to Christ's death are more
likely to be the ancestors of modern Jewish people than those who were actually
there when Christ was crucified.
Therefore, when someone says that the Jews played some part in the death of
Jesus, you can correct them and say:
"The people who killed Christ became the first Christians."
Christianity is really just one of many offshoots of Archaic Judaism. In fact, over
half of the religious belief in the world originates with those first Jews. But you
shouldn't blame modern day Jews for that either – they are the ones that have
allowed their religion to mutate the least.
The family tree we have shown is complicated enough. But consider that this is
really just a sampling, and that many related religions, sects, and cults (existing
and dead), have not been included. Also consider that all of these religions
continue to sprout new mutations regularly. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are
broad categories. Each of them has at least several popular sects with tried and
true traditions. But each also has (and has always had) numerous new cults
springing up with new self proclaimed prophets on a fairly regular basis. Most die
out quickly, but the occasional cult grows until it is a large respectable religion.
Try to imagine (if you can) that today's familiar main-stream religions all started
as weird little cults. When historical authorities threw Christians to the lions, they
were just following the same sort of Collective Identity impulses that cause
modern secular authorities to raid the compounds of modern charismatic cult
leaders, throw tear gas through their windows, and burn them out if they continue
to resist.
The Church of Rome, that dominated western ideology for the next thousand
plus years, continued to fight against this sort of mutation of ideas, and was not
unchanged by it. It had to continuously evolve with each new ideological change
that it could not suppress.

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2.5 Church and State
With the breaking-up of political Rome (in Europe anyway) and the establishment
of the Roman Church, a new order had taken shape. Before long it became a
firm ideological structure.
The new order featured a very powerful Church, relative to the power of the
State. Or perhaps the Church might have best been viewed as the highest level
of government. This might seem unusual, but the Church also had the impressive
credentials of being the last part of the great Empire.
When people are living in a degraded situation, they tend to look to past glories.
In this case, the Europeans found identity as being part of the Roman Empire,
degraded as it may have been. That gave the Church – the last legitimate part of
the Empire – great ideological power. Which, we must add, they used very well...
and, once in a while, even benevolently.

2.5.1 The New Order

The Europeans of the Middle Ages were absolutely convinced that the order of
their lives had been established by GOD and that to challenge it was a horrible
offense. They saw a world made up of three types of people:
1. The Kings and lesser Nobles, who protected everyone else.
2. The Clergy, who interceded with GOD for everyone else.
3. The peasants, who fed everyone else.

There were always a few specialists on the fringes, such as long-distance traders
and Jews, but they were not terribly many and always subject to violence if they
attracted too much attention. So, they seldom made much trouble.
As mentioned above, one key feature of this structure was the meme of everyone
has their God-ordained place and they should stay in it. To break out of your
'place' was a sin. This, as you might guess, ruined progress for a long time. Your
talents didn't matter. It was God’s will that you were born into a certain class, so
that is where you had to stay. There was no upward social mobility at all. Dark
times... and dark times that lasted for a lot of centuries.

2.5.2 The Rise of the Nobles

This Middle Ages structure held firm from the 7th through the 13th Centuries.
There were occasional rebels who wanted to change things, but sadly, they didn't
get too far. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 13th Century that things started to
change.
Kings of this time had great power and little accountability – after all, it was
thought that GOD Himself put them there! This does not breed good conduct.
The Clergy suffered from the same perverse incentives but they were still too
scary to question. Challenging them was almost a direct challenge to GOD who,
according to them, would happily lock you into an eternal furnace. (Yikes!)
So when the Kings behaved badly – as Kings usually do – it was usually the
nobles who suffered first. After all, it was the nobles who fought for the King and
it was the nobles who had to deal with the families of their dead soldiers. It was
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also the nobles who were taxed by the King. Even though they passed those
taxes on to lower levels, they were responsible for the whole exercise.
Eventually, the nobles got together and decided that they were getting a bad
deal. It would be wonderful if we had good historical records of how the nobles
communicated with each other and how they were able to overcome the 'God-
ordained' problem about extending their power. But, that seems lost to us. It may
have taken generations of discussions to reach this point, or perhaps it happened
all at once. We just don't know. Such thoughts are not committed to writing by
prudent conspirators.
We do know that the nobles of England rebelled in 1215 AD. Finding themselves
in a position to demand that King John share power with them, they drew up the
Magna Carta Libertatum ("Great Charter of Freedoms") and pressured the King
to sign it. King John, facing a near-certain death if he protested, went along with
the deal. He and later Kings tried to trash the deal afterward, but the nobles were
strong enough to make it stick.
This gave us the first divided government since the Republic of Rome. Power
was now shared by more than one group and there was a written set of rules that
even the King had to follow. Divided power works because it limits the power of
the ruler by requiring him to cooperate with (or fight with) other branches of
power and with the citizenry. Not only does this restrain the power-hungry
psychology of the King, but it leaves people to make more of their own choices,
which is much more productive.
It took some time for this idea to make its way across Europe but it worked so
well that it was adopted in most places. The "Our social order is ordained by
God" memes have slowly changed along the way – sometimes violently and
sometimes not.
While too many layers of power can be problematic (as it is now, with a
government program for anything and everything), less power in more hands has
worked relatively well. Concentration of power gives us the likes of Stalin, Mao
and Castro.

2.5.3 The Crusades

There is a common misconception that crusades were all about Christianity trying
to forcibly expand its influence into the Muslim world – that the Christians were
the aggressors and the bad guys. This is only partially true regarding the
Crusades. Neither side was truly blameless.
To be sure, the Crusades were sickeningly violent and vile. But, unfortunately,
that's the way all war was conducted in those days. The primary opponents of the
Christian Crusaders, the Muslims, were no saints either. Both sides committed
horrible acts. That doesn't make any of it okay (yes, your mother was correct, two
wrongs do not make a right), but neither does it make the Europeans ideological
aggressors.
In fact, the truth of the Crusades is that they began as largely defensive actions
on the part of Christendom.
The followers of Muhammad had been ravaging Christian lands for a long time.
They did things like killing monks, requiring Christians to bear an identifying

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mark, applying special taxes upon them, forbidding them to display a cross, and
so on. Oh, and a whole lot of spreading their religion by the sword. Actually, the
very core of the Christian world was originally in Asia. And it was these lands that
were conquered by the Muslims at this time. What happened to the Christian
world at that time would be about the same as the United States losing its east
coast to Venezuela now.
That may seem to be an extreme as an analogy; after all, we think of the United
States as a single country and Europe as being a collection of nations. However,
at the time, the whole idea of the Nation State didn't quite exist. There were
regional place names, and rivers and mountain ranges provided borders of sorts,
but no one anywhere had a sense of national identity.
There were different languages, but they were not as important as now.
Language was a general problem everywhere, not a national issue. (There were
many more tongues spoken than we have now. With less travel and no TV or
radio, regional dialects of the same language could be quite incomprehensible.)
Loyalty was to the local nobility and to God. And the local noble family had
relatives all over, with the nobles marrying their daughters off to other nobles
everywhere. So another country might easily be a place where your King's sister
was in charge – hardly very foreign – more like part of the extended family. Thus
the sense of higher level identity that people felt was mostly from sharing God.
All of Christendom was nearly as much of an ideological unit back then as the
United States of America is today, with the various countries being the equivalent
of the States in the USA (which are still semi-sovereign territories). So our
analogy stands.
There was certainly an ideological component to the crusades, but that is also
something of a chicken-and-egg issue. It has often been said that religion is what
causes wars. This is not exactly true. Wars are mostly about ownership of
physical territory. That is, the theft of property, the right to reap the taxes of the
populace, and, sometimes, the power to impose your ideas (only one of which
might be a religion).
That said, it is true that religion plays a key role in most all wars. After all, the
rulers need to convince the young males to fight and die. Religion works really
well at this, just as it did in convincing people to pay their taxes. Even Stalin, a
confirmed atheist and tyrant, was forced to let the Church open up and function a
bit during World War II. It simply kept people more willing to die. Religion is a
very good way to justify war to the people who actually have to fight and die in it.
If you have neighbors with stuff that can be taken, who you can portray as
dangerously unlike your own people, you have a good recipe for war. Religion is
traditionally the best choice as the publicly stated reason for war. And when two
religions keep using each other as this excuse, it strengthens both of them in the
minds of their people by providing a serious external threat. So this is good for
both religions, and the cycle goes on.
But, back to the Crusades...
As ugly as they were, these were territorial wars, and were more or less
instigated by initial Muslim conquest. Ideology mattered, but it was not the initial
and instigating force, just another excuse to act badly.

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2.5.4 Another Crusade
Now, if we leave the popular and simplistic idea of Crusade as an attack on
Islam, we do find a wonderful example of the Church engaging in brutal warfare
simply to stamp out competition.
The Crusade against the Cathars (also called the Albigenses) was almost purely
an ideological thing. In the Muslim wars, ideology was used to stir up the
soldiers. Here, it was actually the cause.
The Cathars were a group of Christians in the South of France that had
rediscovered a form of Gnosticism. Gnosticism is an odd arrangement of beliefs
and doesn't often have a lot of popular appeal. It is something of an elitist
ideology. This group of folks, however, was extremely pious, which seems to
have looked pretty good compared to the thoroughly-corrupt clergy of the time.
(Now those guys knew how to party!)
The Cathars believed that evil was a force in all worldly things and that riches
and excess were a sign of evil. They pointed to gold bejeweled crosses and
elaborate churches as a sign that evil had entered the church. Pretty soon, a lot
of Frenchmen were joining the Cathars and publicly insulting the Pope and the
Roman clergy for their excesses. This was a direct memetic challenge. The
excesses of the Church were for the glory of God. So, the dominant memes were
moved to action, made their hosts angry and disturbed, and sent them to France
to kill anyone who would not recant.
While there was a Collective Identity difference, personal greed needs to be
addressed as well. Collectives must reward their followers as well as punishing
the non-believers and the “spoils of war” are an excellent method of doing this.
The Cathars were very much against property like gold and jewels but they did
have a lot of land. So those who helped the Pope clear that land of the people on
it (Cathar or not) were offered that land (with God's blessings).
This leads us to the only thing even remotely amusing about this Crusade. Do
you remember the line from Rambo, where Stalone says, "Kill 'em all and let God
sort 'em out"? Well, it came from the Crusade against the Cathars. An emissary
(then called a Legate) was sent by The Pope to make sure the job got done. At
one point the soldiers came to this man and asked how they could figure out who
to kill. After all, they were all Frenchmen, and all looked more or less the same.
"Kill them all," said the Legate, "The Lord will know his own."
This crusade is an excellent example of the effectiveness of Collective Identities
in protecting their territory. The average person has never heard of this crusade,
even though it was a bloody purge. These people, whose only real crime was
being overly-pious, were labeled Devil worshipers who drank the blood of babies.
The accusations and resultant actions were much like the Salem witch trials, but
on a scale where whole cities of people were killed.
Though it remains mostly unknown today, it may have been the largest
successful campaign of genocide. A few Cathars may have escaped, but
certainly not very many, and those that got away almost certainly covered up
their previous heritage. The Cathar idea-organism was effectively wiped out
through the systematic destruction of all its hosts.
Have you ever seen a Cathar church?
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2.5.5 The Inquisitions
The Inquisitions originated with the Cathar Crusade we just mentioned. The
Church set up an organization, called The Dominicans, to fight heresy. These
were the real scary guys of the Middle Ages. Run fast, run far.
In fairness, there were some good guys among the Dominicans, such as Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, but... if you were in any way unique and if agents
of the Inquisition – who were popularly called The Black Friars – came to your
little medieval village... you had better get the hell out, and fast!
The Dominicans more or less started by mopping up after the Albigensian
(Cathar) Crusade. It was called the Inquisition because they went around
inquiring; checking whether you were a heretic or not. And if you were... well,
torture was likely.
Sometimes these acts of inquisition were worse, sometimes they were milder.
(Well, "less evil" is probably a better term than "milder," but you get the idea.)
They did, however, last for a long time. In fact, the Office of The Inquisition in
Rome didn't close down until well into the 20th Century.
At their worst, the Inquisitions were the ideological equivalent of total war. You
hold the enemy idea, you suffer horribly, and then you die. It was terrorism and
brutality in service to Collective Identities – destructive and anti-human.
The Inquisitions were able to exist because of the immensely strong position of
the Church in the minds of men. And this is precisely why we need to use our
ideas, and never allow them to use us. Every time we serve an idea-organism,
we are committing the same error that created and fueled the Inquisitions, even if
the scale is smaller. And the scale of things is usually much larger these days.
Never think that we are so far beyond Holy Wars and faith-based genocide that
we don't have to worry about collective idea-organisms instigating wholesale
slaughter. As long as people allow themselves to think in terms of groups, this is
an ever-present threat.

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2.6 Exit from Darkness
In a previous chapter we have discussed the strange circumstance of one idea-
organism acting as a hedge against another – allowing people greater mental
freedom than they would have with just one collective idea-organism as their
master. In this chapter, we’ll explain how human civilization made use of this
trick, leading to some of its best growth ever.

2.6.1 The West Leads the Rest

Now, before we get into the substance of this chapter, we need to start by
addressing this subsection title, "the West leads the rest."
The last fifty years have been full of criticism against Western civilization, even
as it has continued to make the world a much better place to live. So we had
better set the criteria for making this statement and then support it:
"Lead" implies advancement. We define "advancement" as that which improves
human life. How has human life been improved? How about:
• A huge increase in human life-span. (That is, not dying so quickly.)
• More food and more variety of foods. (Modern grocery stores.)
• The ability to store food. (Refrigeration.)
• Better cooking techniques. (Stoves, ovens, microwaves.)
• Healthy environments. (Central heat, central air, no open fires inside.)
• The availability of immense power, almost anywhere. (Electricity.)
• The ability to travel. (Affordable autos, airplanes, etc.)
• Sufficient wealth to allow for leisure.
• Increased knowledge. (Books, newspapers, the History Channel.)
• Increased communication. (Radio, cell phones, Internet, etc.)
• Less danger in daily life.
• More and better entertainment.
• Machines that do mundane chores for us. (Washing machines, etc…)

OK, this list could go on and on, but the point is pretty well made. Now, the proof:
Question: Where were all of the above developed?
Answer: In the West.
You can insert whatever rants you like following the last statement (Hint: we
never said the West was perfect, so if you are reacting to that assumption, don’t
blame us), but that doesn’t change the fact: Almost everything important in the
last few centuries has arisen in the West. We live so incredibly much better now
than our ancestors did that any comparison is ridiculous. If you live in a modern
western city, even in one of the worst neighborhoods, you are richer than any
King or Queen of a few centuries ago. You can afford, and have access to,
goods and services that they could not even dream about.
So, we conclude that the West has certainly, and with no doubt, led the rest of
the world forward. Arguing with that statement is super-duper proof that some
idea-organism is fighting for dominance in your mind.
All right, with that concluded, let’s move on!
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We showed earlier that all of the subjects of this book, the idea-organisms,
Distributed Identities, collective ideologies, unions of memes, or whatever other
names we apply to them, are often parasitic in nature. They can only live in
human minds and only by co-opting mind-space and brain-cycles. Further, they
often endeavor to control the human animal toward their own ends, not the ends
that best suit the animal.
We have also showed how some of these parasites can serve useful purposes.
Perhaps these are not benevolent or completely good purposes but, given the
current less-than-perfect situation, these idea-organisms (parasitic though they
may be) can provide some relative benefit.
In a world where no one is free of such parasites, some can be better than
others, and sometimes they can block each other, leaving room for some
freedom and growth.

2.6.2 Another Modern Blasphemy

OK, now that we have defended Western civilization, we will proceed to commit
another modern blasphemy by saying that much of the human growth of the past
centuries has been due to Christianity.
If you are reading this book because the cover seemed sacrilegious and you are
not a fan of religion, that statement may make you want to freak out. Go ahead
and freak out now, we’ll wait...
Are you done? No? OK, we’ll wait some more...
All right, please try to restrain your emotions now, and listen to the argument.
God is the big idea-organism, the top of the Distributed Identity food chain, the
biggest of dogs, and so on. That makes it very useful as a hedge against other
ideas that wish to control men. The idea of God is very difficult to overpower.
So... what if we could use the idea of God as a protection from other dominators?
What if God could provide us open mind space in which to prosper and grow?
This is exactly what happened in the West between the 14th and 20th Centuries.
Let’s take a look backward to show how this happened, understanding that we
are not really contradicting the Enlightenment, or making silly claims that the
Earth is only 6000 years old, or anything else of the sort. (After all, we do want to
keep our secular bona fides intact!)
In the popular idea-sphere, and we think rightly, the years leading up to 14th
Century in the West have been considered dark and sad. Certainly there were
some people who were lucky enough to lead rewarding lives in this period, but as
an overall description we think this is a fairly good one.
Chief among the reasons for this darkness was that the minds of the Europeans
were held in deep superstition. The Roman Catholic Church more or less held
influence over the Kings and Princes of Europe (though certainly not completely)
and strongly over the minds of the European populace. The people were mainly
illiterate, and were strong in the belief that the structures of their civilization had
been put in place by GOD. They believed that any attempt to change them would
be an act of immense evil – insurrection against GOD, almost.

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The people gave the Church the benefit of the doubt at all turns and lived in an
almost palpable fear of Hell. It was hard bondage.
With apologies to the many nice Catholics in the world, to understand this
properly, we need to separate between the Roman Catholic Church and
Christianity. And please bear in mind that no bad actions committed by Catholics
of the past are to be laid to the account of any other Catholics of this time or any
other. All individuals are responsible for their own deeds and collective guilt is a
deadly scam. The idea that when a person who is part of some group does
something bad, all people in that group are responsible is a logical fallacy caused
by group thinking – a fallacy that contributes greatly to the evil done in the world.
Middle Ages Catholicism was really not Christianity as we are using the term. It
was almost entirely separated from its book, the New Testament. Most of its
adherents were illiterate – certainly they could not read Latin – and were fed only
the bits and pieces of their book that the Roman Clergy wanted them to have.
The European belief system of the Middle Ages, which is justifiably held up as a
bad example, was a long, long way from being properly called "Christianity."
(Where Christianity is taken to mean following the recorded teachings of Jesus
Christ) It was almost completely divorced from the Christian book, dominated and
subjugated by the existing priesthood, and controlled by one of the worst forms of
coercion – fear of eternal torture.
We should, perhaps, add that the New Testament has no mention of the
Priesthood and many passages which actually tend to revile any such institution.
The history of the establishment of Catholicism, including the near-instant
conversion of the Pagan Priesthood into a Christian Priesthood; "by the sword"
conversions, suppressions and book-burnings of Theodosius II; the "heresy" of
Donatism; the conversion of Roman holidays into Catholic holidays; and many
other bizarre events make very clear the distinction between "Roman Catholic"
and "Christian."
In reality, the Church of the Middle Ages was the last remaining institution of the
old Roman Empire. The Church of Rome was created by a series of Roman
Emperors, most famously by Constantine, but it was also significantly shaped by
several subsequent Emperors.
The Church took over the secular world of Europe by a series of lying deceptions
over a long period of time. If you are interested, look up The Donation of
Constantine and the Letter of St. Peter to Pippin (alternately spelled Pepin) for a
wild look into the Church’s manipulations of the secular world. The Dark Ages
were governed by a Church-State arrangement with the Church being the senior
partner. (This was not a static situation and there were always many variations
and exceptions but generally this was true.)
We’ll back up to this point in a few minutes, but we’ll continue forward a bit first.
"Christian Europe" only began to resemble the teachings of its book once that
book was in the hands of the people. The first serious attempts at this were met
with force by the Catholic Church. They were a bit late in clamping down on John
Wycliffe in the 14th Century, but after the delay they did dig up his body, burn it,
and toss his ashes in the river. Other men who worked to get the New Testament
into the hands of the common people – and in a form they could actually read –
did not fare nearly as well.

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It finally came to a head in the 16th Century, with Gutenberg and his printing
press. By this time many brave men had translated the Bible into the vernacular
languages, and once they could be printed by the thousands, the suppression
game was over. The Church kept trying for a long time (and killed lots of people
in the process), but it was all downhill from there.
As more people actually read the Christian book, the modern world took shape.
The more difficult passages of their book, such as the genocides ordered in the
Old Testament, were ignored or explained away as being before the new deal
with GOD that was brokered by Jesus. The new Christians turned dramatically
away from the violent edicts of the old Roman Church.
New printing technology broke the hold of the Roman Catholic Church by
allowing a wider readership for the actual ideas of Jesus Christ.
These changes were contagious, and soon even the Roman Catholic Church
had turned away from the ideals of the bad old days. We are not saying that
Protestants have been blameless. They have done lots of bad things as well, but
the upward trend of humanity in the west since the scriptures were available to
the common man is quite striking.

2.6.3 Backing Up – How Did This Happen?

The hold of parasitic idea-organisms on the men and women of the European
Middle Ages was strong, to say the least. They were deeply affected by the
Church’s superstition, and had been for many generations. That’s a very hard
thing to break out of. Certainly there were exceptional men and women who were
able to drag their minds out of the general bondage, but spreading their freedom
to the rest of the people of Europe (even if they weren’t killed for it) was simply
too high a mountain to climb. The vast majority were psychologically unable to
make such a leap.
What got them out was the evolution of a better God idea-organism. The two
primary characteristics of the new idea-organism were reading the New
Testament and rebelling against the authority of the Pope.
There is a lot to be said on this event, but the important things for us are these:
1. The people had a reason to say that the new version of God was better
than the old. That it was far more faithful to the New Testament. They
could now read it and make their own decisions on that basis.
2. The act of reading, comparing, and deciding was a method of
purposefully removing the worst idea-parasites from their minds.
3. They turned hard against the biggest icon of the old idea-organism, the
Pope. They kept the intangible icons of the religion, but they rebelled
against a living human standing as an icon.
4. By having a better ideology and by being more faithful to it, they got a
great deal of self-esteem from rebelling against previous mental slavery.

The new Protestant Distributed Identity was the perfect tool to protect people
from the many influences of the Old Catholic DI. In effect, people used it as a
vehicle to escape their hard mental bondage.
Then, once more or less established, the new God began to form alliances with
the State. This lead to further ideological evolution on both sides, and pretty soon
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a new and better type of God was combining with a new and better type of State.
The new world was taking shape. Economic activity began to gain respect and
wealth became acceptable. Learning and free inquiry began to get a grudging
respect and so on.
The situation was hardly perfect, but it was the start of an upward trend that we
are still riding today – the beginning of a long movement forward.

2.6.4 The Quality of the Memes

Within any large idea-organism (such as any version of God or State) there are a
large number of individual ideas. It is the qualities possessed by these individual
ideas that give the overall idea-organism its main characteristics.
The new God – or the Protestant DI if you wish – proved to be extra useful for
four specific reasons:
1. Its library of memes was primarily drawn from the New Testament.
2. Its library of memes specifically excluded non-New Testament
memes present in the old Catholic Church.
3. The new God-State partnership was economically more productive
than the old God-State partnership and at some point, economic
strength equates to military strength.
4. The idea-organism was not fully-formed. That left time and space for
improvements to be written-in.

The first item in this listing requires explanation. After all, the common modern-
humanistic view is that anything attached to religion is poison through and
through. We maintain that this attitude is just as much a product of a parasitic
Collective Identity as any religious Ideology.
Logical thought allows you to look at the relative merits of each idea separately,
regardless of source. A good idea that happens to be part of a religion is still a
good idea. If it is bundled with bad ideas, it can be a mess to untangle, but it
does not change a good idea into a bad one.
Automatically rejecting all the ideas under a given label is just as stupid as
accepting them all.
As Holy books go, Christianity’s is pretty good. Certainly there are some parts
that modern people (including many Christians) reject. We are not saying that the
book is perfect, only that it has been useful, especially for getting people out of
the Middle Ages and into modernity.
While Christianity does generally claim allegiance to the Hebrew Bible (that is,
the Old Testament), it specifically excludes large portions, treating them as
history more than rules of faith. (Animal sacrifice, genocides, ancient rituals and
so on.) This is doubly true because the crux of Christianity is that it exists as a
new agreement between God and man, being mediated by the god/man, Jesus.
This means that the old agreement (the Old Testament) is no longer in force.
This distinction is made more or less by different groups of Christians, but it gives
Christians a good excuse to edit-out "bad" passages of the Old Testament, while
keeping the better parts. This ability to use the best ideas while rejecting the
worst is the only defense that man can have from parasitic idea-organisms.

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2.6.5 The New Testament
The New Testament itself contains a lot of useful material. No, it is not all ideal.
Some passages are prone to unkind uses but there are a large number of very
useful passages that reproduce some very useful memes. Consider some of the
following:

2.6.5.1 Separation of Church and State

"Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s."
This tends to keep the God-State alliance from getting too strong and keeps
them in a permanent balancing act. Balancing means variation and modification
of both of the two Distributed Identities as moderated by their usefulness to the
hosts. It means space in between where no single Collective Identity is in control,
and people gain individual freedom. This is a very good thing. Neither those
states controlled by religion nor states that eliminate religion; have ever offered
as much individual freedom as those doing this balancing act.

2.6.5.2 Self-Reference and Integrity

"Whatever you would have men do unto you, do ye even so to them."
"With whatever judgment you judge, you shall be judged."
"By your words you will be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned."
Consider how much better this is than the old, "Obey without thinking or else"
model. This model encourages honesty above obedience and suggests that
people can set their own moral code provided they are not hypocritical.

2.6.5.3 Expectation of Reason

"Why, of your own selves, do you not know what is right?"
"Examine yourselves... prove your own selves."
Yes, there may be an anti-reason passage or two in the New Testament, but the
command to reason exists – most emphatically from the mouth of Jesus himself.
This gives any Christian full leave to use his or her mind.
"Be ready always to give an answer to any man who asks you a reason."
This makes the believer responsible for understanding. He or she must consider,
understand, internalize the essential facts, and be able to assemble and present
them to others. Good skills to encourage.

2.6.5.4 Compassion for the Outsider

"If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not
leave the ninety and nine, and go seek that which is gone astray?"
"There shall be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over
ninety-nine who need no repentance."
Considering that hatred of "the outsider" has caused enormous death tolls under
many belief systems, this love for the outsider is a critical feature indeed.

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2.6.5.5 Violence is Discouraged
"If a man strike you on one cheek, turn to him the other."
Violence has often destroyed value for many. This discouragement (sometimes
considered a prohibition) has kept human affairs far less ugly than they might
have been otherwise. Where use of force is reduced, freedom and prosperity are
increased. Again, whether any particular group of nominal Christians followed
this admonition is not the issue; this has always been in the primary collection of
memes and has borne good fruit.

2.6.5.6 Self-Reliance
"How is it that you go to law, one against another?"
What Paul (the apostle – not the co-author of this book) is saying here, in modern
terms, is this: “Why are you suing each other in court? If you can’t solve your own
problems, and are running to a government to do it for you, you’re no examples
of my teachings.” He expects them to be a new type of human who can solve
their own inter-personal problems. In effect, he says, “If you can’t handle self-
reliance, you’re not much of a believer.”
Biblical messages concerning solving your own problems doubtless contributed
to the limited governmental systems of the west, and this discouragement of
frivolous law suits is a lesson we can still use today.

2.6.5.7 Co-Dominance
“Love your adversaries.”
Let’s say you are in the construction business; so are a dozen other guys in your
town; you compete against them every day… can you still respect them and care
about them as human beings? This is what Jesus demands of his followers, and
it is an essential and healthy thing. Without this, business becomes war. Actually,
without this meme being mutually held, everything inter-personal becomes war,
with one person or another always dominating, and the other forced to submit.
Where co-dominance is absent, anger festers, compassion fails, grudges are
never released, and endless volumes of energy are wasted in posturing and
scheming. (As opposed to using energy to create value.)
Where co-dominance is present, cooperation rules and massive accomplishment
can and does arise.
For people to live together in a peaceful way, either co-dominance with
cooperation is necessary, or tyrannical central control is required. And individual
liberty can only thrive in the former.

2.6.6 The Greeks and the Jews

One very interesting thing mentioned above is self-reference. This is what
bridged the gap between the two great influences of Western tradition: The
Greeks and the Jews. The adherents of the Greeks and the Jews have long been
at odds with each other, although generally in ways more scholarly than physical.
Adherents of the Greeks (followers of logic and science) see the Jewish group
(that is, the religious ones – remember above we showed that over 50% of the
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worlds religions stem from the Jewish root) as being irrational. The Jewish-
inspired see the Greek inspired as cold – perhaps even soul-less – lacking in the
more beautiful things of the spirit.
Although these two schools of thought are seemingly at war, without the
combination of both world views, we would not be where we are today.
The Greeks were the first (at least from the view of Western civilization) to begin
to think seriously about thinking itself. In time, they invented logic – the science of
non-contradiction. Once we have a tool for judging self-contradiction, we can
eliminate our errors. This was a solid technique and made possible the clearing
of many difficult paths in front of us. Not that it would be fast or easy, but that it
would be possible.
The Jews, on the other hand, didn’t major on the science of thinking. They
developed a framework to direct, control, and train men’s biological impulses.
In other words, the Greeks addressed the intellect and the Jews addressed the
emotions. That is obviously a gross generalization, but it is... um, generally...
true.
Training the intellect is the more straight-forward of the two. The science is clear
and logic does not require long study to comprehend. We cover it fairly well in a
single section later in this book. Implementing logic in a real human being,
however, isn’t so simple. The minds of men are full of parasitic ideologies and
troubled by erratic flashes of emotion (the effects of biological replicators). The
Greeks gave us tools for weeding out bad ideas, and the Jews taught us how to
mediate a truce between our minds and our bodies.
The contribution of the Jews is a bit more complex than that of the Greeks, but
terribly important to the overall success of the venture. (A success, we must add,
that is still incomplete and is still not certain.) The Jews may have had
antecedents, but this is really quite speculative. It is possible that Zoroaster
influenced them. Certainly Pharaoh Akhenaten tried monotheism. And certainly
the Jews were influenced by Egypt in some ways. However influenced, they are
the ones that developed a successful framework for restraining and redirecting
many of the most powerful emotions of men – the kinds of emotions that can
create real trouble when let loose to revel unrestrained.
We must insert that Jewish ethical monotheism has evolved greatly since its
beginnings. It was far harsher at its beginnings than it is now. The major
innovators since Moses (presuming he existed) were the Jews of the Babylonian
captivity (Ezra and Nehemiah in particular), Jesus, and Paul. Judeo-Christianity
can indeed be viewed as a single library of memes that work well together.
There is a great deal to say on the subject of the structure of ethical monotheism
that the Jews created. We will stick to a few highlights. Here are the big ways
that this structure was important:

2.6.6.1 Monotheism
Having a single god, rather than many, does many useful things. To begin with, it
centers the mind on a single judge. Secondly, it parallels human nature. Humans
are individuals and now God is a single individual. This makes it possible for men

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to compare themselves to the highest and the ultimate and to align themselves
with the high and the great.

2.6.6.2 Supreme Goodness

The Jewish monotheistic god is almost always seen as qualitatively perfect. He is
ultimately wise, fair, and so on. This gives believers something to strive toward.
And since there is a huge theme of the believers being associated with God, they
esteem themselves as at least largely able to gain these characteristics as well.
This kinship of believer with God is especially strong in the New Testament,
where the relationship is explicitly that of a father and his family.

2.6.6.3 The Ethical Becomes the Eternal

Non-religious folks are often amazed (and a little impressed) to see believers get
up early to go to Church, go back at night, and so on. They wonder how, with all
the complexities of life, they can continually do it. The answer is simple: If you
really think that the creator of the universe, the judge of your eternal soul, wants
you to do it, you simply adjust your life and do it.
If you begin with a strict religious assumption, it’s not hard. And that is the point
here: The Jewish creation magnifies ethical choices. Acting charitably toward
your neighbor doesn’t just matter here and now, it creates an eternal reward.
(Eternity – now there’s a concept that can make your brain circuits heat up.) So,
if your ethical choices are hyper-important, you care about them! This leads to
improved choices, each of which may have dozens of follow-on effects to the
good.
Think about this carefully – it was huge.

2.6.6.4 Forgiveness and Repentance

Since the beginning, this set of stories has glorified men who had deep changes
of heart. This not only allows bad men to start anew and improve, but it removes
all guilt for their past actions. There are problems associated with this from a
justice standpoint, but it did make human improvement popular. Again, this was
hugely beneficial.

2.6.7 Contradiction and Non-Contradiction

Now, in all of the Jewish virtues listed above, there is a troubling element:
Believing in HUGE conclusions with no evidence. And that is precisely why the
Jews have always needed the Greeks.
The Greeks invented the technology (non-contradiction) that moves men forward.
The Jews gave it a chance to thrive. The wild impulses of the human animal were
directed inside the Jews’ ethical monotheistic structure, leaving openings for non-
contradiction to be applied to the thoughts of men.
The combination of these two ideologies allowed man control over body and
mind, with new religious and political systems that balanced larger Collective
Identities against each other. This was a recipe for unprecedented individual
freedom in the west and led to the realization that individual freedom could create
benefits, the likes of which no one had ever seen before, or had even imagined.

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2.6.8 Better than the Rest?
Some people have a real problem with the judgment, "better.” They immediately
jump to ugly and bizarre conclusions, assuming that anyone who does not bow
down before the altar of equality is a Nazi.
The truth is that there’s not a whole lot of difference between any one group of
humans and another. Heck, there’s not much difference, genetically, anyway,
between humans and chimps!
Why did the people of the West move forward better than the others? We don’t
know, and we don’t really care. Maybe the folks in the West were a couple
percentage points better than the rest in some way, maybe it was a lucky
accident, maybe there are some microbes that made a difference, and maybe it
was the work of some superior being.
In the book "Guns, Germs, & Steel,” author Jared Diamond makes the case that
western culture overran many others because of the effects of, you guessed it,
Guns, Germs, and Steel (and a few other things). But guns are certainly a
product of the ideological, and not a cause. The plagues that the West bred in its
cities and brought to other places are again a product of living in larger cities with
denser population – an effect of the ideas, not a cause. The materials to make
steel might have been easier to get at in certain parts of the world, but the will to
dig it up, and the recipe to make it, are again a product of free ideological
evolution, not a cause.
So why the West? Who cares? Let’s just call it an arbitrary statistic that western
culture has moved forward ideologically better and faster.
There is no guarantee that the West will continue to do better. Other parts of the
world that have seen western progress and imitated its economic freedoms have
already experienced the same acceleration of progress. Collective idea-
organisms continually create an environment where people have to fight against
central control. Should the West lose ground in this fight, while those following
close behind on the same path do not, then the West will be quickly surpassed.
Why the West learned these cultural and economic lessons first is not important.
The lessons themselves, however, are important. Very important.
Knowing how this increased growth and prosperity happens – realizing that it is a
product of individual freedom and self-responsibility, rather than any central
authoritative control...
That just might be the most important thing in the world.

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2.7 Interesting Times
In a speech in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 7, 1966, Robert F. Kennedy
said, "There is a Chinese curse which says, ‘May he live in interesting times.’"
This was probably considered to be a curse because life is a lot more dangerous
when the world is in a period of rapid change. However, such changes can also
bring new ideas that allow us all to live better.
We would suggest that a related blessing might be "May you live through
interesting times." If you can somehow manage to reach the other side of such a
period of change unscathed, your world may well be a much nicer place to live.
In the previous section we talked about how the old collective ideas that had
enforced a world of strong central control started to change. This change started
slowly, but it picked up speed. The agricultural world changed and new
arrangements replaced them to create the industrial world.
Some would say that advances in farming, travel, communications, and medical
technology are what bring about new forms of collective ideas, rather than saying
that an off balance and changing Collective allowed this new technology to spring
up without being suppressed. We won't even completely deny that view. But we
will say that it is a classic "chicken and egg" problem:
Greater freedoms allows new ideas – new ideas create new technology – new
technology makes new ways of life possible – new ways of life force collective
idea-organisms to scramble to adapt – uncertain collective idea-organisms leave
(at least temporarily) space for even greater freedoms and we are back at the
beginning. Start this cycle anywhere you like and, if it can continue to overcome
the limiting factors, it may pick up speed like it is rolling down hill.
New technology can put incredible evolutionary pressure on Idea
Organisms. In the past, a tiny little bit of new knowledge has slain many a
large powerful old idea. This is why the powerful Collective Identities fear
the changes of technology.
As the pace of technological change continues to increase, Collective Identities
are more threatened by new technology than they have ever been. They have to
change faster than ever before to keep up. It is possible that we will reach a point
when new simple symbiotic memes are developing so quickly, that complex idea-
organisms can not keep up at all. They may lose control completely and forever
or they may yet find a way to stem the tide of new symbiotic ideas, both
technological and social. They may yet slow progress to a manageable rate, and
reassert control over the world.

2.7.1 Revolutionary Ideas

At the beginning of the Renaissance the religious bosses had been enthroned for
centuries on end. They were given the benefit of the doubt at all turns and
everyone followed them. This predictably made them very arrogant and they
behaved badly for a very long time. But, eventually the more honest guys got up
the courage to question them and their power began to splinter.
As we mentioned earlier, the new technology of the printing press let people
actually read the Christian texts in their own languages and this created a new

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God identity which partnered with a new type of State identity, then a new
arrangement came into being.
This is when technological development really began to accelerate. The
upheaval of the old collective idea-organisms left room for people to think freely.
The freest thinking, least infected minds developed new technologies – new
symbiotic memes. The new ideas that these historical geeks developed changed
the world even more, and continued to keep the Collectives in a state of flux.
Also at this time, a very important new meme came out of the darkness and into
the light of day. This was the nobility of commerce and of commercial success.

2.7.1.1 The Commerce Meme

Before this time, commerce was widely considered a dirty thing. Here is a story
that illustrates the point:
A certain monk reported an important vision. He had been praying in
his local church and opened his eyes to see demons everywhere.
They were sitting on people's shoulders, waiting in every corner of
the church, and generally trying to distract anyone in any way
possible. There were hundreds of them. Horrified, the monk left the
church and walked into the market square. There, he looked about
and saw but one lone demon, sitting high on a pole and observing
the people buying and selling. Seeing this, the monk was thoroughly
distraught and prayed bitterly to God for an answer. How could it be
that the church was full of demons, but the market had only one?
Soon enough, the answer came: The demons had to flock to the
church, because that's where people were being turned god-ward. In
the market place, the answer continued, the devil already controls
them all, so he needs only one demon to observe.
This story was well-known, and the interpretation was widely accepted. But once
the old grouping of ideas in the old dominant Collective Identity was broken up,
this meme was subject to question. And, as people saw soon enough, having
enough food, land, houses, clothing and provision was rather nice, and
commerce seemed pretty good at getting all those things.
While anti-commerce memes remain today, and outbreaks of such thinking can
still occur and devastate whole nations, compared to the dark ages, we are all fat
happy capitalists.

2.7.1.2 The Science Meme

Under the old ideological regime, religious leaders had gone so far as to say that
they knew everything about everything. Once they were shown to be wrong, their
empires of fear cracked and the vast oceans of non-thinking obedience began to
dry up. The need for those who claim to know the mind of GOD to be able to
produce all the answers is the root of the war between science and religion. It
was not just the Catholics that were opposed to new discoveries; a lot of
Protestants hated them too.
As this began to run its course, religion got kicked to the back seat. In this void,
science was able to function with much less intimidation. There was some
science under the old system, but it was restricted and maligned.
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Think of it this way: What if you were to develop a better form of money? Would
the powers that be let you use it? Maybe. but only on the peripheries. However
better your currency might be, it is not theirs, and the legitimacy of their money
may not be questioned. You may not compete with it directly. Why? Because...
well, shut up! There's something wrong with you!
Get the picture?
Like commerce, science provided excellent results and found a safe place in the
new collection of memes that was forming. The religious memes did not want to
let go, but as their best hosts began to die, and the new hosts were less
receptive (having already seen a different vision of life on Earth), there was no
real option left. They continued to exist strongly in some places, but fewer and
less-strongly as time went on.

2.7.1.3 Wars and Geeks

It has been noted by many people, at many times, that scientific breakthroughs
and new technology happen more quickly during times of war. Some have even
concluded that war is therefore somehow good for us. This wartime surge of
innovation may be the best evidence we have that collective idea-organisms
spend a lot of their energy slowing the creation of new technology.
A war means that the Collective is competing violently with another Collective.
During such time periods, it is reaching for any advantage that it can. It can not
afford the safe route of suppressing new ideas that could be dangerous to it –
instead it has to give its freest thinkers the opportunity to devise new
technologies for killing people and destroying things – but also healing people,
rebuilding things, communications, transport, etc.
The individuals, throughout history, who create new technology, have been those
who are not as strongly molded by the Collective into standard pathways of
thought. These people are the poorly-socialized geeks. They don't always know
how to talk to members of the opposite sex, or blend into a group of people when
it is best to be unnoticed, but their minds do some strange and wonderful things.
Free from the chore of thinking about correct social behavior with whatever large
percentage of the brain that normal people use for this – the geeks can explore
new ideas. They can see new ideas clearly for their relative costs and benefits to
individuals, without the distortion of the Collective’s desires.
In times when Collectives are not fighting for their lives – such people are too
dangerous to be allowed to create and communicate new ideas freely and are
suppressed or even killed. When the Collective is fighting for its life, it either does
not have the time to devote to such suppression or recognizes the need for the
production of new value that these people can create – even if it might be
dangerous.
A whole book could be written on the topic of "war and geeks" – starting maybe
with Archimedes who is famous for running through town naked in the excitement
of scientific discovery yelling "Eureka!" He was also instrumental in building many
new war machines to keep the Greek dream of freedom alive against outside
invaders. Da Vinci, likewise known for many personality quirks, produced useful
weapons for renaissance warfare. Tesla, a key man in the invention of radio and
electricity, was renowned for his bizarre mannerisms.
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Every time you look into the history of a great mind, you almost invariably find
that the person was also a serious eccentric. Such people have only been
tolerated in times of war, or times of greater freedoms in the gaps between
colliding collective idea-organisms. In many cases, once these people won the
day for their side, and the Collective moved back to a state of stability and stricter
control, these heroes were once again persecuted.

Alan Turing was by all accounts a very odd fellow indeed. He was also a key figure in
bringing victory to the Allies in World War II. By breaking Nazi codes, his work provided
crucial information that could very well have made the difference in winning the war. After
the war was over, the British government "rewarded" him by forcing him into experimental
hormone therapy to try to cure his homosexuality. These hormone treatments caused him
to grow female breasts. Turing became distressed and eventually killed himself.

The societal upheaval of war can create the freedom of thought necessary to
allow free thinkers to exist unmolested and to advance science and technology.
Fortunately, this upheaval does not always have to be war – the new ideas that
such people create can sometimes keep society churning long enough for the
next generation of thinkers to do the same. This cascade of freedom and
invention is what we find ourselves in today. It produces an environment for freer
exploration of technological ideas – much like a war does – but without all that
annoying screaming, dying, and blood.
It is not a coincidence that the historical start of this cascade of new
technology has been given a name that sounds like it was a war – it has
been named the “Industrial Revolution.”
But despite the general progression towards the creation of more and stronger
symbiotic memes, and fewer and weaker parasitic ones, collective idea
organisms continue to adapt in order to survive. They keep finding new ways to
re-assert control. With the upheaval of older forms of the Collective Parasite, new
contenders have evolved quickly to fill some of the same ideological niches.

2.7.2 Lines on a Map

One important subject we have just barely mentioned is the Icon status of local
geography.
The land people live on has always been special to them. These feelings
certainly increased when human beings invented farming – when the larger part
of our food came from seeds planted in the ground. Even before that we had
territorial instincts much like any other animal – hunter gatherers almost certainly
had strong feelings about their hunting grounds. You can still see it today, as
"The land where our fathers died", "Where our brave ancestors spilled their
blood", "Where they tamed the wilderness,” and so on.
Now, those may in fact have been good things, but it was not the dirt that made
your ancestors great. If they were great – it was due to their own virtues. Dirt is
for walking upon and for growing things. Warm memories about things that
happened in a certain place are nice, but glorifying dirt is stupid.
Be that as it may, the local geography always developed into something of an
icon for the people in the area, and helped them feel connected and unified. This

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is, of course, good for tax collections. (It is also good for military defense, another
book-length subject that we’ll leave alone.)
Note that land was more important both before and after the medieval rule of
Church and State. The strong icon of the Roman Church suppressed and co-
opted almost every other icon – The Land was no exception. This return to
geography was in some ways a return to the norm and, in retrospect, it seems a
lot healthier not to have a purely ideological entity like a church empowered
above the ruler (even if the ruler is usually an idiot). Allowing an abuser to control
the bodies of men is bad enough, but to have an inhuman idea-organism control
their minds is much worse.
The sanctity of the land made a comeback and moved up in the Distributed
Identity hierarchy. Until the industrial revolution, that is. Then everyone started to
flee the sacred valley and move to the unknown, cold city; a place with absolutely
no relevant mythology. Distributed Identities were a mess over this for some
time.

2.7.2.1 The Map IS the Territory

Previous to the industrial revolution, building a larger kingdom entailed taking
over a series of small, rural power centers. Now there were huge urban power
centers and with all that manufacturing, specializing, and inventing going on,
these cities were very, very powerful. That made all the Kings uneasy, although
they, too, grudgingly adapted.
The new unit of collective rule would be the nation-state, complete with a
modernized set of collective ideas.
Before the Industrial Revolution, people knew "where they belonged,” even if the
rules did change from time to time. Now, the farm boy often moved to a
completely new place, where he knew almost no one and lived a radically
different life than anyone in his family had ever lived. The nation needed an
identity much larger than what was necessary for the local valley. If not, a
neighboring nation – which had unified itself with a strong Collective Identity from
border to border – would be able to defeat your country militarily.
The first part of the new national myth was simply to extend the local land icon.
After all, the folks on the next hill were pretty darned similar to you – and the next
hill after that – and the one after that… Pretty soon, the name of your individual
valley mattered less and the name of your nation mattered more.
Just as the agricultural King needed a priesthood, the new national leaders
needed people to encourage the loyalty and support of their people. In some
places The Priesthood remained in this job for some centuries. In others it fell
away. In the cases where the Church fell from favor, a variety of replacements
were drawn in: Intellectuals, artists, orators, psychiatric associations, teachers
unions, and many others.
All of this was made solid by the ideological organisms in human brains. As
mentioned earlier, these always prefer stability. So once in place, the new order
had its own roots. Today, the concept of the nation-state is considered
unquestionable. It is that which is, was, and ever will be... except that it was not
only a short while ago and almost certainly will not be forever, and upon real

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examination, has only some arbitrary lines drawn on maps as its justification for
existence.
We are not saying that the nation-state is a particularly bad choice for now. An
idea of national identity, confined to geographic borders, actually reduces the
chance of expansionist warfare. After all, if our borders are somehow sacred, it
wouldn't be right to change them by absorbing our neighbors. But, notice that
seriously considering that the nation-state has not really been around very long,
and may just be a temporary concept, is something that probably causes you a
little mental discomfort. Uh huh, that’s right, evidence of the Collective Identity in
your head sitting up and taking notice of what you are thinking, unwilling to have
its legitimacy questioned.

2.7.2.2 Vox Popular

Along with changing sources of legitimacy for this new world order, the
mechanics of governance changed. The old order, based upon farm communities
and the old methods of publishing and enforcing the King’s commands, began to
vanish. A new "city model" began to form.
A middle class composed of merchants, traders, supervisors and engineers
appeared and grew steadily. Wave after wave of farm children came to the cities
for good jobs. Banks, courts, meeting halls, merchants' associations, central
markets, warehouses, barge terminals and more began to appear. The world
took its modern form. However troubling these changes were, they were based
upon science, and Science had a very powerful and respected place in the new
hierarchy of memes. The changes would go on and everything else – short of
questioning the state itself – would have to adapt.
Before this time, the idea of "divided power" meant divided among the nobles or
perhaps divided with the clergy, but it did not mean divided with the peasants. At
this time, the Greek dream of individual rule was “remembered” and divided
government evolved into representative democracy, with the people of each area
choosing and sending a few of their own to capital cities, in order to pursue their
interests.
Yes, we all know that representatives don’t always represent terribly well, but this
was a significant change nonetheless. For the first time, the great masses of little
people were a force for the ruler to reckon with. This was especially true as
communications technologies improved and newspapers and mail became
common – government actions were at least partially open to scrutiny and
discussion.
Power shifted to the masses living in the cities. That meant that rulers were now
in the popularity business. Getting huge numbers of people to vote for them
determined their status and power. This was particularly true of the more
industrialized nations, and since such states waged war better than others, the
model proliferated.
Politicians had to learn to balance group against group and to figure out what the
masses really want, what they are afraid of, and what made them like or dislike a
candidate. Politics (rulership) became a manipulation contest. This led to a lot of
work being done – purposefully – to strengthen the basest of human
manipulators: Fear, envy, status, dominance and shame.

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In modern times, Distributed Identities associated with the basest instincts are
somewhat stronger now than they "should" be. Not only politicians, but corporate
marketers and manipulators of all types, use the same mental hooks. Let’s go
through just one example, regarding how people tend to vote:

Joe Half-think is watching TV, and a commercial comes on. The politician, dressed
impressively, is warning him that another politician is getting ready to "slash spending" on
the program that "we all rely upon" and that he’ll give "your" money to his rich friends! This
is called (in highly technical terms) Triple Sucker Bait. There is fear of losing something
very important and maybe of a granny reduced to eating cat food. There is outrage at the
bad politician stealing what it rightfully yours. Finally there is envy, that there are people
richer than you and that they are getting a good deal. Now Joe isn’t going to let them get
away with it – so he votes for... a complete liar who doesn’t even believe it himself.

If this wasn't how people voted, negative ads wouldn’t work and you’d almost
never see one.
Every time you hear a scary political slogan you are being played for a sucker.
And, it gets worse! There are sets of memes that pump cheap self esteem into
people because they are a member of a certain political group. (Demogogic,
Repellican, whatever...)
Power thrives upon this, even though it is almost entirely fraudulent. Politicians
take mountains of money away from people to spend it on imaginary fears that
they create from scratch! The problems will never actually be solved but that
really doesn’t matter. In fact, if the problems ever were solved, they’d have to
revamp their entire business structures.
Finding or creating an unsolvable problem has become a political specialty.
Being the boss is what matters. And the way to do that is to deal in envy, fear,
and cheap self-esteem. Remember – it’s now all about lines on a map. Keep the
people jealous of their neighbors on this side of the line, afraid of those strange
people on the other side of the line, and proud to be surrounded by the best lines
ever to be drawn on a map.
If you do it right, you can become and stay rich and powerful. If you can actually
make yourself believe your own lies, at least when the cameras are on, it all
works even better.
And the crime goes on.

2.7.3 Enter the Isms

As the Industrial Revolution has spread and continued and the idea of the Nation
State has risen, scientific knowledge has advanced and religion has lost some
territory. This has happened slowly at some times, rapidly at others, even
reversing upon occasion, but religion has been on a downward trend.
Because Ideologies are competing for territory in human brains, such a big idea
as religion losing its strength creates something of a vacuum, or at least a gap.
Perhaps it would be better to call it a memetic ecological niche that is going
partially unfilled. As the Church controls less and less mind-space, other idea-
organisms move in and fill the vacuum. There is some space for them to get

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started, but with even a reduced version of God still in a top place, and with The
Nation State right up there next to it, these new memes have to begin first on the
fringes, then – maybe – move to better positions.

2.7.3.1 Communism
Perhaps the most “successful” of the new breed of idea-organisms (which we
have called the "Isms") found its niche by competing directly with commerce.
Communism (or Socialism, its first stage) seeks to displace commerce in the
modern mind, then to extend those gains all the way to Statehood.
Notice that one of the first things this ideology did was to create a derogatory
label to place upon commerce: Capitalism. Free commerce is not about capital
(that is, stores of money) it is about free human action and the creation of human
value. But the idea of "capital" implies unfairness, stirs envy, and directs the mind
completely away from the virtues of commerce. This has proved to be
Communism's great tool.
Once it had booted commerce and was rooted in enough minds, Communism
began to adapt in whatever ways would get it maximum power. The Bolshevik
variant proved best at this. It waited for an opportunity to arise, and then seized
power with extreme speed and force. The Bolsheviks took over the existing
machinery of the Russian State and violently forced all other memes out of
business.
This was the Inquisition on steroids. People died in mind-numbing
quantities – only because of the ideas they held.
But because the Bolshevik pattern worked, other communist groups followed the
pattern, and soon Socialism controlled major areas of the Earth. Something like
200 million people died in the ideological warfare that accompanied this
Inquisition. In this example, better than any other we have, we see that human
bodies are of no real importance to the idea organisms. If the easiest way to
insure ideological supremacy is to kill everyone who disagrees – so be it; new
bodies can be grown.
Once in power, Communism has shown itself to be the deadliest idea-organism
ever to poison the Earth. In Cambodia, where the utter disregard for the human
may have reached its peak, the ideology killed a third of the population in only a
few years. These numbers are on par with the worst biological plagues in history.
In a head-to-head comparison, socialism exceeded the Church of the
Middle Ages in killing people by a stunning margin... even as compared
with the height of the Crusades or Inquisitions.
Despite Communism being the current, undisputed, death toll record holder, the
anti-capitalist, anti-commerce memes remains strong. Go to most any upscale
cocktail party and start talking about the utterly astonishingly and anti-human
acts of Communism... but be ready to be scowled at and probably to be called
some very ugly names. And you may expect that it will be otherwise seemingly
intelligent, educated people who will become angry and call you the worst
names, rather than engaging in reasoned debate on the topic.
Regardless of intelligence and status, anti-commerce memes have been firmly
planted in many people's minds and tied to their self-esteem. Therefore it hurts

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the hosts to hear such ideas called evil. To these people, letting go of these
ideals would be like pulling off a piece of their souls.
But, with over 200 million deaths on its hands, in a matter of decades... what else
can you call Communism but evil? To pass over all of those purposeful deaths –
purely for the sake of a disembodied idea... Dear God! What kinds of monsters
can subservience to a collective Ideology make us!?

One of the most frightening thoughts for a couple of guys that are writing a book about
collective ideas is that this was pretty much all Karl Marx did. He put some thoughts on
paper about how government and economics worked, and how maybe it would work better
someday. The big theme of his “Communist Manifesto” was really just the idea that the
world would be a nicer place if people would just share the wealth. By committing this
seemingly nice idea to writing, he killed over 200 million people.
So now here we are writing a book about political ideas, and it occurs to us that we don't
want anyone to die. So we thought a clarification of our thought might be a good idea:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE ANY OF THE IDEAS IN THIS BOOK TO BE TAKEN
AS MEANING THAT ANYONE SHOULD BE KILLED – OR EVEN HURT A LITTLE. WE
ARE DEFINITELY NOT GOING FOR THE DEATH RECORD HERE.
There – we feel better now. Oh, wait a second, let’s add:
MARX PROBABLY FELT THE SAME WAY, AND YOU SHOULD ALL STOP KILLING
EACH OTHER OVER WHAT HE WROTE TOO.
Oh, and:
JESUS ALMOST CERTAINLY ALSO FELT THIS WAY ABOUT HURTING PEOPLE.
Actually Jesus was quite specific on the topic, and it didn't seem to work for him... Damn.
Well, we have at least tried to keep it somewhat light hearted. Maybe if Jesus had told
more jokes or drawn cartoons, not so many people would have died? Hopefully we will
manage to keep our death toll well below his numbers...

2.7.3.2 Fascism
Fascism was a very unique idea-organism. It was actually a bid to directly
replace the Nation State.
The State, as it exists in modern times, rests on the support of its citizens, more
or less. These citizens reside primarily in or near cities and find their identity not
only in their DNA, but as members of a scientific, industrial, modern world.
Fascism was something of a return to the past in that it placed "The People" –
the DNA group – at the top of the hierarchy of importance.
This "People" ideal said that The State was fraudulent, built upon a foreign base
of money and the interests of Jews and other "peoples.” With this idea more or
less established, Fascism sought to replace the previous form of State. It
promised to be more faithful and helpful to the "people" and demanded (not
'asked') vehement support from the people. If you didn't support the People, you
were an evil traitor.
You can probably see that this was an ideology that was perfectly positioned to
demonize outsiders and, most unfortunately, it did so quite well. It was also an
ideology that pretty much needed to be expansionist in order to survive and the
resulting war (World War II) killed some 65 million people.

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2.7.3.3 Environmentalism
This is the big, new Ism. Modeled more or less after socialism and using many of
the same strategies, this has risen rapidly in the last couple of decades, though
more so in Europe than in the United States.
In defining what we mean by the Environmentalism idea-organism, we can say
that we are referring to that which goes above and beyond the simple altruistic
meme “try to minimize your impact on shared resources.” As we have seen with
other Ideologies, Environmentalism may have some symbiotic and altruistic
memes, as well as many parasitic memes bundled together.
Remember that these new Isms are the product of old collective idea-organisms
trying to adapt to a world that is rapidly changing and advancing. Slowing that
change is a priority for modern collective Ideas. The two main ideas that enable
progress are Commerce (creating and allocating new value efficiently) and
Science (producing new ways to create value). Where Communism/Socialism
attacked only Commerce, Environmentalism is also going after Science – and,
very cleverly, it has learned to do this by putting on the clothes of Science.
Environmentalism may be the last shot for collective idea-organisms to hang on
in their current form. It seems to be a clever enough adaptation that it could
conceivably stop Western Progress – and it already has a strong hold
established in Europe and is growing in the Americas. The reason for
Environmentalism's greater success in Europe is primarily that religion memes
have been much more removed from the European host-pool than they have in
the US. This left a larger void to be filled by a new Ideology. Notice the way that
followers of this ideology exhibit similar behaviors to what the religious
Europeans used to display.
For example, service to nature replaces service to God. It’s the same passion
and the same devotion – just a different icon. (The scary part is where they try to
enforce their dogma.) Environmentalism is a theology where nature replaces
God. There are even versions that have an icon that makes this more explicit:
Gaia the Earth Goddess. But even where this religious icon is not as explicit, the
idea of a “natural order” is virtually equivalent to a “divine plan.”
Adherents in the US display the same characteristics as the Europeans, and tend
strongly to be non-Christians. But in the US there are still many fewer of them, as
a percentage of the populace.
Environmentalism seeks to directly replace the religion meme, and seeks an
alliance with Science, which is still strong (even though under attack by a few
neo-tribalists). This alliance with the idea-organism version of Science is quite a
two-edged sword for Environmentalism, since when science is practiced
correctly, it cuts idea-organisms to shreds – but it is proving to be a fairly
effective strategy for now. In order to make this work, Environmentalism must
influence Science away from the scientific method – make scientists more
concerned about whether conclusions are “good” than whether they are true.
On one hand, science is very useful to Environmentalism. By publishing scary,
scientific-looking papers, getting scientists to sign petitions, and so on,
Environmentalism got a free ride toward respectability. On the other hand, the
actual scientific results are not nearly as impressive as the press releases.

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Some of the original leaders of the movement have already shown themselves
honest enough to admit their scientific errors, and have publicly turned against
the collective ideology. Of course they are branded heretics by their former
comrades. Fortunately, it's a lot less dangerous to be a heretic than it used to be.
Like all collective idea-organisms, Environmentalism has offered its share of
horror stories concerning the fate of the world if its leader's directives are not
followed. The current enviro scenario is the battle against global warming, but
other disaster scenarios have been tried and failed to get as much attention –
seas dying from toxins, holes in the ozone layer, genetically modified food
monsters, and even global cooling. Ideological evolution is constantly searching
for the scariest possible scenario to gain the most attention and win mind share.
Global warming is surprisingly meek for the attention it has received – its
strongest claims seem to be that the seas will rise a couple of feet over the next
hundred years. This is hardly end of the world stuff.
The degree of the claimed danger is not really the issue though. The issue is the
bad thinking that goes into the arguments to avoid the claimed danger. Here are
some important questions one needs to answer before trying to control the
actions of other people in a “good” cause:
1. Is there really a problem?
2. How much value will the problem cost people in the future?
3. Will the proposed controls really stop the problem?
4. How much value will these proposed controls (including the power to
enforce them) cost people now?
5. How does value lost now compare to future lost value?
6. Will collective controls now open the door to more controls later?
Instead of any real attempt to find real verifiable answers to these questions,
Environmentalism makes its case for collective control over individual action with
the same methods that have always been used by collective ideologies of all
sorts – fast speaking, quick zingers, and the age-old "excluded middle" trick.
("Either you support our plan, or else you are in favor of sewage in Baby's soup!")
The worshipers of Nature use the same logical fallacies that have served, and
continue to serve, Gods, Countries, and Corporations.
The people that use these tricks may even know that they are stretching the truth
– but they believe that it is in a good cause. This is the same as church and state
lying to you for your own good. It is the same as communist revolutionaries killing
now for a better world later. Environmentalism is just another idea-organism
trying to control as many minds as possible – and as such its adherents know
that they are righteous and can do no wrong.
Environmentalism is also attempting to absorb other Isms. The newest variation
in Environmentalism's strategy is that it is increasing its infiltration of Nation
States by making use of the groundwork laid by socialism/communism during the
1960s when socialists (now usually called Progressives) invaded existing state
structures. This adaptation, rather than the not so scary global warming scenario,
is probably the main reason for its recent rise to greater power.

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This is a slow revolution via the Trojan Horse model, in which Environmentalism
is infiltrating existing structures by absorbing Socialism. There are a lot of
socialist types who are installed, able and willing to influence what they can
towards any promising socialist cause. Environmentalism has tried to become
such a cause.
Maybe we should just call this the Sixties Strategy. But, whatever the name, it
has proven to be very effective.
Marxism, for example, has been as A group called FEE (The Foundation for
Economic Education) exists to combat the
completely discredited as an idea can anti-commerce memes that are still spread
be, but it remains King in the in United States Universities. They promote
University. Socialist types are the teaching of economics through student
ensconced there and they promote seminars, and the publication of free market
whatever ideas make them feel literature of all sorts. According to their
young and revolutionary. The icon of website at www.fee.org, FEE's mission is
Nature seems to be providing what "...to offer the most consistent case for the
these people need. 'first principles' of freedom: the sanctity of
private property, individual liberty, the rule of
Whether the socialist/enviro alliance law, the free market, and the moral
will gain strong control over any superiority of individual choice and
Nation States is an open question. responsibility over coercion." – Sure sounds
Environmentalism seems to be good to us!
gaining power with its current
strategies, but Science may reclaim its nerve and dethrone it, or a few good
winters could do the job.
Things could get quite entertaining. If the scientists do a bit of thinking, they'll
figure out that environmentalism is anti-technology, and if we'll have no
technology then we'll have no use for science. The more thoughtful scientists
have already figured it out, although plenty more are still running around looking
for easy grant money.
Hopefully the death toll from this one will not even be measured in the tens of
millions, but in the crazy world of collective ideological organisms... Well... Now
that we think about it, the death toll on this one is already pretty high if you
include the banning of DDT and the resulting malaria deaths. (DDT was banned
in a mania following the first big Enviro book, "Silent Spring.”) In the book “State
of Fear”, Michael Crichton wrote:
Since the supposed ban, two million people a year have died
unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has
caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT
killed more people than Hitler.
In addition to obvious deaths, there is the much more difficult issue of reduced
production. You never know where and when a little extra convenience and
comfort might give someone the intellectual free time to develop a cure for
cancer – or to make any other major new technological breakthrough. We can't
know what specific value is not created because of artificial restrictions. But since
we are on an exponential upward growth curve, intellectually we can know that
any artificial restrictions have exponentially growing costs going forward.
Body counts are obvious, but they may be the smaller part of the cost we pay
when we let collective idea-organisms restrict our freedoms. We may pay a

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larger price in lost opportunities; geniuses who are ignored, dreams that are
never realized, value that is never created – useful world-changing technologies
that take longer to invent or are never invented at all.

2.7.4 The Long Arm

Another recent collective icon to make the list is the concept of "The Law.” This
may seem a strange thing to call an icon, but it actually has all the right parts and
effects people's thinking just like any other Collective Identity.
The Law or the concept of Law Enforcement has its roots in an older concept.

2.7.4.1 Justice
Remember Lady Justice? She carried scales with which she weighed each case,
and wore a blindfold so she would not be swayed by the sight of those who were
being judged. She was a slightly different icon, for a somewhat different concept
than The Law. She represented the idea that the scales would always be
balanced, that all evil would be punished, no matter whom had committed the
evil. Whereas enforcing The Law implies forcing the actions of each individual to
conform to a set of collective rules – just or not.
That standard of justice is what Max had always been after. He
hated to hear his business called ‘law enforcement.’ “Law
enforcement,” he used to say, “is a cheap substitute for justice.
Half-justice at best, and frequently much less.” The further he
rose in the ranks of the FBI, the more he was forced to do ‘law
enforcement,’ and the less real justice he could pursue.
--A Lodging of Wayfaring Men
The idea of punishing evil presupposes that we know evil when we see it. This is
not too much of a stretch. The whole concept of "law and order" is to have a
society in which all the things that can go wrong are minimized. We know when
something has gone wrong. Therefore, we know what we are trying to minimize.
If we believe that punishing someone will reduce the "wrongness" in our world,
then we do it.
We try to create a system that maximizes reward for those actions that create
value for everyone and maximizes punishment for those actions that detract
value for everyone. This is not just true at the societal level – but personally as
well. We give feedback to those around us, concerning what is and is not
acceptable behavior. When situations are extreme enough, this feedback can
and does take the form of violence.
Our sense of justice is based on the idea of Natural Law, which is the law we feel
in our hearts to be correct. (This is properly based upon self-reference, but “know
in our hearts” is how it is traditionally explained.) The things that really bother us,
to the degree that we would be willing to use violence to stop them from
happening, are the things that we consider illegal under a system of natural law.
Now, since different people have different ideas about what really bothers them,
it seems like society might be stabilized by finding some normal average of what
the people believe to be wrong. That idea is that we should write down the things
that, on average, society feels so strongly about that violence will be used to stop
or punish someone doing them. This is done for two reasons. First to keep
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weirdly insensitive people from doing things that are, on average, considered
bad, and warn them that society will object violently to these things. Second to
warn weirdly sensitive people against reacting violently to a thing that, on
average, society does not care enough about to prevent with violence.
While this seems like a good idea, it is where we start to lose our concept of
justice, and replace it with the idea of "Law Enforcement.” We stop thinking in
terms of what is right and wrong, and start thinking in terms of legal and illegal. If
it is written down as "illegal" it must be bad – and we know this not because of
certain results, but because of a label that has been assigned.
Goodbye Justice. Welcome your new icon, The Law.

2.7.4.2 The Law

Once a list of things that society will not tolerate is written down, it has the
unfortunate tendency to take on a life of its own. Earlier in the book we noted the
difference between a list of individual ideas and a list with an impressive title like
"The Ten Commandments of God.” The deal is the same here. When you have a

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list of rules that people are expected to live by, and you label it as "The Law of
the Land,” it stops being a list of separate ideas and becomes an indivisible unit
which requires your respect. The moment it is thought of in such a way, it is
harder to criticize individual bad laws that happen to make the list.
Somewhere the paradigm shifts, and it stops just being an informative list that
tells anyone who reads it what the things are that members of a society, on
average, would be willing to use violence to stop. Instead it becomes a list that, if
you can get something written into it, allows you to cause society to use violence
in the way you want it to. And boy do Collective Identities like to be able to direct
societal violence where it will do the most good for the idea-organism.
Law starts as a way to identify bad ideas and ends up as a tool to enforce
bad ideas.
It changes into a system where, once something is written on the list, society is
obliged to use violence to enforce it, even if the average person in society would
not think it to be a thing worthy of violence. This means that if you can get
something put on the list, you can harness the full power of collective violence to
your cause. This is true, regardless of how much any specific member of society,
or society members on average, agrees that your cause is worth using violence
to achieve.
The list of laws can become something sacred. And when the list is sacred,
challenging any part of it is sacrilegious. Even if the list is not considered sacred,
it is hard to keep it from expanding to things that only some people care a lot
about. If someone wants to put something on the list that society on average
does not favor, but would not normally think worthy of using violence to stop,
people are not likely to object much.
It’s hard to stand up and fight for everyone’s right to do something that you
personally find distasteful, even when you don't think it is worth initiating
violence to stop or punish the people who like doing it.
The list of "crimes" always ends up being a lot longer than it should ever be.
Once the law has morphed into this form, it is sometimes known as positive law,
in contrast to Natural law (which is sometimes called negative law). The positive-
negative distinctions come from the idea that Natural law is there to stop people
from doing bad things. It warns you that you must not do things that will get
people mad enough to hurt you. "Must not do" is what makes it “negative” law.
The other system is positive law, which can compel your actions. Rather than just
preventing you from doing things that bother others, it can require you to take
actions that may bother you. “Must do” is what makes it “positive” law.
Natural law is about telling people not to piss off other people, positive law is
about telling people what they have to do (and, hence, it often pisses people off).
It is also the ideal mechanism for Distributed Identities to enforce themselves as
a Collective. (Ironically, we observe that positive law has many negative effects.)
Positive law is a list of rules which must be obeyed – even if those rules aren't
things that folks would normally care enough about to use violence to enforce. In
order to have these rules enforced, the Collective needs a special group of
people willing to use violence to make other people do whatever is written down
– because it is their job and they are just following orders.
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Unfortunately, it has never been terribly hard to find people who will
enforce rules without questioning them.

2.7.4.3 Law Enforcement

Collectives are often divided into different organizations. This represents the
same advantage that multi-cellular biological organisms have. Different cells can
specialize and group themselves into an organ that provides certain services to
the larger body. Each cell still contains the same genetic material, identifying it as
part of the same organism, but each is differentiated to perform a certain function
based on its location in the body. Likewise, each person in a Collective may be
hosting the same basic ideology, but their roles can differ depending on the
organizations to which they belong.
Organizations for the purpose of law enforcement are just such an organ.
While the rules of proper conduct in the minds of the people may vary, the
purpose of a law enforcement organization is, theoretically, to keep societal
norms of behavior in line with the laws of the land. This enforcement causes
feedback to the minds of the people and brings their mental ideas about what is
acceptable in line with the written law. Although the idea of law is to have a
system in which the people's ideas of right and wrong give rise to the codified
rules of behavior, an opposite pressure becomes felt, and what is written in the
codified law affects what people think of as right and wrong. The Law becomes a
powerful icon that can be used to enforce collective behavior.

2.7.4.4 The Law as Icon

The rise of The Law as an icon, started out, as all such things seem to do, with
only good intentions.
When John Adams declared his preference for a "nation of laws, not men,” he
was talking about a nation in which all were equal before the law. (Remember
that Lady Justice has a blindfold for this purpose.) But when you think of that
phrase from a standpoint of ideological organisms, it sounds a little creepier.
Taking individuals out of the equation and letting the information systems rule is
exactly the bad thing we are talking about throughout this book.
Once The Law is an icon of high authority, with specialized organs to enforce it,
these enforcers are often given different rights than normal people. When this
happens, you have divided the members of society into separate classes.
1. Law Makers
2. Law Enforcers
3. Law Breakers (Criminals)
4. Potential Law Breakers (Everyone Else)

In a democratic system, this becomes somewhat circular, with the first and last
classes on the list being somewhat blended together. The idea is that by some
system, all the people can influence the making of the laws. This is a big step in
the right direction, but there can still be problems.
Ideally there should only ever be one class of people, all of whom have equal
rights. But as long as only certain special people are allowed to enforce the laws,
they are effectively a separate class with additional rights that others do not
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have. And as long as those who break the laws are forever after treated
differently, they also become a separate class with fewer rights than others. (For
example: In the United States, if you are convicted of a serious crime, you lose
your right to vote – thus becoming a lower class of citizen.)
Granted, the Law Breakers class will likely be filled with a lot of total scumbags.
However, in a society that expects its people's morals to follow what is written in
law – rather than the other way around – anyone who fails to bow to the Icon and
tries to maintain their own ideas of right and wrong may be labeled a criminal.
When this happens, they lose their ability to try to change the laws of the society.
Even if they happen to be right, who is going to listen to a criminal?
This is all great stuff from the point of view of a Collective Identity that wants to
control everything within the society, but from the point of view of individuals who
want the best set of rules for a society based on what works best for people, not
for collective ideologies, it totally sucks.

Are you infected with this Distributed Identity icon? Think about how you feel about this
statement: "You need not have any respect for The Law – you just have to respect other
individuals." If that statement bothers you, it is because you are hosting a DI called "The
Law." Actually that statement works pretty well for testing your feelings about any idea-
organism. The word "respect" is a BIG deal for an idea-organism.

2.7.4.5 The Law at War

The icon of The Law and the idea of Law Enforcement have worked so well for
the Collectives, and have grown so much in recent times, that the United States
doesn't go to war anymore. Instead it has police actions. In this way, it makes it
clear that other nations will follow its rules and be pressured to think as it
chooses. It does not invade them and take their territory into itself. The concept
of geography as icon may actually have gotten too strong for that to happen. So
it has adopted the concept of Law and cast its military into the role of global
police force.
In some ways, this makes the idea of "The Law" the current King of the
mountain, and it is quite possible that the concept of "International Law" will
eventually grow to be the controlling ideology of the planet. It may start out as
just an imposition of the will of the most powerful nation states, but if they remain
constrained by their sacred borders, an icon of International Law could break
away and start running the whole show on a global scale.
Ironically, at the same time the military of the United States has become a global
police force, back home it has become normal to sell bad law enforcement by
declaring it to be a "war." The current biggest, most futile, exercise in impractical
law enforcement is called "The War on Drugs." But we will talk more about that,
and the nature of The Long Arm of The Law, in the next chapter.

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 3
Your Money or Your Life
In the previous chapter we reviewed the history of the world with a focus on the
evolution of ideological life forms. The best parts of history are stories of new
symbiotic memes and how they have helped mankind survive and thrive. The
worst parts are stories of war between competing collective ideologies and the
damage that parasitic memes inside these Ideologies have caused.
In this chapter we will take a look at modern forms of collective idea-organisms.
We will examine the ways in which the Collective bends the individual to its will
and makes sure that some large part of individual productive effort gets
channeled into the survival and reproductive goals of the Collective. This
channeling of resources takes the form of a loss of value for individuals
everywhere. It is a price paid in property, liberty, and sometimes even lives.
While it is true that God claims the highest authority, the Geographic Country
(Nation State) is actually the strongest player in controlling peoples' lives in our
time. Although the State's moral authority may not be as great as God's, it
certainly has more guns, bullets, and policemen than God currently commands.
The collective forces we are mostly talking about in this chapter are the
governments of Nation States, where such government can be defined as the
organizations that makes the claim that they have a legitimate right to maintain
(and use) a monopoly of force.
We will also discuss how the various idea-organisms in a society compete for
influence in the government – for a chance to use this legitimized violence toward
their own ends.
While reading this chapter, keep in mind the things we have talked about
previously concerning the nature of icons as faces for collective idea-organisms.
Worship of these icons is what allows behavior in service to the group that would
never be tolerated on the part of lone individuals:
Murder is wrong, but the Nation State is allowed to kill.
Slavery is wrong, but the Nation State can direct your actions – make you do
work without compensation.
Theft is wrong, but the Nation State can demand that you contribute property.
Those who look favorably on the Icons of the Nation State believe that since their
Country is good, any action taken in its behalf must also be good. Those that
carry out these actions feel blameless because they act in service to a Higher
Power – they “know” that they are the good guys because their icons are good.
While they would never kill, enslave, or steal from another person for individual
gain, they believe that it is alright to do such things on behalf of a Nation State.
This same logical error, that allowed the Church of The Middle Ages to commit
atrocities, now allows powerful Nation States to turn greater technological
capabilities to the task of even greater stealing and killing – limited only by the
need to keep a certain level of stability for host human beings to stay productive.

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3.1 Killing the Goose
We have already discussed how The West took the lead economically when
gaps between the competing/cooperating idea-organisms of Church and State
left room for individuals to have greater freedom of thought – and hence to create
new value. The paradox from the Collective’s standpoint is that if the wealth that
such free thought creates could be turned towards the “right” goals, the idea-
organism could strengthen itself and replicate itself forcibly to other nations.
However, that same freedom of thought makes it hard for the Collective to guide
its hosts to such actions. For the Collective, this is a classic “you can’t have your
cake and eat it too” scenario.
Let’s take a look at how the degree of central authority affects the nature of a
collective:

3.1.1 Strong Central Authority

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
-- Vladimir Lenin
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our
enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?
--Joseph Stalin

The idea behind a Collective with strong central control is that all "important"
decisions are made at the center of things. Information comes in from all points
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and central decisions are communicated back to the people that need to take
action. Authorities at the center are presumed to have the best possible
information and thus the best chance to make exactly the right decision.
When information speed was slow and the world was not changing as fast,
having a central hub for decisions might have been the best solution for the
survival of a group of people – but that has definitely changed as the technology
has increased and everything is moving faster.

3.1.2 Weak Central Authority

That government is best which governs least.

-- Thomas Paine

Weaker central authority makes better decisions faster. In such a system, the
central authority only rarely gives orders, and only when a threat to the power of
the central authority is perceived. No attempt is made to control every action.
People are allowed to think and act for themselves. In such a system the center
acts as a distribution point for the best possible information.
A reasonable amount of information must also be passed from person to person,
bypassing the central authority; this insures that the center can not completely
distort the truth. Without this independent communication, a slow creep towards
stronger central authority is almost guaranteed. Limited central authority is
therefore possible only with communications systems that allow a wider range of

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person-to-person communication. Decentralized communication systems lend
themselves to supporting the concept of Free Speech, which limits the growth of
control by central authority.

3.1.3 No Central Authority

That government is best which governs not at all; and when men
are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they
will have.
-- Henry David Thoreau
While the state exists there can be no freedom; when there is
freedom there will be no State.
– Vladimir Lenin

If people are allowed to act on their own ideas, and anyone can communicate
ideas with anyone else, then no single authority need ever decide what the
mandated solution is. A good idea can be communicated more quickly to
everyone, and many people will implement it. At the same time, others are free to
pursue better ideas and try new things. This allows a better idea to come along at
any time, even to replace an already good one. This is both a faster path to a
good solution and a never-ending process of producing even better solutions.
The less central authority is allowed, the faster and better all solutions become.
And those solutions continue to improve with each discovery of new information
and/or innovation.
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3.1.4 Communications Systems
Decentralized systems are only possible with fast, unregulated, person to person
communications. Not surprisingly, this sort of peer to peer communication is
resisted by any existing central authority. Central authority will especially resist
technology that allows any arbitrary individual to broadcast information to a large
numbers of interested parties. Such systems allow ideas that are against the
central authority's purposes to germinate and spread very quickly.
The better and faster a Collective's communications systems are, the weaker its
central authority becomes, while at the same time benefit to individuals
increases. Good for individuals, very scary for a Collective.
Note that in the “No Central Authority” diagram above, information may flow from
any individual to any other individual, without any center point of control. This is
precisely the type of communication system that has grown first and fastest in the
West with the advent of modern telephony and the Internet.

3.1.5 Just Choke It A Little Bit

The Collective is always forced to allow some level of individual freedom. A
weaker Collective Identity makes better decisions and can adapt to external
threats faster, but a stronger Collective Identity can better subvert human
resources towards its own needs. This is the delicate balancing act that any
Collective Identity must manage carefully.
The goose that lays the golden eggs must not be allowed to fly away, but if
the collar is too tight, it can choke to death.
Unfortunately, there is no good feedback system when the Collective starts to go
bad. When it starts to choke the goose too tightly, the goose will get angry and
pecks at it. (Yes, let’s way overstretch this metaphor.) Then, the Collective will
push back at the goose by squeezing harder.
Now, in real world terms: When people start to feel overly controlled, they'll start
to subvert those controls. This gives the Collective's bosses an excuse to declare
emergency measures and to call on their people's loyalty to the group, "in this
time of crisis.” The reflex will be to impose tighter and tighter controls until either
all out civil war or internal coup results. The other possibility is that the Collective
will be destroyed from the outside because it has grown weak from internal strife,
or because it failed to keep up with the innovations of freer systems that are
competing with it.
Individual human minds may be smart enough to recognize when things are
heading in a bad direction, but the Collective is not, and therefore neither are
those who unthinkingly serve it. When central control increases to the point that
free individuals become powerless to change the system, things have started to
go down a bad road – one which almost always ends in a great deal of human
misery.

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3.2 Controlling the Market
A large part of what collective idea-organisms do involves economic manipulation
and control. This is a good point of attack for control of all human behavior, as
the exchange of value is what makes all modern human lifestyles possible.
The things that free individuals value differ from the things that the
Collective values. The desires of collective idea-organisms affect the
market significantly, making it – on average – produce results that are
worse for individuals – resulting in less overall human value.
Collectives have great influence. And when they use this for their own selfish
purposes, it distorts the market and disrupts the efficient allocation of resources...
at least as those allocations of resources correspond to the best solution for
individuals.
And before we get into this, we should be careful to explain that trading is THE
central mechanism for human survival, at least for survival beyond bare
sustenance. Without free trading between humans, we could not have anything
more than what we grow in our own back yards. No water purification, no sewers,
no refrigerators, no heaters, no car, no air travel, nada. If you think self-
sufficiency sounds romantic, go try it for a while. (You have no freaking idea.)
Trading is simply what people do, unless someone forces them not to. Label it
capitalism if you must, but it's really about free trading. And this is the thing that
allows humans to specialize and to increase production. There is enough 'stuff'
on this planet for all of us to have many mansions. The problem is making use of
it. Free trade is the best method ever seen for efficiently allocating scarce goods
to where they can create the most value for people.

3.2.1 The Collective Desire for Monopoly

Collectives, as we have said many times now, behave like living organisms. And
if you look at nature, you will see animal eating animal, with never a guilty
thought. Animals are, from our standpoint, fully amoral. We don't attribute malice
to the bird that eats the worm, do we? There is no morality implied – the bird is
amoral – it is hungry and it eats what it can find.
Collectives have an amoral desire to feed to expand and, like animals, they
will do this to whatever extent is possible.
Humans are, to these organisms, raw material. We are hosts and we are
creators of more power. We are things to be used. It's not that the Collectives are
actually malicious; it's that they are wholly amoral. They want to be the bird, even
if it means that we are the worms.
The basest of economic instincts is to presume what economists call a “zero-sum
game.” That means that there is only so much money (or whatever) to go around.
The name comes from the Game Theory side of economics. Think of the game
Monopoly, which has a strictly limited amount of money in the game's bank.
Here's an example: You sit down with some friends to eat a pizza. Let’s say that
there are twelve pieces and four people, so you each can have three. But if you
are really hungry, you might want a fourth. In order to get a fourth slice of pizza,
for yourself you have to take one slice of pizza away from someone else.
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The zero-sum game is how primitive human societies always looked at wealth.
And it is also how collective idea-organisms still look at wealth. "More" must be
obtained by taking it away from someone else.
The alternative to the zero-sum game is called the positive-sum game. You can
think of a positive-sum game as one where, unlike Monopoly, additional money
can be put into the bank during play.
A positive-sum version of the example above would end with the person wanting
more pizza getting up and making another pie (or driving to the pizzeria to get
one). Additional work produces additional pizza.
Positive-sum is how modern economies work. (They could have worked like this
in the old days too, if everyone hadn't kept trying to steal everything within their
reach.) When they started selling microwave ovens, did people stop buying gas
or electric ranges? Of course not. The people who sold microwaves didn't have
to steal "slices of pizza" from the range makers; they simply "made their own
pie.” Positive-sum economics presumes that humans can create wealth – that
scarcity can be overcome.
If you look at economics this way, you'll find a never-ending set of strategies by
the Collectives to maximize their advantage in the market; a market that they
presume to be zero-sum.

3.2.2 Disapproval and Prohibition

There are two ways in which collective values can work to repress unwanted (by
the Collective) ideas and actions. The first way is through expressions of
collective disapproval, the second is through use of collective Force.
Collective disapproval may not sound as strong as using force, but in many ways
it can be just as effective. Since no one is compelled by force, it is not really a
distortion of the free market, but rather an expression of the values of the
Collective, within the free market. It is, in our opinion, a good idea to ask, "Do we
want our market to reflect the values of parasitic ideas?" If the answer is "no,"
certainly it would be hypocritical to try to use any sort of force to prevent it.
Education concerning the nature of collective idea-organisms would be the only
right answer.

3.2.2.1 Collective Disapproval

If you live in a place where certain actions meet disapproval, you will tend to
modify your behavior, even if there is no other bad consequence to be faced. In
fact, knowing that the people around you disapprove of your actions can make
you feel physically bad.
In most cases, it is the ideological that must bow to the biological. This is
because ideology can change a lot faster than biology. So, the pressure that the
biological exerts on the ideological occurs over more "generations,” and
produces more change. The ideological cannot exist without the biological, nor
exert direct change on it. However, human beings have lived with ideological
replicators long enough that some backwards pressure on human bodies to have
occurred. Rather than any specific ideas enforcing changes in our bodies, our
biology has responded to make us feel a fear of being different than the group.

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The reason that this is a biological survival issue is simple enough. Up until very
recently, from the standpoint of biological evolution, human beings could not
easily move around the planet nor exist in a fairly anonymous way in a big city.
The survival of a human being was, to a great degree, predicated on the ability to
work well within a small group – a tribe. In fact, this structure is seen in other
animals too, and almost certainly predates human thought processes by
hundreds of millions of years.
Amongst a small group, disapproval can be as deadly as any weapon. If the rest
of the tribe believes in the Sun God, and you express your belief in the Moon
God, they may stop taking care of you. They do not need to actually crack your
head open with a rock to seriously hurt your chances for survival. If they only
stop sharing food with you, you're in trouble. If they decide not to back you up
when a big cat comes hunting for some man flesh... well, you're dinner.
Once ideological organisms catch onto this (and remember how fast they adapt)
pressure is put on the biological replicators. The resulting mutations cause
people to feel bad when they are in some way different. This is likely the source
of the quite physical reactions associated with embarrassment and shame. The
biological pressure to change your ideas can be so severe that some groups can
condition people into believing almost anything. (I know you don’t think this could
happen to you, but it really can – your body will betray your mind in a minute. All
your body cares about is physical survival and reproduction – your genes don’t
know and don’t care what strange philosophies might be bouncing around inside
your skull.)
Biology adapts slowly. So, even if you live in a culture where different thoughts
will not lead to being shunned by the tribe and starving to death, your body still
sends chemical messages warning that not blending in is a bad thing. And, since
ideologies may still use the direct method of brute force against the non-believer,
those chemical messages may still be giving you good advice from a physical
survival standpoint.

3.2.2.2 Collective Force

While the expression of the values of Collective Identities bends the free market
away from what it could be if it reflected only individualistic values, it is still a
working market system. The use of force in the cause of the Collective doesn’t
just bend the market, it breaks it.
There is a huge difference between a group of people expressing disapproval –
even refusing to associate – and that same group of people authorizing the use
of force to make a person behave the way they want them to. Morally, it is similar
to the difference between paying for something you want and taking it at
gunpoint.
And there is no doubt that the market is indeed the target of collective idea-
organism interference. A currency (like dollars or Euros) allows for the fluid
exchange of goods and services. It is targeted in cases of prohibition. The first
step towards fully prohibiting goods and services that do not further the goals of a
Collective is to prohibit the exchange of money for them.
Where a society is not yet restrictive enough to be able to ban all unapproved
sex, it can often ban the exchange of sex for money. Where it can not yet remove

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the right of individuals to put anything they want into their own bodies, society
may still make the sale of certain substances illegal.
Where such restrictions are not yet possible, the market can still be skewed by
taxing goods and services that the Collective disapproves of. The mathematics
are fairly simple from the point of view of the Collective – if some activity is an
unwise use of resources, coupling it with a direct contribution to the collective
coffers can cancel the sin. In religion this took its purest form in the purchasing of
indulgences for sins; in the secular world, the form is taxation. (Which are
sometimes even called "sin taxes.”) But even though this is a lesser measure
than criminal charges and punishment, the Collective must still have a means to
enforce such rules.
However, the biggest hit to the market comes when the Collective starts to
enforce its rules through physical violence or the threat thereof. Doing this
invariably requires a new class of people with different powers to act as the
enforcers. This can be trouble even to the Collective that spawns this new
organization.
The first problem is as old as the first police department. It is summed up by the
Latin Phrase, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" which means, "Who will watch the
watchmen?" This group of humans is clearly free to break the rules as long as
they stick together as a group and fail to police themselves.
That policemen are free to break the law is not so bad all by itself – at least not
from the Collective’s standpoint. Just as it is okay for the televangelist to sin in
private as long as he keeps many others toeing the collective line, it is okay for
the cops to be robbers as long as they are all doing more good than harm. The
harm comes from the fact that any group assigned to such a task will evolve its
own group identity.
The higher-level Collective is, in fact, spawning a lower level Collective to act as
one of its organs. Such lower-level Collectives must, by their own evolutionary
logic, do more harm than good, both to Individuals and to the Collective that
spawned them, because they must redirect as much value as they can to their
own survival and growth, and this value is leeched from the higher Collective and
taken from individuals.
However, some of this harm to the Collective is canceled by the advantage of
specialization. Much like biological animals have specialized organs that perform
certain important functions, the evolution of Sub-Collectives can be a net gain for
the overall Collective. It is however, important that Sub-Collectives identify
themselves strongly as such, or they can actually grow to compete with the
overall Collective. (Think military coup)

3.2.2.3 Enforcement Agencies

Let us take a look at the life cycle for a new agency of prohibition:
The agency is being created for some reason. Some good or service exists in the
market that is deemed to be damaging to the collective "way of life." Let us call
our prohibited thing "Behavior X.” If the Collective perceives it to be a large
enough problem we can jump right to the creation of the new agency, but if not, it
might be something that needs study first. So a panel of one or more qualified
people is put together to study the problem.
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The panel gets together to decide if it has a real problem to work with. If it
decides not, then it winds up, and everyone has to go look for a real job.
However, if the panel wisely decides that Behavior X is a serious enough
problem to require prohibition, then, as the "experts" on the evils of Behavior X,
everyone on the panel gets a job that lasts for as long as the Behavior X problem
continues to exist.
So an agency is created to fight Behavior X and it is given a budget to hire the
initial employees (perhaps the original "experts" and many of their friends and
relatives). The Anti-X Agency (AXA) must then come up with a plan of action to
combat Behavior X and put it into effect. If the plan is immediately successful in
wiping out Behavior X then AXA has no more purpose, will receive no more
funding, and all the employees of AXA must go look for a real Job.
As long as Behavior X continues to be a problem, AXA might continue to exist. If
the problem of Behavior X grows or is perceived to grow, AXA will receive more
funding, and more employees (perhaps more friends and relatives) can be hired.
With more employees comes more sub organization, and pay bumps for the new
department heads (those same early employees).
So the main job of AXA is most definitely not solving the problem, but rather
scaring everyone into believing that the problem is worse than ever. On the other
hand, AXA can not be seen to be losing the battle, or it might be replaced by
some other agency, so it must seem to be always winning the battle. Also, we
have new departments all fighting the same way to survive and grow. Eventually
there will be sub-departments, and so on.
Big fleas have little fleas, upon their backs to bite them. And
little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
-- Old proverb
What we have described is the evolutionary process by which a parasitic
organization takes up residence within a larger collective. The final product is an
organization that spends its time and money showboating and scaring you,
always claiming to be winning the war on Behavior X while at the same time
claiming that the problem is also somehow worse than ever. They are forever
claiming to need more resources from us in order to fight this horrible problem,
and ever reminding us what a horrible problem it still is.

The "War On Drugs" is the most obvious example of this sort of organizational budget
growth, and the spending of that budget to further scare the public. It becomes all about
the money, and not at all about protecting people from anything. In the United States, laws
have even been passed allowing drug enforcement agencies to take private property
directly from citizens, and the citizens can only get it back if they can prove that it did not
result from "drug money.” This is exactly opposite from the right of Due Process
guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that requires proof in court before any property can be
taken. As usual the Constitution (the supposed highest level of law) is ignored by The Law.

That sounds pretty bad, but it's even worse when you consider that most of the
agencies in your government are probably operating like this. This evolutionary
process weeds out agencies that are efficient enough to solve the problem they
are asked to solve, or ones that fail to keep the problem in the public mind, or

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ones that don't overreach their original mission. And since the public grows used
to something that stays the same and stops caring about it, only problems that
continue to grow worse will continue to stay in the public mind. So your
government ends up as a large collection of agencies that manage to do just the
opposite of what they are set up to do. Instead of solving problems they make
them gradually worse – or at least scare you into thinking they are worse.
The message from your government is a fairly constant one: "You are in more
danger than ever as we continue to make you even safer!"

3.2.3 Values and Vices

Values are quantities (like numerical values) that we assign to things in the world,
according to how much we prize or despise them. We might not use numbers,
but we do say, "I like that a lot" or "I hate that!" By saying these things, we are
assigning values to those things.
Now, this is important: We express our own values when we reason, decide and
choose. But if we simply follow others and Authorities, it is some idea-organism
that is expressing its values, and we're just an unpaid spokesman.
All expressions of values can be seen as the extension of some replicator or
combination of replicators. For example:

If you like candy, it is because certain genes cause you to be predisposed to the taste of
sugar.
If you prefer boxers to briefs, it could be that that your body is more comfortable that way,
and/or, it could be an ideological question of taste.
If you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing white after Labor Day, then it is certainly just a
question of ideological replicators expressing a strong value.

Vices (depending a bit on how you define them) are things that individuals value
but the prevailing Higher Powers do not like. Ideologies would rather have you do
only things that increase the ideology's chances for survival and replication. Any
time or money you spend doing something that does not further the Higher
Power’s ends is a waste of time, and is certainly something to be discouraged –
those are resources that could be put to work serving the Higher Power's needs.
Depending on the level to which a Higher Power is bothered by an action, vices
will receive some level of tolerance. They can never be eliminated without
eliminating the underlying replicators, and if those replicators are in any part
biological, there is not much chance of this – yet. However, there is certainly a
level of discomfort that a Distributed Identity can impose on its host to suppress
these behaviors.
It can also push its hosts to suppress such actions in others. This can represent
a net win for the Higher Power, if it does not spend too many resources in
discouraging the behavior. In fact, if a host is good enough at discouraging
resource wasting in others (from the Collective’s standpoint), it matters little if a
host engages in those same behaviors privately. This may, in fact, be a common
sort of compromise that can be made between the replicators that must share a
single body.

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This would certainly explain why televangelists always seem to get caught with a
pre-op transsexual prostitute, while snorting cocaine off his-her boobs, and
listening to death metal music – or some other such blatantly hypocritical
behavior.

3.2.3.1 Sex
From the viewpoint of the Collective, sex is a good thing – but only to a point.
Sex leads to babies, and babies have very impressionable minds that are quite
likely to end up hosting a copy of the resident collective idea-organism.
Occupying the mind of a child is much easier than attempting to colonize the
mind of a non-believer and evict the native ideas, so the Collective is very big on
unprotected sex for the purposes of producing children.
So if the Collective is all for sex, why does it seem to have so much to say on the
topic, to the point that it often seems to be against it?
Well, for one thing, the Collective needs sharp hooks in order to motivate people
to do its bidding. If it can convince you that you need to have a special public
ritual that is accepted by the Collective (marriage) before you are getting any,
then it has enlisted a powerful biological drive to its cause. If, on some level,
people are made to believe that they can only have their fix of regular orgasms
with the approval of Church and State, and if they were not good
worshipers/citizens that these pleasures could be denied them, the collective
Higher Powers end up with a lot more enthusiastic believers.

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Also consider that there exist quite a few sexual behaviors that can give people
their orgasm fix, yet are guaranteed to produce no offspring: masturbation, oral
sex, anal sex, gay sex, sex using contraceptives. Wow – look at that – that list,
plus any "extramarital" (non Collective authorized) sex and incest (which can
produce birth defects) would be almost exactly the list of sexual behavior that we
find is routinely discouraged by Higher Powers. Coincidence? Nope. The
Collective definitely likes healthy babies.
Beyond this, there is the guilt factor. This is extremely useful to Collectives. Not
only is guilt very powerful, but it is an emotion. That means that it does not need
reason in order to function. Think about this: Collectives need people to
sometimes act against their own self-interest. How are they supposed to do that?
Encouraging people not to think is one popular way, but humans don't always
comply with that. So, the only other path around reason is emotion. And guilt is a
strong one. Now follow us here...
The sex drive is the most basic, hard-wired, immovable force in humanity (well,
after the need of air, water and food, maybe); it's what keeps the race alive. It is
the one thing that is most difficult to restrain. So, if you make people think that
the sex drive is evil and must be restrained... and they basically cannot do it
except by heroic measures... then you have a super-duper, never-fail way to
create guilt!
After that, getting people to act contrary to their own interest is pretty easy. Make
them feel guilty and make them feel that they owe the Collective the action you
seek, and they'll do it. This has worked like a charm for all of recorded history.
Finally, also consider “gay” sex – an act that produces no offspring – and think
about why the Collective reacts the way it does to the idea of gay-marriage. That
is the idea of condoning a sexual relationship that does not produce offspring. If
you think of it in these terms, it’s not the homosexuality per se, that is the trigger.
The Collective would probably react in much the same way to talk of a new kind
of heterosexual marriage that was to include only oral and anal sex. Many
Collectives are specifically about demanding only reproductive sexual behavior.

3.2.3.2 Drugs
Various chemical substances are known to distort various functions of the human
body. Some of these can be used for medical reasons to produce beneficial
results. Some make people feel good, some bad, and some just interestingly
different. Some are poisonous substances that can kill even in low doses. Many
fall into more than one of these categories at the same time.
So what causes some of these substances to be labeled a vice by the Collective,
while others are considered harmless or actually approved of?
As with the issue of sexual behavior, the major discerning factor is the question
of "Does this behavior serve the needs of the Collective, or does it waste
resources that could better be applied elsewhere?" Of course it is not that cut
and dried, because we are dealing with an evolutionary process with constant
random mutations. Also, advancing technology is constantly uncovering new
substances that have different effects on the human body. Since it takes a while
for a new thing to be evaluated, the general answer is: If it's new it's bad, until it

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is proven good. If it's old, we will try prohibiting it every now and again anyway to
see if that makes things better or worse.
Alcohol is one very interesting case. It has been with human beings for a very
long time, and its value as an anti-bacterial agent has, in the past, helped many
cultures avoid water-born diseases. Before chlorinated and fluoridated water,
people used to drink watered down alcohol, rather than straight water. Straight
water could kill you. Alcohol can also be harmful to people and it can cause
behavior that meets with collective disapproval. (Loss of inhibitions caused by
alcohol might be looked at as a temporary suppression of the parts of the brain
that hold our models concerning approved collective behavior.)
It has a long history of changes in its status from Prohibited to Mandatory and
everywhere in between. Some people say it’s bad, some say its fine. Of course,
the real issue is not whether any given substance is good or bad, but whether we
should allow people to do things that are bad for them.

Imagine a world where, instead of ingesting small amounts of poison to feel differently,
people found they could get high by hitting themselves in the head with hammers. Of
course everyone would have their own hammer type of choice. Tough macho guys would
use sledge hammers. Fancy young ladies would prefer small hammers made of crystal.
There would be an ongoing debate between the ball-peen and claw-hammer crowds,
concerning the quality of the buzz obtained.
In all meaningful ways, it would be the same world as ours. People would certainly become
addicted to the released endorphin from all that hammering. Sometimes they would overdo
it and hammer themselves to the point of seriously injury or even death. Some would have
to go to rehabilitation centers to kick the hammer habit. There would even be some fatal
car accidents because hammer heads were driving while still dizzy from too many blows to
the skull.
And just like our world, certain groups would probably even try to make certain types of
hammers illegal, and jail the people who used or sold them.
Of course, one difference would be that when you called up a friend on a Friday night, you
would say, "Let's go out and get poisoned!"

Making any drug (be it alcohol or heroine) illegal in an attempt to prevent

voluntary destructive behavior, makes just as little sense as outlawing
certain types of blunt objects because people are choosing to hit
themselves in the head with them – or certain types of rope because people
are choosing to hang themselves with them.
Actually deaths due to recreational strangulation/hanging and auto-erotic
asphyxiation have been increasing in the United States. Is it only a matter of time
before the purchase of something as mundane as rope becomes heavily
regulated?

3.2.4 Censorship
Another group of things that Collectives are very keen on controlling is any idea
that it finds dangerous. And it does make some sense for the collective idea-
organism to attempt to restrict control of all media channels. But, as we pointed
out earlier, tight control on information flow can also seriously hurt the health of
the Collective. The areas that do tend to get censored regularly are closely
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aligned with commonly prohibited behavior. Once again it’s a case of Sex, Drugs,
and...

3.2.4.1 Rock and Roll

The ideas of young people are always of great concern to the Collective Identity.
Those youth are the next generation of true believers, and must be infected with
the values of the Collective if it is to continue to survive. However, there is a gap
between the experiences of adults and younger folks. This leads to a rise of a
separate, sub-DI. This is the DI of the new generation. You know the ones who
always know everything that matters, and know that their parents are completely
out of touch. While these kids almost always grow up to adopt most of their
parent's culture, not all of the ideas packaged in the previous generation's DI
cross the generation gap to the next generation. New ideas can and do replace
the old in this turnover. This is a place where the old ideas are really fighting for
their lives.
Music often spreads these ideas, and the adult who stops to listen to the lyrics of
their children’s music is often shocked. This leads concerned mother's groups to
lobby for mandatory labeling of music. This, of course, also applies to
magazines, comic books, video games, and any other media targeting youth.
Sometimes the leisure entertainment of the newest generation goes so far (by
the standards of the older Collective) that it is banned.

3.2.4.2 Pornography and Other Spectator Sports

Because of the link between sexual behavior that is not approved by the
Collective and sexually stimulating information in the form of text, pictures, and
video, it does not seem too odd that the Collective wants to censor erotic media.
Sometimes it even tries to make it out to be an addictive drug. To contrast the
way the Collective Identity acts towards pornography, consider for a moment the
parallels between media that deals with sexual situations and media that deals
with sporting events.
Where the Collective frowns on sexual media, it highly approves of sports media.
Where a father giving his son an adult magazine might be considered evil, a
father giving his son a magazine about baseball would be considered quite
wholesome. They would seem to be entirely different things. However, they are
actually very similar.
Sports media targets the tribal instinct in human beings in exactly the same way
pornography targets the sex drive. Both produce adrenaline rushes that can be
considered addictive. Both give a person a sense of participating in something
exciting where they are not actually participating. Rather than actually going out
and engaging in real sexual behavior, a person can use pornography to receive
vicarious gratification of the sex drive. Likewise, rather than actual engaging in
tribal behavior that involves actually fighting with some other tribe, sports allows
a vicarious outlet for those drives. Just as a person can sexually fixate on a
media icon, rather than actually falling in love with a person they know, so can a
sports fan experience a sense of hero worship over a sports idol, rather than
falling under the influence of a local cult leader. In this way, both mediums are
"gaming" the biological system – deferring biological needs that might lead to
consequences that they are not ready for by faking out their biological replicators.

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The reason the Collective reacts unfavorably to one and favorably to the other
should be pretty clear. The impulses that the individual is redirecting in the sexual
arena are impulses that lead to production of more hosts for the collective DI,
while those that are being redirected in the sporting arena lead to the production
of competing smaller collective DIs that could grow to offer competition. It may be
that by encouraging the creation of harmless Fan DIs that have no teeth, the
Collective is avoiding the formation of a more dangerous type of DI.

This may also explain why the Collective seems to have no problem with the standard plot
of an action adventure movie – or television show, in which the hero stands as an
individual against the Collective. This type of entertainment also serves as an outlet for
impulses that could break apart a Collective's control if channeled into real life actions. If
you can vicariously be in on the fight against the Evil Collective with your favorite action
hero, you don't need to fight for freedom in real life – you can be a good tax-paying citizen.

Perhaps when the University of Michigan “battles” Ohio State in the "Big Game,”
this diffuses a regional rivalry that could otherwise eventually turn into an actual
armed conflict between the two states. The whole concept of organized sports
and the vicarious sense of self-worth that fans draw from watching their team
win, might be what allows Nation States to be as large as they are now without
breaking up into smaller regions fighting each other for the sake of regional pride.
Local jurisdictions regularly buy their professional sports team’s new stadiums,
spending large amounts of local tax dollars. One would think that the higher level
Collective would see this as a waste, unless the resources expended doing this
were far less than what might otherwise be lost to local armament and internal
conflict without this mechanism for diffusing such local DI tensions.
In addition to all this, actually playing team sports serves another important
purpose – preparing young men for war.
Playing sports is different than watching. Rather than the "tribal" unity, it is a
"team" unity. This prepares young men for battle in many subtle ways: Making
sound decisions on the fly, rising to adversity, instinctively helping your
teammates, grace under pressure, seeing many actions at once and integrating
them, and so on.
This is very much in the interest of the Collective, and sometimes in the interest
of the human as well. Just because warfare is essentially evil, don't think that it is
always a waste of time. If you are being attacked, war skills are necessary; very
much necessary. It is a fool's conceit that he can talk an irrational thug out of
violence. And if your DIs don't like the sound of that, remember that history
proves it – over, and over, and over again.

3.2.5 Taxes and Tithing

OK, we just explained that unwanted behavior (from the Collective's standpoint)
can be deterred by expressions of disapproval or through threat of collective
force. Similarly, resources needed by the Collective may be obtained by asking
for donations, with expression of approval towards those who donate and
disapproval towards those who do not, or alternatively, by threatening the use of
force against individuals who do not contribute. Contributing to the Collective

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coffers without fear of force we’ll call tithing, where force is used to obtain the
payment it is called taxation.
Just as with prohibition of goods and services, the use of force to obtain funds
damages the creation of value that free market exchanges might otherwise
produce.
Normally, every free exchange of value creates additional value. This happens
because people will not freely choose to trade unless they value what they
receive more than what they are giving up. If both parties in an exchange value
what they receive more than what they gave up, additional value is created (or
released) in the exchange.
This additional value doesn’t come out of nowhere – it isn’t magic. It is a factor of
goods or services being supplied where they do more good. For example, you
have heard the phrase, "He could sell ice cubes to Eskimos,” which is funny
because Eskimos live in a very cold climate. The phrase, "He could sell ice cubes
to Polynesians," wouldn’t have the same exaggeration-based humor, because
Polynesians live in a hot area, and could really use the ice. Therefore if Eskimos
traded ice with Polynesians in return for pineapples, each would have received
something that they valued more, and thus new value would have been created.
The new value comes from moving something from where it is not highly valued
to where it is.
The great strength of the free market is providing goods and services to
the people and places where they are most needed, producing the most
additional value.
Unfortunately, not only does taxation take value out of the hands of people who
can presumably do more good with it than the Collective, but the taking of it, no
matter how it is done, also creates a deadweight loss in transactions that don’t
happen. This takes value out of the market, and thus reduces the average value
of everyone's lives.
Ten out of ten economists agree that if the free market can provide given
goods or services, having the government provide the same, funded by
involuntary taxation, is a bad thing to do to the economy.
Taxes can be taken from people in many ways.

3.2.5.1 Income Tax

The idea behind income tax is that you give some percentage of money that you
earn to the government. This form of taxation may have originated with the
custom of tithing some percentage of one's income to one’s church. It is a pretty
good system from the standpoint of collecting the money because you are asking
for money from the people that are making money.
The deadweight loss that occurs due to this form of taxation happens because
people need to make a certain amount of money for it to be worth their while to
do a given job. Since they must pay the government part of this money, the bar is
set higher on the salary that an employer must pay for any given job. This means
that there will always be employers and employees who can not quite hook up on
the price that the employer can pay.

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In a nation with income tax, jobs go undone and people remain unemployed.
Without the income tax, this work would get done and economic value would be
created.

3.2.5.2 Sales Tax

The idea of sales tax is that on any economic transaction involving money, the
Collective takes some percentage. Again, like in the case of income tax, this
leads to deadweight loss in transactions that do not occur due to the higher
prices that are required of a buyer for the same goods. Buyers that would have
made a purchase at the untaxed price will not necessarily find any value in the
exchange at the taxed price.

3.2.5.3 Inflation of Currency

Sometimes called a "hidden tax,” a Collective that controls the issue of currency
can fund itself by simply printing more currency. This causes everyone’s currency
to actually be worth less than it was previously, but it is not so obvious that value
is being taken. Deadweight loss is caused here by the fact that prices will always
be somewhat higher than they would otherwise be to reflect the knowledge that
money is losing value over time.

Think of it this way: Everything in the United States has a certain amount of monetary
value. And, there are only a certain number of dollars in circulation. So, let's say that your
factory is worth 0.01% of all US dollars. Now, if Congress goes out and prints up 20%
more dollars, your factory is worth only 0.008% of all US dollars. The long, slow result is
that the dollar has lost about 99% of its value since the Federal Reserve Act that allowed
Congress to print up money with relative impunity. (Not that any other countries are much
better about this. Many are much worse. This always happens when politicians take
control and the currency is uncoupled from real value, such as gold, silver, or any other
real world goods or services.)

On the plus side, this form of taxation causes no additional deadweight loss in
the overhead for calculation and collection of the taxes that requires work for no
economic benefit whatsoever.

3.2.5.4 Other Possible Tax Revenues

A few other ways to tax occurred to us while writing this, but since governments
never stick to just one method of taxation, even if the ways we came up with
might be better, it would be VERY irresponsible for us to publish them and give
the Collective new ideas about how to take your money. This is particularly true
since each new type of taxation causes additional unplanned consequences and
requires additional compliance costs.
If the government could be convinced to only have one type of tax, it could raise
the level of that tax such that it would be the same revenues as the current
multiple tax systems. The boon to the economy of not having to deal with the
compliance costs of multiple systems would be significant.
It has also been shown that in some cases reducing tax rates can actually
increase tax revenues. When taxes are decreased, the amount of damage that

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taxation is doing to the economy is decreased. This can stimulate more
economic activity and actually result in higher tax revenues.
This was famously illustrated by a diagram called the "Laffer Curve" named after
an economics professor who sketched it on a napkin for some politicians. These
politicians went on to argue publicly that tax revenues could actually be
maximized by lowering taxes. While this can indeed be true, any argument that
starts with the premise that our goal is to maximize the amount of value put into
the hands of the government does not sit well with us.

3.2.5.5 Government Fees

It also is possible to have a system of taxes in which people pay only for the
government services they voluntarily use. Sometimes called "Consumption
Based Taxes," these are the most free-market friendly form of tax there is, and
might not even be called taxes, per se.
However, if private parties could offer the same services legally, and the choice
to use government or non-government services was voluntary, then the
government service would just be another competitor. In that case why have
government service at all?
The fact that government services are almost always protected monopolies, or
are not voluntarily purchased, means they need not, and therefore will not, offer
the same value as a non-government service organization.

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3.3 Good Enough for Government Work
Wealth is created through individual actions and transactions between
individuals. Not only do Collectives use this newly-created wealth for their own
ends (at the expense of individuals), but wherever the Collective intrudes on the
free market – requiring and prohibiting economic behavior by threat of collective
force – the result is always inefficiency. Not only does such market interference
cause economic deadweight loss by repressing actions that would otherwise
create value, but governments often intrude to the degree of completely taking
over whole industries. Let us look at a typical path by which this happens.

3.3.1 Regulation
The first intrusion of the Collective into any industry is the start of regulation. This
begins with information coming to light about how this industry could be better.
Perhaps it could make safer products – perhaps it could be less polluting – the
claim is that there is something this industry could be doing somehow better.
Always, this is mixed with a certain amount of fear, envy or outrage to better sell
the idea.
The free market would normally take care of this problem, as new information
gets to customers and they look for a competitor in the industry that does this
thing better. If it costs more to do this thing, then people decide if it is worth it to
them by how much they are willing to pay. This is a signaling system that works
perfectly, given perfect information.
Regulation can only be good if the regulators always have better
information and always act benignly. Neither is normally seen to be true.
In the name of making the world a safer place, the Collective creates regulations
concerning the industry and creates a new agency to enforce these new
prohibitions of economic behavior. Now, much like the cases we have previously
talked about concerning agencies of prohibition, this agency begins to grow and
branch out. It increases the number of regulations and the degree to which it
enforces these regulations.
The cost of any good or service offered by the industry has already started to
increase in response to the cost of compliance with regulations, but this
additional drain on the economy is only paying for the additional cost of doing
business, it is not paying for the cost of enforcement. The money that pays for
this new agency has to come from somewhere. If the people had been willing to
voluntarily pay more for this better safer industry, the new agency would never
have needed to exist, so they certainly are not going to be happy about paying
the additional costs plus oversight and enforcement costs.
Licensing is the usual next step as a means of both raising revenue and
exercising greater control over the industry.

3.3.2 Licensing
So the next step, if this industry “needs” to have oversight, is to make it pay for it.
A new oversight tax is then implemented in the form of licensing fees. And to
justify these fees, additional levels of oversight are added in the form of verifying
the suitability of anyone trying to get a license. This means that before any new
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player enters this industry, they will have to have a stamp of approval from the
Collective.

There is even a religious example of licensing. Actions of individuals are controlled by a

church through the concept of Sin, in much the way the government regulates through the
concept of Law. Churches used to allow people licenses to sin – called Plenary
Indulgences. They would allow the rich to buy the right to act as they chose. (The church
was issuing a "license to kill" before James Bond's agency, MI6 ever existed.)

The interesting thing here is that when this occurs, there may already be a free
market organization (that is to say, one that can not get away with using force
and thus has to provide real value) that has already been certifying members of
this profession. This organization may call itself a school and provide training
followed by certification, or it may just call itself a rating agency, but it is in the
business of giving consumers additional information when it comes time to
choose from many competitors in an industry. More than one competing rating
industry may even (and likely does) exist.
The government (the Collective that can get away with using force) doesn't like
competition, so if it's going to go into the rating industry, it is going to want to get
rid of these competing organizations. The easiest way is to just absorb them (see
below), making them part of the government. This is done either by actually
declaring them governmental, or by cementing a relationship with one of them
such that its credentials are accepted, and all other agencies credentials become
worthless. In exchange, the Collective assumes control of all policies for the
previously free-market rating agency, which now has a product that is legally
mandated.
You might expect the actual professionals in this line of business to complain
about this – maybe go on strike or something, but it turns out that they like the
situation. You see, the harder it gets to satisfy the government to get a license to
be in the industry, the less competition there is.
The natural laws of economics say that when demand is restricted, prices go up.
This means that the people lucky enough to already be in this line of work are
now making a lot more money – more than enough to afford the government
licensing fees. If they are really lucky, the government will not only shield them
from competitors, but they may also decide that their services are necessary for
everyone, and make it mandatory for some or all of the people in the Collective to
become customers.

The AMA (American Medical Association) is an example (just one of many) of a

government supported trade union in the United States. The government puts the task of
licensing of doctors into the hands of the AMA. It then carefully restricts the number of new
doctors that are allowed to practice each year, and thus makes sure that the cost of
medical care is kept high. This high cost benefits the members of the AMA financially. It is
also used by the government as a political tool to justify greater regulation of medical
matters. This is the same system used by every union, trade association, or guild, since
this form of Collective Identity first evolved.

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3.3.3 Absorption
When everyone is forced to pay more than they want for a product they do not
want (does that sound familiar?) then the government does its final trick. It has
already infiltrated this industry on all levels, so it is no big move to just declare it
to be a government service. They combine everyone in the business (if they want
to remain licensed to practice) into a single non-competitive government agency.
In a final bit of bitter irony, if the Collective is not strong enough to do this without
explaining itself to the people, it claims that it is doing this to reduce the rising
costs that are hurting this vital industry, and to protect it from the perils of the free
market.

In the United States, the airline industry is right on the verge of this level of governmental
control. These days the Geography Distributed Identity is very strong in the form of the
Nation State, so travel is a highly suspect thing and prone to strong control. The railroads
have been an effectively nationalized industry in the United States for many years, and it is
quite possible that the U.S. Government will find the necessary excuses to do the same
with the airlines. The hobgoblin of terrorism is already moving things in that direction.

3.3.4 The Finest First

The first private businesses to be absorbed or replaced by any government are
justice providers. Living in a non-frontier area (as you almost certainly do) the
idea that a police officer could be anything but a government employee may
seem ridiculous to you. This is a Collective Identity talking – there is no
conceptual reason why a system of privatized justice can not work.
In the United States today, security guards and bounty hunters employed by bail
bondsmen are all that is left of private justice providers. But in the early days of
the United States, private cops were well known. The Pinkerton National
Detective Agency, established in 1850 was the largest police agency (public or
private) in the country during the late 19th Century.
In theory, the only thing that separates a government authorized police officer
from any other citizen is a government monopoly on the job of serving warrants.
This certainly need not be the case – at least in theory. A government that only
consisted of legislatures and courts could exist, and when some person or group
wanted law enforced, they could pay any of multiple private law enforcement
services to do it.

The Framers of the United States Constitution saw "policeman" as just another job like
"plumber.” They likely did not think of a policeman as having to be a government
employee, or even someone who had to be licensed.
Today, in the US, law enforcement agents are almost a separate class of citizen, with
many special laws protecting them. It is illegal to impersonate a police officer – much as a
serf in feudal Europe was not allowed to dress like a noble. It can even be more illegal to
physically defend yourself against a large armed and armored man who breaks into your
house in the middle of the night, than to do harm to a defenseless little girl in her own
home – that is if he has a badge and she doesn't.

Under such a system, when you felt you had been wronged (let’s say someone
stole your car) you would obtain a warrant from a court and could go to a police
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agency to arrange a deal with them for trying to recover your property and/or
bring the alleged criminal to justice. A private insurance company could be
involved to pay you for your loss and pay a police agency to try to recoup their
loss – also saving you the trouble of having to negotiate with the private police
agency.
There is no reason why such a system could not be made to work. In fact, there
have been such systems at various times and places in history. The reason they
do not last, and the reason you have all sorts of objections to the idea popping up
in your mind, is that such a system does not allow for a lot of the laws that
various idea-organisms would like to have in place. Control of law enforcement is
the first place that idea-organisms attack to gain control over the actions of any
group of people.
A government monopoly over law enforcement is the gateway thug.
Until this is allowed, government can not control any other industry. Until this is
allowed, there can be no enforcement of laws concerning victimless crime. If
there is no victim, who would complain?
Laws based on immoral behavior – drug laws, prostitution laws, gambling laws –
are all the product of idea-organisms. They are all attempts to force ideas of
some code of behavior on people that don't think the same thoughts. Laws that
mandate any business to be licensed or operate a certain way are likewise a
product of the need of the Collective to control things. Immorality laws and
economic controls are both examples of laws that regulate otherwise voluntary
behavior and contractual exchanges of value between consenting individuals.
Collective idea-organisms can not assert serious control over individual behavior
until you have a government designated law enforcement agents going around
looking for people who break the rules, rather than a justice provider responding
to actual complaints. The out of control growth of government agencies and bad
legislation all starts with the monopolization of justice – the change over from
Justice Providers to Law Enforcement Agents.

3.3.5 Consequences
Real world observation and experimentation shows us that everything is more
expensive and lower quality when the Collective does it. But why should this be?
Perhaps the waste lies in the transfer of value from individuals to the Collective –
like the waste one sees in any transfer of energy from one form to another.
Perhaps it is lost in the costs of the battle between individual and collective
interests – the cost of taking it away from the individual. Maybe it is the cost of
the damage done by the parasitic memes that get bound up in the Collective
idea-organism? Whatever the reason, everything is at least twice as expensive
when the Collective does it. That is why when they do something, they are the
only ones allowed to do it. Free market competition would be more efficient and
would make the government look silly.
To hide the fact that it is more costly, the price is often partially deferred into
general taxes. Thus people are left paying only somewhat more for somewhat
worse product and services, but separately, paying a higher tax bill. The tax bill
may even look reasonable as a line item, after all it is a charge concerning a very
vital industry, and the government is the only provider, so it seems reasonable...
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The progression from freedom to control continues mostly without interruption.
This progression, like all progressive control by the Collective, is very hard to
stop and seems to be almost always one way. Given enough time, the Collective
will first regulate and then take over any industry. It will start with those that are
most vital and move on to all of them. It is almost always a one way journey
towards more central control.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a
few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate
it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan

3.3.6 Deregulation
When things start to get bad there will sometimes be pressure against central
control and talk of free markets performing better. At such times a government
may be forced to do a feeble experiment in deregulation. This will be done by
removing some controls, while leaving others in place, in such a way that is
guaranteed to choke the industry.
One example might be opening up a free market in the suppliers for that industry,
but continuing to fix prices for the end product. When the market for supplies
rises temporarily above the level where the end product can be produced and
sold for a profit, the industry starts to die and the government will move back in
and declare "deregulation" a failure.

In 1996 the California State government announced that it was “deregulating” the power
industry. However the actual legislation enacted included rules about who could own
power plants, who could sell power to whom, time limits on power contracts, and strict
pricing controls – while other California laws made it a practical impossibility to build new
power plants as demand increased. California was experiencing regular blackouts by 2001
and “deregulation” was widely criticized as the villain of the story – never mind that the
State’s scheme more closely resembled a communist 5 year plan than a free market.

From then on, politicians can point to the failed experiment in “deregulation”
whenever anyone suggests that free markets might actually work.
God help us!

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3.4 How Bad Laws Happen to Good People
When talking about law, it is necessary to remember what we discussed earlier,
that there are two differing philosophies of law:
Natural Law (also called Negative Law) is based upon the idea that you are free
to do whatever you want, except things that are specifically forbidden, because
they hurt other people. This was expressed in the Common Law as the idea that,
“Your freedom to swing your fist only ends where my nose starts.”
Positive Law is characterized by legislation from authority, and is based upon the
idea that an authority can make things forbidden or mandatory.
Legislation, the deliberate making of law, has justly been
described as among all inventions of man the one fraught with
the gravest consequences, more far-reaching in its effects even
than fire and gun-powder. Unlike law itself, which has never
been 'invented' in the same sense, the invention of legislation
came relatively late in the history of mankind. It gave into the
hands of men an instrument of great power which they needed
to achieve some good, but which they have not yet learned so
to control that it may not produce great evil. It opened to man
wholly new possibilities and gave him a new sense of power
over his fate. The discussion about who should posses this
power has, however, unduly overshadowed the more
fundamental question of how far this power should extend. It will
certainly remain an exceedingly dangerous power so long as we
believe that it will do harm only if wielded by bad men.
-- Friedrich A. Hayek, "Law, Legislation and Liberty"
Natural Law is much better for the individual. Positive Law is much better for the
collective idea-organism.
Under natural law, the local policeman is a Peace Officer not a Law Enforcer. His
job is to keep life moving forward safely and productively. Under Positive Law,
the police officer is employed by the state to detect crimes. In the former case the
cops respond to requests from people who think something is wrong and they try
to make it right. In the latter case the cops go looking for people who may well
think that what they are doing is right but the government has made it wrong.
Natural Law was the original Common Law of England, which was then passed
to the entire English-speaking world. Over time, layers of legislation have brought
the English systems of law closer to Positive Law, but so far the foundation is still
holding somewhat firm. In many places, the foundation of the legal system was
actually Positive Law, but the success of the Anglosphere (English-speaking)
countries has encouraged many to emulate the Common Law, at least in part.
This gives us a world of mostly mixed Natural and Positive Law systems.
For the balance of this section, we'll be talking about a mixed system with a
Natural Law basis but a layer of Positive Law instated by later legislation, as is
the case in most of the United States. The roots in the English Common Law
system still provide protection and value to individuals but collective idea-
organisms are often able to use the layer of positive law for their own ends.

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3.4.1 The Law of the State
Law enforcement organizations play a key role in any Collective. The laws of a
society can be thought of as the society's genetic code. While the rules of
conduct in the minds of the people may vary, the purpose of a law enforcement
organization is, theoretically, to keep societal norms of behavior in line with the
laws of the land. Different organizations are often charged with enforcing different
sets of laws.
As we mentioned previously, such organizations are also the products of
evolutionary pressure. They usually come into being as a result of some
perceived problem that they are charged with solving. If they actually solve the
problem, then they are no longer useful and will eventually disappear. If they
seem to be too ineffectual however, they will also tend to disappear. This
naturally leads to the existence of a collection of organizations that look very
busy, but never actually solve any problems.
The other thing that an organization must do to successfully survive is to provide
feedback in the society that perpetuates its own existence. They must continually
exaggerate the magnitude and threat of the behavior that they have been
charged with modifying. For example: Witch hunters would soon be out of a job if
they did not regularly find witches to burn (whether they were there to be found or
not) and exaggerate the power and danger of the witches that they defeated.
The end product of this is that the successful law enforcement agency must put
on a good show of fighting a "war" against a problem that is always growing, and
claim the need for more and more resources and power to combat the “growing
threat.” They will also continually lobby for more laws for them to enforce and
greater protection for the existence of their organization under the law.

3.4.2 How Far Shall It Go?

At one time new laws were hard to come by. Legislators had to travel long
distances on horseback, discussion took time, voting took time, and getting the
new laws to each little town took a very long time. But now, with jets, email and
FedEx, new laws happen fast – in response to short lived media hyped issues.
Worse, politicians are always trying to prove their worth by pointing to the new
laws they enacted! Laws are multiplying, and that is NOT a good thing. More and
more "victimless crimes" are being legislated. Where does it all end? How do we
stop legislators from legislating?

Actually, we do have one good example of how to keep legislators from making new laws.
In the United States, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, the U.S. Congress spent a very
large amount of its time discussing oral sex instead of passing laws. It seems that
Legislators find sex scandals more interesting than creating new restrictions on our
freedoms. A presidential sex scandal would seem to be a recipe for less legislation.
This same time period produced huge economic growth and a boom of new technology
companies. Coincidence? Maybe. But perhaps it is an experiment worth repeating.
We would suggest that freedom loving people everywhere should try to vote in such a way
that different branches of your government are always controlled by different political
parties. (Political gridlock is our friend.) Furthermore, trying to elect politicians who you
believe will find themselves in juicy public scandals seems to be a very good idea.

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One example of police activities against victimless crimes is now called the "War
on Drugs." Literally millions are imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses.
Granted, many of these drugs are essentially poisons and taking them is stupid...
but do we really need to throw millions of kids into jail to prove that we are
righteous?
Perhaps you can see from our drug war rant that there is another element here:
Once "the law" exists under the legitimacy of the collective DI, it is very hard to
change. After all, "It's The Law!" and "If we don't respect The Law, we'll have
anarchy!"
None of this is to say that there is not a legitimate place for a system of law, that
snorting coke is good, or that we should allow people to sell these poisons to
children on their playgrounds. But, once these ideas become "The Law," they
have the legitimacy of a revered icon, which makes them very hard to question or
to remove. This is a mistake and the “war on drugs” is just one great example
where it stands out.
Legitimizing laws for any other reasons than their effectiveness at producing
greater value for individuals is an error. A law is NOT good because it is part of
"our system;” it is only good if it produces good results.
To respect a law for anything but its direct benefits to us is not really respect, it is
worship.

3.4.3 Are Any Laws Good?

We have been complaining a lot about central authority and the controls it places
on individual freedoms. However, this may contrast sharply with the idea you
might have in your head that some kind of law is necessary or good. Most people
agree that there is too much law, and that a lot of it is ill-considered, but almost
no one thinks there should be no law at all.
So when is law a good thing, and why?
Earlier in the book we talked about some memes falling into the "altruistic"
category. These are ideas that stabilize a society and create an environment that
is safer for the breeding and exchange of the local memes. Since societies with
bad laws can certainly lose out to those with good laws, the evolutionary
pressure is for the laws to promote the continued existence of the society. Since
society is made up of people, this can't help but do some good for some people
some of the time.
However, for a law to be, on average, a good thing, it must create more value
than it removes in restricted freedoms. (All laws restrict human action in one way
or another.) This is actually a hard thing to measure.
It is important to understand that law does not directly produce value. Human
behavior naturally produces value and sometimes – to a lesser extent – losses.
The best law can do is to minimize the losses. If the losses it eliminates are
greater than the costs it imposes, then it is a good law. If the costs of
enforcement are greater than the losses it is preventing, it is a bad law.
The problem with tabulating all of this is that counting the losses that a law
prevents is almost impossible. Once people know that there is an effective law in
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place, some of those who might otherwise do nasty things will think twice. So,
any calculation of the avoided losses has to be based upon guesses.
Someone who wants law to be justified will guess very high; someone who is not
too fond of law might guess low. Collective idea-organisms want lots of law to
channel all behavior and thought into pathways that will not produce competing
ideas. So those infected with such idea-organisms will always be guessing on the
high side.
All of this leaves the people who want government and law to expand endlessly
in the advantageous position: How can you actually prove that it wouldn't be
worse? You can't. You may be able to show that it is highly unlikely to get worse,
but the big government types can make powerful appeals to fear with simple
arguments. The minimum government types have to appeal to reason and to use
fairly complex arguments about the economics of free thought and action. The
maximum government people don't have to use arguments anymore complex
than, "Without this law, no one will be safe!"
So, what is the right amount of law? The answer is, "We don't really know." We
do, however, know that law can impose huge costs upon a society. It is very
likely that when the costs of law are high, they outweigh the losses that law is
supposed to prevent.
Some accepted system of resolving disputes will always be a useful thing in our
complex world, simply because people will always disagree over things. It is
better to have a responsible third party solve the problem than have people
fighting about it endlessly. (It might be ideal if people resolved their own disputes,
but we're talking about reality now, not what people "should" do.) There is reason
to believe that such a system of law need not be put into the hands of a central
authority – that there are ways to create a sort of free market in laws and justice.
But even if this is a possible system, getting from where we are to there could be
quite a trick.
In his book "The Machinery of Freedom,” David Friedman discusses the
possibilities of free market legislation, law enforcement, and courts. He says:
In such a society law is produced on the market. A court
supports itself by charging for the service of arbitrating disputes.
Its success depends on its reputation for honesty, reliability, and
promptness and on the desirability to potential customers of the
particular set of laws it judges by. The immediate customers are
protection agencies. But the protection agency is itself selling a
product to its customers. Part of that product is the legal
system, or systems, of the courts it patronizes and under which
its customers will consequently be judged. Each protection
agency will try to patronize those courts under whose legal
system its customers would like to live.
It is also important to remember that the enforcement costs of law can be very
high, but are often completely ignored, as if they were inevitable. Enforcement
costs are not just paid in dollars, but in lives lost and in liberty surrendered. The
ongoing costs of imprisoning a significant percentage of society can be
incalculable. In many cases, the costs of fully enforcing a law may actually be

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infinite. Unfortunately, that still does not stop enforcement agencies from trying to
do the job.
The sensible thing to do, then, would be to have the minimal necessary law, and
the most efficient administration of that law.
Bear in mind that very limited systems of law in the past produced excellent
results. The English Common Law, the Lex Mercatoria (Law Merchant) and
others did a fine job, with enforcement costs that were a tiny fraction of what we
pay now. In addition, these systems of law easily adapted, largely because they
were not under strong government control. (How many times have you seen a
legislature erase a law that wasn't working? Ever?)
In some cases, a law that provided benefit at one time no longer works in light of
new technology or other changes in a society. Of course this will not stop
enforcement agencies from trying to enforce it and from continuing to hype the
necessity of the job they do. (Consider the costs of trying to enforce copyright law
since the invention of the Internet.)
Whenever the costs of enforcement can be seen to be continually increasing, it is
a very good sign that the law being enforced is no longer a good one by any
reasonable definition. Whenever more people are being punished every year for
breaking a law, rather than less, this is a good clue that something might be
wrong with the law. Keep in mind that punishment itself is a cost – especially
from the point of view of the person being punished. If your first thought here is
"But they are criminals!" you are thinking in terms of Collective Identities again.
The existence of the law in question is all that has made them criminals. Without
that law, they are law abiding citizens.
If it is a bad law, then considering those who break it to be criminals is a bad
thing.

In 1897, a bill was introduced into the Indiana House of Representatives that would
legislate the value of Pi to be a rational number. No one in the State Congress seemed to
be bothered by the fact that this law was attempting to contravene a known mathematical
law of the universe in which we live. (Apparently the idea was that it would be of benefit to
the majority of people, who do not understand how irrational numbers work, if irrational
numbers simply did not exist.)
Several possible alternative values were considered to replace the irrational value of Pi,
which is, in the real world, approximately 3.14159..., including either 3 or 4, for people who
could only deal with whole numbers or 3.2 for those that had mastered their decimals but
had not learned how to round them off properly.
While it did not actually become law, the bill did pass in the House by a vote of 67 to 0
before dying in committee in the Senate. It may have failed to become law only because
the Senate was very busy and there were many matters, more important than saving
people from irrational numbers.
Also it was probably unclear to the Senators how this law would have put any money into
their pockets. (Although one would think that these politicians would have welcomed the
promotion to legislating the laws of the universe rather than just the laws of Indiana.)

3.4.4 Is it Worth Killing For?

The idea behind law is to write down what things society will not tolerate – what
actions society is willing to use violence to punish. The problem is that once you
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have such a list, it allows anyone who has a way of adding things to that list to
focus collective violence on things they don't like. So we end up with laws that
are violently enforced, even if the majority of people would say that the "crime" is
not something worth using violence to prevent.
One of the ways that bad law comes about is through the “binary thinking” that
Collective Identities encourage. People who succumb to binary thinking feel that
something must be either good or bad – this leads gradually to a legal position
that all behaviors should be either forbidden or mandatory.
To allow a free society, people need to stop voting for legislation that makes
things that they like mandatory and things that they don't like forbidden. They
need to instead ask themselves the question "Is it worth killing for?"
All the big crimes, that people are sure should be illegal – murder, rape, assault,
theft, and the like – are crimes that you know are worth fighting and possibly
killing for. If you saw someone doing any of these things, you would have no
problem initiating violence to stop it. Or if you did not feel up to the task, you
would have no problem with the idea that someone else would initiate that
violence to prevent the crime. It would not bother you that the person doing the
evil deed might be hurt or killed. You would probably even believe that preventing
or punishing such a crime would be worth the risk of the person coming to the
rescue as well, perhaps even if you were that rescuer.
Now think about all the victimless crimes against which laws are regularly passed
and violently enforced. Would you feel right breaking down someone else's door
and physically assaulting them to prevent them from eating or smoking one plant
but not another? What about the behavior you engage in privately – if someone
else did not like what you are doing at home, should they break down your door?
The Collective is quite willing to risk individual lives in enforcing a wide array of
laws – controlling all the behavior it can. Individuals are much less willing to risk
violence than collective idea-organisms. Probably because individuals have only
one body and it is precious to them, where as the Collective has many bodies,
and they each individually mean very little to it. Would you personally risk
violence to ensure the enforcement of all the laws you claim to agree with?
The only correct test of whether a law is worthwhile or not, is to ask yourself, "Is
this worth violence? Is it worth the risk that someone will die over this?"
The problem is, when it comes to voting on laws, you have to either vote Yes or
No. Well, actually, you can abstain, but trinary logic is not much better than
binary logic in this regard. So when you are a congressman, and someone
introduces a stupid bill to prevent some sort of private act of sexual perversion or
unhealthy (but quite voluntary) behavior, you are presented with three choices:
1. Vote YES, even though you would not really think it is worth having such
a law that will be violently enforced, perhaps resulting in deaths, to
prevent such voluntary consensual behavior.
2. Vote NO, even though you don't really like the behavior, and then have
your political opponents forever after publicly label you as being in
support of something you actually disagree with. (See how the legislative
system supports binary logic? You are either with us or against us!)
3. Abstain, and let others decide the vote.
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The correct answer is of course #2, but every time you choose that route you are
giving your political opponents more ammunition. Do it enough and soon you are
no longer a congressman. You will be replaced by someone willing to vote YES
or abstain on such issues. This is true unless the people who are doing the
voting can think more clearly than the usual binary Good/Bad – Us/Them mindset
that the Collective encourages.
As an individual citizen you face the same issue. With binary thinking, you can
not publicly speak out against overreaching laws without seeming to support
those things that the laws are trying to ban. It is very difficult to have to say "I am
not in favor of it, but I don't think there should be a law,” even though retaining a
free society requires that we all do just that – and often.
Because this is hard to do, many issues not actually worthy of violent
enforcement, become law. First the behavior becomes unpopular through
collective disapproval. Then someone infected strongly by a collective idea-
organism proposes legislation. Then people have trouble not agreeing that
something unpopular should be illegal.
Every behavior eventually becomes mandatory or forbidden as the Collective
grows in power. This is how totalitarianism comes into being.
First they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I
wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the sick, the so-called incurables, and I didn't
speak up, because I wasn't mentally ill.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I
was a Protestant.
By the time they came for me, no one was left to speak up.
-- Poem based on speeches by Pastor Martin Niemöller

3.4.5 Bad Breeds Bad

It is also worth noting that creating one bad law often leads to more bad laws.
There are two related reasons for this. One is the "slippery slope" effect. The
other is the effect of seeing "The Law" as an icon.

3.4.5.1 Slippery Slope

Most people are quite familiar with the "slippery slope" phenomena. And it is a
hard thing to resist. The only defense against it is to stand strongly on principles
and never give in to incremental erosion of our rights. This is hard because your
opposition will always have the position of seeming more reasonable than you.
They will always be suggesting just a small change in existing laws that does not
reduce freedom too much, and *might* help solve some problem.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
-- David Hume
The most insidious part of this is that this slow creep of more and worse laws can
happen over generations. If every generation allows just a little more law, and
gives up just a little more freedom, over the course of a few hundred years,

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freedom can become slavery. There is a noticeable "ratcheting effect" that
happens – in which Laws can not be rolled back.

3.4.5.2 Ratcheting
The "Law as icon" problem we talked about previously is the cause of this
"ratcheting effect" which keeps bad laws from being repealed. The Law is held as
something semi-holy, so once something is called illegal it has then been
assigned a sinister quality beyond its actual relative merits or demerits. Even if
the prohibited behavior was just barely thought bad enough to make illegal
before, the additional bad feelings that calling it “illegal” generate act to “lock it
in.” Something illegal must be bad, so trying to repeal a law must then be a bad
thing to do. This makes adding laws to the system a one way procedure. Add to
this a political body that must justify its own existence by always doing something
new, and you can expect the growth of law to be a constant one way process.
While the "slippery slope" is a problem – there is also something worse going on.
Deciding whether something should be legal or illegal is ideally a process of
logical reasoned debate. Of course it never is – it is usually all about the use of
emotional appeal and various other logical fallacies – but that is not what we are
discussing now. What we are trying to point out is that even when people do try
to think logically about new laws, existing law gets thought of as being a given.
In logical terms, existing laws tend to get thought of as axioms rather than
theorems. That is, they are held as givens that can not be disproved; because of
this, once a bad law is passed, it can be used logically to create more bad law.
For example:
In the United States, immigration is a big issue. No one will argue that past
waves of immigration helped build the country, but now immigration is resisted.
One of the "logical" arguments against immigration is that, when unskilled people
come to our country, we will somehow have to support them with our tax dollars
– paying for their schooling and health care. Therefore, we should not let people
immigrate here that might take more out of "the system" than they put in.
This sounds plausible, but you could also look at it from another standpoint. You
could acknowledge that immigration was a good thing in the past – and was part
of the great success of the country. Then you could decide that if welfare makes
immigration a problem, it is the concept of welfare that must be flawed. An
argument that puts two concepts – immigration and welfare – into opposition with
each other should open each concept up to inspection of its relative worth.
However, if the Icon of "The Law" makes the existing law seem unchangeable,
then one bad law can "quite logically" produce many additional bad laws to
terrible effect – for example, shutting off a country to any influx of new productive
members.
Laws that are unchangeable, even when they have unforeseen consequences,
can be horribly damaging to a society. It is a VERY bad idea to take a logical
system like law and then set things up so you can only add theorems – never
remove them – and never try new axioms. Such a system will just paint you into
a corner over and over again, and produce more bizarre and draconian laws in
each attempt to patch each previous mistake that can never be undone.

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3.5 Praxeology and Other Big Words
Praxeology (PRAKS-see-OL-uh-gee) is the more general study of human action
that grew out of the narrower field of Economics. Initially, Economics sought only
to quantify and explain the production, distribution, and consumption of goods
and services, but it eventually became clear that all aspects of human values and
actions feed into these issues. Praxeology, therefore, arose as an overarching
attempt to explain all values and actions that feed into the market of goods and
services.
One of the common starting points of Praxeology and Economics is the
assumption that individuals make rational, self benefiting, choices – if not always,
then at least on average. This starting point has been useful in explaining many
observed market phenomena, but has certainly fallen short of explaining a great
deal of what we observe as human behavior.
We believe that the reason Praxeology has fallen short of its goals is actually
fairly simple: Praxeologists have not taken into account the fact that market
pressures do not arise from individual human beings, but rather from replicators
– genetic or memetic.
Because human beings are creatures of both biology and ideology, they are
uniquely able to have desires that conflict with each other. Where the actions of
most all biological creatures are driven solely by their genetic code, human
beings play host to additional ideological replicators. While genetic replicators are
forced to mostly play nicely together, because they succeed or fail to reproduce
as a group, memetic replicators can work directly against the wishes of the host's
genetic code, and against other memes in the same host’s head.
When religious fanatics strap on bombs and blow themselves up, it is clear that
the desires of their ideological replicators are overriding the desires of their
biological replicators. The value pressure that the religious replicator is creating
inside the individual is, at least temporarily, overriding the individual’s biological
desires for survival and sexual reproduction.
Since there are conflicting market pressures inside individual human
beings, the assumption that individuals are the source of value is an error.
Praxeology and its subset, Economics, should in fact, be viewed as subsets of
information theory. Since it is these replicating patterns of information, and the
ways in which they interact, that actually create the values, it is the propagation
and interaction of these replicators which must be studied to understand patterns
of human interaction.
To understand the human animal’s behavior, a couple important questions need
to be answered:
1. How do the various wants of the many replicators that influence a
human mind add up to produce an individual human being’s behavior?
2. Why does the biological desire for continued life sometimes give way to
actions that are sure to result in death?

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3.5.1 The Animal Inside
Let’s start out by making some educated guesses at what goes on inside the
mind of an animal in governing its behavior. Human beings can be thought of as
animals with an additional level of replicating ideological information. Many
animals are quite capable of quite sophisticated learned behavior; they just are
not as good as people at communicating what they know to others. Our theories
about how animals process the world around them should give us some insight
into the first level of motivation that affects human behavior: the purely biological.
The brain has evolved as an organ for storing and processing information
collected by the nervous system and every animal with a brain as complex as
that of a flatworm or better has the ability to learn from its environment. Without
the ability of animals to learn, all useful behavior would need to be encoded
specifically in the animal’s genes. With the ability to learn, general patterns of
behavior may be genetically encoded and applied to specific situations. When
they work well or poorly, they can be used again or ruled out for the given
situation.
For example, pretend you are a very simple animal that may have just a few
genetically encoded behavior patterns, such as Fight, Run, and Eat. Past
evolution may well have also specifically linked these behavior patterns to certain
things that have existed in your ancestors for a long time. Perhaps:
Fight if attacked by animals in group A. Run if attacked by animals in group B.
Eat animals in group C. Ignore animals in group D.
This genetically stored information happens through the very slow process of
natural selection. Potential ancestors that were first inclined to try to fight, run
from, or eat the wrong animals, died and did not pass on those inclinations.
However, those that were inclined towards the more correct response lived and
passed on information about correct choices, thus preserving the encoding of
specific behavior in the genes of you, their descendant.
But beyond this genetic memory, animals have evolved the more familiar kind of
memory. Genetic memory is no help in new situations that ancestors never dealt
with. Information is important for survival, and while passing on lucky first
guesses to your descendants certainly improves the species, being able to
remember bad guesses that did not quite kill you, so you can try a better guess
next time, improves you, right now.
Let’s say a new animal – one that has not yet coexisted long enough with your
species to have made an impact on your genetic code – comes on the scene.
Your first instinct might be to eat it because it looks something like a species from
group C, although it is red instead of blue. So you give it a nibble, but instead of
feeling full and happy, you get very sick and have to go lie down in pain for a
while. You won’t be eating that animal again, best to file it in category D to be
ignored.
Just that easily you have learned something, and no ancestors had to die to put
that information in your head. So what happened? Well, your genetic code was
helping you out again. It is always there doing its thing. Your genes built you a
body that has internal states, including 1 – Full and Happy, and 2 – Sick and in
Pain. Your genetic inclination is to prefer state 1 over state 2. Your mind has the

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evolved ability to associate past events with the internal states they have
produced. This allows you to think first and see if the thought of an action
provokes any remembered response.
The next time you see one of those little red animals, your genetic inclination is
still to gobble it up, but your mind does a test run on the idea of eating the animal
and finds a connection to the feeling of being sick and in pain. When you think of
eating the little red animal, you actually feel a little sick. When you think of eating
its blue cousin, you actually feel a little full/happy. Your mind is alerting you
ahead of time to the likely outcome of your potential actions, based on the results
of your actual actions in similar past situations.
We started by talking about economic values, so it might seem odd to discuss
how animals learn what to eat. However, these are in fact primal economic
values. The animal is clearly exhibiting "wants" in its behavior system. It
genetically wants to eat certain potential food animals, with a memetic override
that it has learned that certain animals are poisonous. The combination of
genetic and memetic information is used to assign high value to the little blue
animals as food, and low value to the little red animals. This valuation is the
beginning of an economic system.
But we wanted to look at Praxeology, the study of human action, not figure out
why animals avoid poison food. So what is it that humans do differently? Or more
to the point, the question should be, "What do humans do additionally?"

3.5.2 What it Means to be Human

Even non-human animals make use of learned behavior. It is much faster than
genetically encoded behavior, as it can help you tomorrow, rather than helping
your decedents long after you are dead. Even the smallest worms with the tiniest
of brains can do it. With human beings something is different.
You never see other animals doing weird things like building metal boxes
that can fly all the way to the moon, just to go there, make speeches,
bounce around a little bit, and come home with a sack of rocks.
So far we have explored two levels of information that produce values and
actions: First genetic replicators that evolve to produce values based on natural
selection, and second, memetic encoding of values based on experience. The
next level is that of communicated learning. Only a few animals can do this at all.
Human beings excel at it.
Communication of memetic information allows one human being to pass learned
behavior and values on to another, and another, and so on. In theory this means
that only one human need experience the potential negative consequences of a
learning situation and can then pass the learned information on to everyone else.
Let’s take a look at these three levels of knowledge as regards to the way they
help a creature avoid a potential danger to life and limb:

3.5.3 Genetic Learning

Fire is hot and can burn you – perhaps badly enough to kill, or wound you
enough that something else can kill you more easily. This is why most animals
fear fire and will run away from the sight, sound, or smell of it. But in order for
animals to have this knowledge genetically, fire had to kill a lot of animals.
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The first animals to encounter fire had actions that varied randomly according to
their genetic makeup. Some of them moved towards the fire, some ignored it,
and some moved away. The ones whose genetic makeup happened to
encourage them to avoid fire had a big natural selection advantage. They were
much more likely to survive, while their less lucky kin roasted alive. Those
animals that lived to reproduce spread the "fear of fire" gene to their offspring,
and with enough repetition of this process, eventually only animals with some
fear of fire exist today.

3.5.4 Memetic Learning

Animals with memory have an additional advantage. Even if fire was a brand new
thing that had not been learned by their genes, if they happened to guess wrong
the first time they saw fire, and moved towards it, or ignored it, it is still possible
that they lived through their burns. If so, the next time they saw fire, they
associated it with those painful burns and ran away. A smarter animal, capable of
somewhat more abstract thought, might even be able to learn the lesson without
getting burned, simply by seeing other animals get burned.
So in the case of animals capable of memory and learning, the number of
animals that have to be killed for an entire population to learn something is vastly
reduced.

3.5.5 Communicative learning

The big trick that human beings do so very well (and that a few other animals
also do, but not quite so well) is the ability to encode life experience and pass it
from one to another. If a group of human beings encountered fire for the first
time, the first one to move towards it and get burned might die, or not, as in the
case with any other level of animal. But the first human to get burned, and all
those that see it happen, can then communicate this experience to other human
beings.
The value judgment that fire is dangerous can be communicated throughout the
whole of the species based on one learning experience. In the best case
scenario, a dangerous lesson can be learned by all human beings without
anyone ever having to die for that knowledge.

3.5.6 Putting it Together

Let’s recap these three types of learning and see how they compare in learning
the lesson that fire is hot:
• Evolved Genetic: One or two thirds of the entire species must die
through repeated encounters with fire for the lesson to be fully learned.
• Experienced Memetic: One or two thirds of any group of the species
may die the first time that fire is encountered by that particular group.
• Communicated Memetic: One or two thirds of some particular group of
the species may die, the first time fire is encountered, but later groups
encountering fire may have learned the lesson without danger.

So with just genetic learning, a new threat is likely to kill some large percentage
of the population that exists at the time. With Memetic learning, it is still likely to

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kill a significant percentage of the population. However, with experiences
communicated perfectly between members of a species, the overall percentage
that needs to die from any new threat becomes negligible.
Of course communication is not perfect. For it to be perfect, not only would good
information need to be distributed to everyone instantly, but there would need to
be a mechanism that insured that only good information would be communicated,
and that bad information would never be distributed. Because people can
communicate misinformation, not only do other people not listen as much as they
might, but they are also reluctant to believe. Even if you tell a person the fire is
hot, until they see it burn, or even better, feel it burn, they will not really "know" it
on some level. This is what people often refer to as the difference between "book
learning" and real experience.
When we first talked about memory, we indicated that memory associated
experienced situations with existing behavior patterns like fight, flight, or sexual
reproductive behavior. These behavior patterns are also analogous to feelings
like fear and anger. Because communication can be wrong, learning by
experience often generates mental links to strong feelings that learning by
communication does not.
So even though, as we explored above, communicative learning has the potential
to be far more beneficial, human beings are far more likely to hold values and
take actions based on their individual experiences. Things that they have learned
through actual experience are more likely to be actively connected to strong
feelings that influence their behavior. The exception to this is during the early
years of development.
During the early years of development, a child is sheltered from experiences that
might be harmful and has as much communicative learning as possible. The
evolutionary advantage of this is significant, because the child is surrounded by
adults with large stores of both communicated and experienced knowledge to
share with the child.
During this time, the slight skepticism and resistance that causes an adult to
favor existing knowledge over new ideas does not exist. It is therefore possible
for misinformation to enter a child’s mind unchallenged, to later be protected by
this skepticism as an adult. However, the bad information that can be propagated
this way is outweighed by the huge amount of useful information that can be
learned quickly.
To prevent a cycle of misinformation, children must be taught to use critical
reasoning skills, so that they can later review and question their early beliefs.

3.5.7 Economics of Ideology

Once communication from human to human became possible, something very
interesting happened: Information held in the brain was no longer just a useful
trick of the genes to allow our species to react more quickly to changes in the
environment than we could through genetic evolution. The information that
passed from brain to brain was now a new kind of replicator, and it could actually
compete with genetic replicators. It could evolve to produce values and actions
that promoted its own replication, even where those values and actions might
conflict with those selected genetically.

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Let’s return to our example of reaction to fire. The idea that fire is bad and should
be avoided must link to biological fear mechanisms to increase the amount of
attention the human mind gives it. If it finds additional ways to create that fear,
perhaps joining forces with an idea that, "There is an evil fire god that hates us!",
it is even more likely to be passed on to other human beings with some urgency.
A competing idea, "Fire might be useful if we just understood it better,” might be
defeated by further linking to senses of anger and group loyalty. People who
failed to loudly decry the evils of fire might be suspected as being in league with
the fire god. They would no longer be considered good members of the group.
When such persons were discovered, we would surely want to impale them on a
spear quickly before they might summon the fire god to destroy us.
With such strong linkages to biologically evolved feelings and behavior patterns,
the anti-fire idea is now entrenched, and unlikely ever to be defeated by
communication of competing ideas. (Whenever anyone tries to challenge the
idea – we impale them!) However, over in the next valley is another group of
humans where the idea of the evil fire god never took hold and random new
ideas about fire were given a fair hearing. Those guys are now cooking their
meat to avoid parasites and disease, keeping dangerous animals away, and not
freezing to death on cold nights.
Clearly they are in league with the evil fire god and must be destroyed!
Unfortunately, when we get there to kill these heathens, there are more of them
still alive, they are healthier, and they have learned to harden the points of their
spears with some evil fire magic.
It looks like we are doomed – the evil fire god will surely now devour the world...
OOPS!
What the hell just happened?
We started out looking at the sources of information that weigh into human
values and therefore human action. It all seemed fairly straight forward, with new
knowledge found to contribute to our survival and reproduction being accrued
three ways: genetically, through individual experience, and passed on from those
with greater experience to those with less.
It all sounded good – then suddenly we were a bunch of technophobic fanatics
trying to destroy what was obviously a much better way of life, rather than
embrace the additional value it could clearly give us.
The problem here is that while human actions will attempt to maximize the best
value for human beings, replicating ideologies create values and actions that
maximize what is best for these ideological life forms. While it is not in the best
interest of human beings to expend their lives trying to stamp out competing
ideologies, it is very much in the best interest of the ideology to have them do so.
Ideally, we would have a tool to quantify the degree to which the values of
ideologies skew the market. Only with such a tool will Praxeology be a complete
science. Until then, it can only describe the action of human beings pursuing
rational self interest, and not the combination of human self interest and the self
interest of replicating information with its own survival and reproductive urges.
Perhaps groups of ideas that propagate as a unit should be considered individual
actors in the economy. Corporations certainly fit some of the criteria for being
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ideological collectives, and also exist as legal economic entities. Churches and
governments might also be viewed as such. However, the necessary work that
has not yet been done in Praxeology is the explanation of how an individual
human being can exist as a self-interested party, an employee of a company, a
member of his church, and a citizen of his country, with each of these identities
applying its own values to influence his actions. Each of these ideological
constructs pays its host with the value of self-esteem, in addition to any more
tangible rewards, in exchange for taking actions that further the ideology.
We are certainly no economic wizards, but we have come far enough in thinking
about these entities to identify the difference between replicating ideologies
(Idea-Organisms that have their own agendas) and ideas that are useful to one's
own self interests. Identifying such idea-organisms is simple. They need to
replicate a complex set of ideas as a whole, so wherever a complex set of ideas
is contained under one label without questioning the parts individually, there you
will find a complex idea-organism – one that has evolved its own survival
strategies that do not necessarily take into account the interests of the human
beings who believe in it.
Perhaps some clever economist can someday find a way of indexing the degree
to which a given population has succumbed to this sort of thinking – quantifying
the degree to which a group of ideas with a label on it has become inseparable.
This might correlate quite nicely with the deadweight loss of value found in the
economy, as value is stolen from individuals and used to further the end of higher
ideological powers.
As human beings, we are creatures of ideas. Often those ideas are useful tools,
but sometimes they can get the better of us. The key is figuring out where ideas
that are part of ourselves leave off and where foreign parasitic ideas that are
trying to use us for their own ends begin. But before you can weed out the bad
ideas, you need to decide what your core values are.
You have to discover yourself.

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 4
Finding Yourself
In this chapter we will be discussing the nature of the Individual. What we are
searching for is The Self – the inner core of being – what makes you you.
This is no easy task. The nature of "self" has been a subject of philosophy
throughout history. It is as hard a question as the answer to the ultimate question
of life the universe and everything (which we will also tackle in this chapter).
Perhaps the two are related, because wherever it is that the self leaves off, that
is where everything else starts. However, to even divide the world into the “me”
and “not-me” categories is quite problematic, because all we have of the outside
world is our perceptions of it, and our perceptions would seem to be part of
ourselves.
We can find a clue in the classic example of the young person who intends to go
traveling to another country, and when asked why, answers, "I am going to find
myself." Although we might jokingly respond, "What makes you think you left
yourself in that particular country?" we actually do understand what was meant.
You really can find yourself in traveling. When you go to another place and
immerse yourself in another culture, with another language and another way of
life – many things will have changed. If you take stock of all the things that have
not changed, they add up to being you. When almost everything else is different,
the things that are the same are either things that are common to all human
beings, or things that you brought with you.
If you have managed to truly adopt another totally different culture, then you have
replaced all the outside influences of your old culture. The parts of your being
that did not change is your inner ideological self, as it exists without the influence
of any Collective, and your biological self. This is the real you. This is the self that
Shakespeare meant when he wrote "To thine own self be true." If you can rid
yourself of all adopted culture, what remains is a pure Individual.
Well, almost. There are group identities beyond that of the culture of your country
and some of them may be very similar from country to country. No doubt you will
still feel the pull of your racial and sexual identities, as these cling pretty tightly to
your body and are very hard to get rid of. And of course, you still have your body.
We are not saying that it is impossible to live without your body, just that we don't
think anyone has ever actually managed it. But that doesn't mean that you can't
resist its control over your mind.
When you are not giving into your genes – eating, sleeping, having sex, using
drugs, etc… and you are not giving into collective idea-organisms (worrying
about how other folks judge your actions) that part that remains is the real unique
and individual you. If you can learn to control or at least bargain successfully with
your body and resist the pull of the Collective, the real you can thrive and grow.
Of course, it may be hard to separate your Ideal Self from the wants of your
body, or your own ideas from those of other people you know. After all, we are
creatures of both biology and ideology and this divides us against ourselves
sometimes.
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4.1 Genetic and Memetic
We exist as creatures caught between two worlds. We are part biological and
part ideological; part genetic and part memetic. What this means is that, unlike
almost every other living thing on the planet, we are not just the product of a
single package of self replicating information.
Instead of counting on our genes to pass good survival behavior on to our
offspring, we use the information pathways of memory and language. While other
animals, especially those closely related to us and those we have domesticated,
may also learn things and pass them on to their young, we have embraced this
newer and faster way more completely than any other species. The linguistic
centers of our brain have evolved to play host to a different sort of evolving
information system, and this has set us apart from other animals. It has also, in
some ways, divided us against ourselves.

4.1.1 Urban Jungle

To gain an understanding of the difference between the two worlds we inhabit,
start by considering the biological world separate from mankind. Imagine yourself
standing in the unspoiled tropical rain forest. It is a place full of life, everywhere
you look you see life in color; green, yellow, and brown plants, multicolored
animals, birds, lizards, and insects. You are also surrounded by sound; buzzing,
hooting, hissing, and growling – animals communicating their desires and
warnings to each other. There is nothing around you that is not natural, a product
of biological life; the ground you stand on is filled with worms and insects, and
even the dirt is a mulch of once living plants and animals.
Now imagine yourself in the center of a large active city. Here you are also
surrounded by sights and sounds; lights flash, horns blare, engines growl, music
is playing. Plenty of signs of life here, but something is different; almost nothing
around you is biological; it is a landscape of stone, metal, and plastic. Most of the
sounds you hear emanate not from the biological noise makers of the forest, but
from the constructed voice boxes of horns and speakers. The bright colors are
not those of colorful animals displaying themselves in warning or to attract a
mate, but lights, billboards, and brightly colored clothing. The ground you stand
on isn't real stone, but manufactured concrete.
Not everything in the city is artificial, but even natural materials have been
altered. Where you see wood it has been cut, shaped and polished. There is also
animal material here, but most of it has been treated and sewn into clothing.
There is a living animal – a dog – but it looks nothing like what you would see in
the forest; it is wearing a collar and its body looks oddly proportioned, almost as if
it has been altered to look interesting, and not in a way that would make a life in
the forest easy for it.
The dog is being lead on a leash by a woman. She walks towards you. Most of
her is biological, but certainly not all. She is clothed and wears jewelry. She has
makeup on her face. Her hair color doesn't look real. Even some of her
permanent skin markings are actually tattoos.
Are those breasts even real? You can never be sure without touching them.

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4.1.2 Natural or Artificial?
The city scene is so different from the forest, and yet so similar. Both places are
certainly lively, but are both alive? In fact they are, but clearly not in precisely the
same sense.
So what is the difference?
One distinction that comes to mind, in comparing the forest to the city, is the idea
of what is "natural" versus "artificial." The word "artificial" means the same as
"created" but even in the forest we see things that are created; beavers build
dams; birds build nests; spiders spin webs. Are these constructions the same as
the buildings of the city?

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What makes a beaver dam natural but a hydroelectric plant artificial?
One could define this as simply "One is made by man, and the other is not," but
that evades the real question. What makes the works of man different than those
of other animals? Why are we different? Why isn't the human animal considered
to be every bit as much a part of nature as any frog or a tree?
In search of the answer to these questions, consider that everything you see
around you in the forest is in fact a complex ongoing chemical reaction. All the
life you see around you is made up of cells and each cell contains some very
complicated organic chemical that are capable of doing some extraordinary
things, including producing other very specific complex chemicals. Under the
right circumstances, they even reproduce exact or nearly exact copies of
themselves. These chemicals, called RNA (Ribonucleic acid), and DNA
(Deoxyribonucleic Acid), are the basis of the self replicating systems that are
generally referred to as life.
There are many repeated patterns around you in the forest: trunks, leaves,
wings, legs, tails, eyes, etc. Each of these patterns is built from a blueprint found
in the DNA at the center of the cells that make up the plant or animal. The
repeated behavior of the animals is also encoded in their DNA. Birds of the same
species sing messages of warning, information about available food, and songs
of courtship. Because they share the same patterns of DNA, animals of the same
species share genetic knowledge of the meaning of their communications. A tree
frog does not need to learn how to speak tree frog language – it is born with that
genetic knowledge.
The physical constructions of some animals are also embedded in the genetic
code – encoded in the DNA. The beaver’s dam, the bird’s nest, and the spider’s
web, are all constructions that the animal does not have to learn. They are
patterns, like those of animals’ bodies, refined through natural selection, and
passed down from the animals ancestors in the genes. Even though these
structures are not in any sense a part of the animal’s body, they are as much a
result of the animal’s genetic code as head, legs, and a tail.
This does not mean that animals can not learn. Any animal that has evolved
even the most primitive central nervous system has some ability to store and
retrieve information. As we have mentioned before, even a very simple animal
can be trained to always turn right when it comes to an obstacle by giving it a
small electrical shock whenever it tries to turn left. It will soon remember that right
is the right choice and that left is somehow sinister. So not all of the information
that generates an animal’s behavior is genetic – some of the animal’s information
is stored in its nervous system, its memory.
So what is it that humans do that is so different? Very few animals take the next
step. The most notable examples are our closest cousins, the rest of the simian
family. What they do is teach their peers new skills. When a monkey discovers a
new way to do something, it can explain these skills to its fellow monkeys. When
it observes something, it can tell its friends about it.
A monkey has some facility for language and communication of new information.
This differs from birds calling warning to each other, and even from tigers
teaching their cubs to hunt. New behavior patterns, proven to be successful for

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survival, can be adopted and passed on to other animals immediately, not just to
offspring through a long period of natural selection.
In a system that passes information through language, the evolutionary selection
process works on the ideas, the new information, rather than the animal itself.
Good ideas can be repeated and bad ideas discarded without the selection
process meaning the death of the animal. The genetic code stops being the sole
method of evolving new behavior.
So this is the real difference between our deep forest scene and our city center.
The information that is used to build the trees and animals is all stored in the
genetic code and expressed in the form of plants and animals, while the
information that builds skyscrapers, roads, and cars is stored as language and
expressed as ideas in people’s heads. In the forest, the birds and animals make
noises that communicate information to members of their own species who share
the same genes; in the city, when signs flash messages and people speak, they
are passing ideas. Where plants and animals can pass information that triggers
pre-coded behavior patterns, people can pass information that can actually
rewrite the code for each others behavior patterns.

4.1.3 Biology and Ideology

When people talk about the distinction between natural and artificial, they are
really speaking of the difference between the expression of biological and
ideological information. What we do, that other animals do not, is make
significant use of a new system of storing information that is much faster than the
genetic code.
A man can try and discard dozens of ideas in an afternoon. An animal species
must see a dozen new genetic lines of subspecies born and die out in an
uncertain number of generations to learn the same thing. Even then, these
negative examples are not really learned, as those same new sub-species lines
might just as easily come into being later with just as little success. The genetic
code has no memory of past mistakes but a man can remember which ideas are
bad (and why) and tell everyone else in the world that he wants to – if they will
listen.
When one looks at it this way, it is not at all surprising that the world has changed
more in the thousands of years since these new ideological information systems
came into being than in the billions of years that biological information systems
have existed. It should come as no surprise to see these ideological systems
supplant and control the biological ones. Just as throughout the history of the
planet before us, better, faster, stronger biological systems dominated and
replaced those that came before. We are now seeing a better, faster, stronger
system take over. This is the natural order of things.
Prior to the existence of DNA, the most interesting chemical interactions were
growing crystals that slowly replicated a pattern. DNA was faster and brought us
a myriad of plants and animals that moved and hunted and exhibited all sorts of
interesting and wonderful behavior. Now we are seeing the next step. Information
systems that are even faster are making the planet even more interesting and
wondrous.

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So we exist as creatures of both biology and ideology – a half breed, or stepping
stone between two distinctly different types of living information systems. This
division is really quite clear to us, as it often puts us at war with ourselves. Our
body might want to eat the cookie, but our mind says we are already too fat. Our
body wants to have sex with someone we find attractive, but our mind says that it
is socially unacceptable to do so.
This division is evident in all attempts of mankind to define ourselves.
Psychologists talk of the different parts of the personality. Freud postulated the
Id, Ego, and Superego. Jung spoke of the Anima and Doppelganger. Poets
speak of the war between the hearts and minds, and having the guts to act.
Priests tell you that you have an immortal soul, separate from your physical self.
Other animals just don’t seem to have these problems with being made of
different parts that want different things.

4.1.4 Good, Bad, or Ugly?

There are even some people who see all the works of man as bad things. They
have a sense of loss that the artificial is replacing the natural. They have the idea
that the biological is good and the ideological is bad. This is the same as if some
of the members of the first tiny species of wriggling things in the primordial soup
bemoaned the fact that their species, with its new capability of moving about,
was knocking down all the beautiful but fragile little chemical crystal towers that
grew around them.
A modern scientist, able to study that primordial ooze, might also see the
chemical crystals as pretty, but would find them far less interesting than the new
life forms. The scientist could recreate the crystals easily enough, but would be
hard pressed to reproduce that first spark of life that started the evolution of the
little wriggly ones.
The small wriggly environmentalist would mourn for the crystal, simply because
he was too close to his own kind to see how much more interesting he was. He
would be unable to conceive of what further beauty and grace would later evolve
in the form of the animals that would follow after his kind. Likewise, the human
environmentalist is blinded to the beauty of his own species – the beauty of the
things that human beings produce and might one day become.
Imagine an environmentalist’s nightmare, an active oil refinery; big metal holding
tanks and cooling towers, a complex array of metal pipes, and smokestacks with
flames shooting out the top. The sight of such a place might make an
environmentalist cry.
Now imagine the exact same scene, but imagine that human beings did not
produce that refinery. Suppose it was just recently discovered, and was found to
be created by some sort of animal. Let’s say a rare species of giant insect built
this incredible factory to convert raw organic materials into a burnable form for
heat to incubate its eggs.
The scene hasn’t changed at all, but now nature lovers would flock from around
the globe to see such a sight. It might be declared the most wondrous natural
phenomena anyone had ever seen.

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Environmentalists would still be moved to tears, but they would be tears of
another sort. They would marvel at this incredibly beautiful thing that nature had
produced. They would be enchanted by the amazingly unique species that could
produce such a complex structure.
Now try another way of looking at our species from the outside. Imagine you are
some sort of intelligent space creature that was born and lives in the depths of
space. You have traveled from star system to star system and seen millions if not
billions of planets. On many you have seen beautiful geological formations of
complex crystals. On some there has been organic life and on a few even
complex animals that you have been fascinated to study.
One day you find something absolutely brand new to your experience. You
approach a planet that is fairly close to a normal sort of G-type star. There you
see what you might think to yourself is the most beautiful sight ever to grace your
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many optic organs. Every other planet you have ever seen close to a star is
brightly lit by the star on one side and dark on the other.
This planet is different. The dark side of this planet sparkles with its own light.

The shapes of the land masses are clearly made visible by a myriad of little
points of light. What could cause such a thing? Is it Geological or Biological?
How could it be either? Neither has ever produced such a thing in your extensive
past experience. There is something wonderful and new at work on this planet.
Once you trade the word "artificial" for "ideological,” the idea of labeling the
phenomena that result from ideology as inferior to that of geology or biology
becomes self-defeating. Your philosophy that reveres the natural over the
artificial is itself an artificial idea. Your appreciation of the beauty of nature is
ideological.
Plants and animals don’t know that they are beautiful; they just are. Beauty is in
the eye of the beholder – a human beholder. Plants and animals lack the
ideological capacity to appreciate the beauty of their own species. Only human
beings have the ability to see themselves as either beautiful or ugly.
Why would you want to limit yourself to using just half of that ability?
And so what if we are still somewhat ugly now? So were those little wriggly things
that appeared at the beginnings of biology. As the first proto-creatures of
ideology, it is quite likely our destiny to evolve into something much bigger and
more beautiful yet.
Of course there will be growing pains along the way. We still have a long way to
go, and a lot of questions to answer.

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4.2 The Ultimate Question
In his book "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" (which you really should read
if you have not already); Douglas Adams has great fun with the question of "Life,
The Universe, and Everything." He tells us of an advanced race of aliens who
build the ultra-mega supercomputer "Deep Thought" to answer The Question.
Needless to say they were not happy with the answer when they finally got it,
despite it being entirely complete, factual, correct, and concise.

4.2.1 Answers
Many others have stated The Ultimate Question of Existence in many different
ways and come up with many different answers. Most of these answers sound
more profound than Deep Thought’s answer, but all convey a similar lack of real
information.
Answers to the Ultimate Question all fall into one or more of the following
categories:
1. "It can not be known."
2. "You do not really understand the question."
3. "You can not really understand the answer."
4. "Give me all of your money."

Zen Buddhism is a fun school of thought that actually has a special answer for
annoying questions like this. Their answer, which incorporates the concepts of
paradox and un-provability, is "mu.” This means something like, "The question
un-asks itself." While we kind of like the approach of coming up with a new word
to provide a definitive answer to the whole category of otherwise unanswerable
questions, we’ll stick with a more honest approach in answering the Ultimate
Question of Existence.
So are we going to give you the answer? Of course we are! In fact, we'll give you
more than one of them!
Paul’s answer to the ultimate question of existence was: "I don’t know, and that’s
OK."
Sean’s answer was this: "I know that I don’t know."
While Paul’s answer is a bit more comforting (at least to Paul), Sean’s is actually
more useful.
Being aware that you don’t know is an important thing. Sean’s thinking goes
something like this:
"I know that I don’t know."
"I am also quite sure that you don’t know either."
"I am even fairly confident that no one knows, and that no one ever has known;
but, I don’t know that for sure."
"I am somewhat less convinced that no one will ever know, but that is something
that I will probably never know."
"The one thing I am really, really sure about is that I just don’t know."

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"And you can quote me on that!"
This may seem to be an entirely unsatisfying, even if somewhat amusing,
answer. It is not, however, the dead end that it seems to be. We may not know
and understand everything, but we do understand our current position.
Think of it like this: We find ourselves at the top of a massively thick stone tower
looking down into a thick fog with no way to see the base. From this position,
however, we can verify the stability of the structure, reverse-engineer parts of the
structure immediately below us, and then build higher. The question of precisely
what our tower rests on may remain open, and may trouble us, but it need not
prevent us from building toward greater heights – at least not if we can verify its
stability first.
The answer "I know that I don’t know" actually provides us with a bit of solid
ground on which to stand. It may not be the ultimate answer (which would, of
course, be most welcome), but it is a useful one. We suggest that you forget
about the bottomless abyss of the Ultimate Question of Existence; if that answer
ever comes along, we assure you that you’ll notice.
It is much easier to stay on track if you remember that you have settled that issue
already – that you have given it due thought and that you know definitively that
you don’t know the answer.
This differs from a simple "I don't know" in that when someone else claims to
know the answer, you can be quite a bit more skeptical; this answer indicates
confidence in your lack of knowledge. It indicates that you have already given the
matter some considerable thought, rather than having a gap in knowledge to be
filled by the next person who comes along claiming to have more knowledge than
you do. You will require some serious explanation and evidence from them.

4.2.2 Philosophy, Religion, and Science

(Oh My!)
The three primary avenues that people take to discover the answer to the
Ultimate Questions are philosophy, religion, and science.
Regardless of which avenue we choose to find an explanation for everything, we
always end up face to face with the fact that we can find no final, provable
answer. This is highly unfortunate for the consumer of philosophy, religion or
science who is looking for an elegant, provable answer. On the other hand, it can
be highly fortunate for a vendor of philosophy, religion, or science who wants an
area to work in where there is little or no chance of ever being proven wrong.
Philosophy seeks to find the answer through reasoned argument, science
through detailed observation, and religion through inspiration. In actuality all
three of these are viable avenues, but only one of these, science, is ultimately
reliable. That is not to say that philosophy or religion can’t supply important
information, but only science can provide verification.
OK, a few additional words on philosophy, religion and science:

4.2.2.1 Philosophy
Philosophy includes a lot of different ideas. Plato and Aristotle were, in many
ways, quite at odds with each other and it hasn’t gotten any better from there.
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The philosophers who have tried to explain everything (or at least more than can
be seen on Earth) generally used reason and inference.
Plato, for example, was very big on the existence of a great "pattern above," a
superior realm, of which the Earth is but a dim shadow. Plato’s means of proof
for this, however, were more than a little fuzzy. (It’s our guess that Aristotle was
driven to the study of non-contradiction [logic] because of such squishy ideas
from Plato. We’re also guessing that Plato was not amused.) In any event,
philosophy has never really made a serious assault on the question of Life, the
Universe and Everything. Its highest achievement may be Descartes’ statement,
"I think therefore I am" proving only the existence of the self.

4.2.2.2 Religion
Religion – at least our Judeo-Christian type – handles this in a very interesting
way: It sets God outside of nature. By placing the creator, controller (to some
sects) and judge outside of the visible universe, it guarantees that we cannot
know the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything by normal means.
Granted, there are a few verses in the New Testament on "the spirit teaching you
all things" but providing a complete answer to everything is actually not a primary
Biblical theme. However, the answer to all questions is present in religion: "As
God wills it!" Proof of this answer, however, is not available.

4.2.2.3 Science
Science is really just a tool for verifying things, but it is very good at verification.
The results of science experiments may sometimes be fabricated, distorted, or
exaggerated, but the tool itself is reliable. It may be slow, it may be limited, but it
works. That’s why we use it, and that’s why we hold it as a final judge.
Sometimes inspiration can allow you to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but
other times this proves to be only an illusion. So, we recommend that you
welcome the insight, but then be careful to prove it before you try to leap. At the
end of the line, everything must be verified in order to be trusted.
Both inspiration and verification are valid when used properly. The "war between
science and religion" is actually a relic of the late Middle Ages, when scientists
came up against an unthinking religious establishment.
We rely primarily on science. (But we really do like inspiration, when it works.)
The problem with science, of course, is that it is slow and plodding. It provides
answers one at a time. This, honestly, is most disappointing. There is so much to
be answered and science is so slow in getting to most of the answers. Well, that
stinks, but it’s the best we’ve got. It is better to plod ahead slowly than to sprint
back and forth on misdirected paths.

4.2.3 And Why Do You Ask?

Let’s take a short detour into psychoanalysis, and ask another important
question: Exactly why is having the ultimate answer so important to you? (And,
we admit, to us too.)
Obviously knowing an ultimate answer would be a very useful thing, but in our
experienced judgment there is a lot more to this than just getting some useful
information. Some reasons we think people are engrossed with such questions:
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 1. Discomfort with unanswered questions. People want everything in
place, so they don’t have to keep their minds at the ready and to engage
in ongoing analysis. They want simplicity. We’ll avoid the deep reasons
for this right now and simply point out that simplicity is a bad goal to
seek. The real world is complex and simplicity can only be had by
reverting to a pre-modern world view. If you want simplicity, you’ll have
to swallow a lot of superstition along with it.
2. Pre-packaged answers. People are mentally lazy. They want short-cuts
and easy answers. A final answer for everything has obvious appeal. It
is the ultimate shortcut around thinking, analyzing and verifying the real
world. As a public service, we remind you that being offered something
for nothing is the one sure evidence of a scam.
3. Because everyone else asks. Most people do frighteningly little original
thinking. Mostly, they just remember slogans. Questions about ultimate
truth are just one of those things that they have received from others and
keep re-asking when the right situations come up.

4.2.4 Do We Know Anything?

Being firm and comfortable in our findings that we don’t know the ultimate
answer, that you don’t either, and that nobody may ever know, we ask this: Do
we know anything at all?
Here we get some satisfaction. The answer is: We actually know a hell of a lot!
Presuming that you are reading this book outside of a primitive jungle, just take a
look around; mankind has learned how to produce food in a stunning abundance,
we have learned how to transport ourselves at amazing speeds, we have learned
to live in comfort, to educate ourselves, to discover the inner mysteries of all
sorts of substances, to understand ourselves (at least partly) and to develop
methods for continuing our discoveries.
Mankind has had a lot of knowledge for a very long time. The general knowledge
held by mankind has grown so much in the past few centuries that it is amazing.
We might not understand the most primary roots of all our technologies (due to
our imperfect understanding of Life, The Universe, and Everything) but we know
plenty enough to do a lot of important and amazing things.
Even when we don’t always know why something works, we do know it works.

Now, a quick aside: If the preceding paragraphs created in you a need to scream, "Oh
yeah? What about wars, destruction, starvation, murder, and global warming!” you might
want to start thinking about a few idea-organisms that may be in your mind and fighting for
their continued dominance. We may not be perfect, but we are unquestionably and
emphatically the most amazing species ever to live anywhere, or at any time that we know
of, and our pace of improvement is only increasing. If that plain fact offends you,
something that doesn’t have your best interests at heart is influencing you. The truth is the
truth, whether your Distributed Identities like it or not.

Is this arrogance? Perhaps it is. Maybe we should be asking ourselves, "Just

who in the hell do we think we are?"

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4.3 The Question of Identity
All the choir of heaven and furniture of Earth – in a word, all those
bodies which compose the frame of the world – have not any
subsistence without a mind.
-- George Berkeley
The concept of Personal identity can be seen as either an axiom or foundation of
Western thought. Many philosophers have thought long and hard (which is of
course their chosen job) on the issue of Personal identity. During this thinking,
many related questions have been raised and answered to various degrees of
satisfaction.

4.3.1 Questions and Answers

Some such Questions that have been posed on the issue of Personal identity
are:
• "How do I know that I exist?"
• "What makes me today the same person as me tomorrow?"
• "Who and/or What am I?"

Some answers to these questions might be:

4.3.1.1 Existence
Rene Descartes is widely credited as having definitively answered the question
of existence, with his famous statement: "Cognitio Ergo Sum" (I think therefore I
am). This gives philosophy a nice starting point, by being able to claim that the
self exists. It may seem obvious, but nothing is obvious to people who think long
and hard about it – so it’s nice that the philosophers seem to have gotten
together on this one, and have allowed you to confirm your own existence.
What would you ever do without these guys? You’d be walking around not
knowing if you existed, that's what! So be sure to thank the next philosopher you
see. If you want to get one a gift, they tend to like alcoholic beverages…

4.3.1.2 Persistence
The second question is known as the question of persistence. It seeks an
explanation of how we can identify with the person we were as a child, and with
the person we will be in old age. This is especially interesting, considering that
both of these people would be seen to have very different personalities, and
would exhibit very different behavior, if they could be compared side by side with
the person we are right now. These people are not just separated by time, but
also, for the most part, composed of entirely different physical matter. Despite
that, we feel very strongly that our past and future selves were and will be the
same person as we are now.
A possible answer to this question, sometimes credited to John Locke, is what as
known as the "memory criterion," which says that a previous person is the same
person as you, if you remember being that person, and that a future person is
you, if they will remember being you now.

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This is a fairly reasonable and useful definition of self. It does exclude some
period of time, in early childhood, that you can not remember, as well as some
period of time in the future when your mind may be failing, and you forget your
previous life. This is not so bad for our definition, however, as we would expect
things to get fuzzy towards the beginning and ending points. After all, we know
there was a time in the past when we did not exist as ourselves.
Where this break of identity occurs: Child, Toddler, Infant, Birth, Fetus, Embryo,
Zygote, Sperm and Egg cells, will always be a fuzzy issue. We also expect a time
in the future when we will cease to exist. Where exactly this occurs, Old Age,
Senility, Vegetative State, Death, Corpse, Ashes and Dust, is also a fuzzy issue.
Why not then, answer these questions in fuzzy terms of memory, since memory
gets fuzzier as we go back or forward, in some fairly direct proportion to our
ability to identify that previous or future person with the person we are now.
We should further amend our definition to "the potential for remembering,” rather
than “actually remembering” since we do not spend all of our time actively
recalling past events. This means that while you were busy thinking about what
you wanted for lunch (mmmmm, French fries) you would not stop being the you
of yesterday. This also cleans up such issues as occur during sleep or other
unconsciousness. A person in these states could be said to still have potential to
at some future time remember their past selves, and might be then allowed to
keep the same concept of identity.

4.3.1.3 Composition
What exactly makes up The Self is the hardest question of all to answer.
Some philosophers, pondering this question, undo all the previous progress
gained in thinking about the other two questions, and arrive at the conclusion that
they don't actually exist after all; that The Self is an illusion. Some, alternatively,
conclude that they are all that exists, and the rest of the world is an illusion.
Some even try to contemplate how both those seemingly contradictory ideas
could be true at the same time. Many others try to find a middle ground that
makes more intuitive sense.
We are going to try to fall into that last group, even if our ideas on the topic will
be a little different than most.
We think that it is best to be practical. "I think, but I am not,” does not seem to be
very useful, although that doesn't stop it from being the core of a lot of Eastern
philosophy, with talk about being nothing or having no head. Likewise, the idea of
Solipsism that holds that you are GOD and the whole world is your dream, while
probably good for the ego, doesn't seem very productive. So we are going to opt
for a middle of the road solution – we maintain that only some small part of the
universe is you and the rest of everything is your environment.
This seems to be a fairly reasonable and intuitive answer. However, it is a good
bet that we will not be providing an answer that is going to sound reasonable or
seem intuitive to you. If it was easy, all those guys who think long and hard about
everything wouldn't be coming up with all that crazy shit about the self and/or the
rest of the universe all being an illusion.
Let’s start by taking a look at what you mean when you say the words that you
use to identify yourself.
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4.3.2 Me, Myself, and I
The Concept of identity is all about self reference. The brain is a tool for creating
maps and models of the world. Some part of identity is the red dot on such a map
with the label, "You Are Here.” This means that there can be many types of
identity, based on the type of mental map you are considering.
The first layer of identity is about location relative to other things.

4.3.2.1 Body Sense

Keeping track of the body relative to other things in the environment is something
that the brain has been doing for multi-celled animals for the past 500 million
years. Relating the body to information about the world outside of the body is,
quite probably, the big reason that biological life found this whole "brain" concept
to be evolutionarily useful.
After a half billion years of evolution, you can now navigate a dark room that you
have seen before, and touch your finger to the tip of your nose with your eyes
closed (unless you have been drinking too much). Of course these are things
very much like what other animals have been doing for almost that same half a
billion years.
There may be some things, however, that you can do with your body sense, that
animals can't, or at least don't get much of a chance to do. The sense of self in
relation to environment is more fluid than people realize. We can project our
sense of self out from some center to include things in our environment. We can
also think of ourselves as being somewhere else than we actually are.
When you drive a car, you find that your sense of self awareness in space
increases to encompass the whole vehicle. You think of the corners of the car as
being "my corners" and have a sense of how your control of the car translates to
its motions through the surrounding environment. This awareness is particularly
useful for parallel parking, as you need to have a feel for the size of your vehicle
and exactly how close it is to the other cars that you are parking between. (But
try not to think about this process when you are actually parking your car. It
doesn't help you actually do it. Sorry.)
Similarly, if you have ever done any martial arts weapons training, a weapon,
when used properly, becomes an extension of your arm. You have a feel for
where it ends, and how far you can reach with it, just the way you know how far
you can reach out and touch something with your own hand. Even with a
projectile weapon like a firearm or bow, getting a feel for the range of your
projectile, as if it were an area you could reach out and touch, is a useful illusion
to have. One way to do this is to visualize the curved path that the projectile will
take as it flies and falls – think of that path as an extension of the weapon and
yourself. (This one actually does help if you think about it. Sorry again about the
parallel parking thing – if you hit someone, feel free to leave a note saying it was
our fault.)
Your sense of self can also be reduced from your whole body to just part of it.
Think about when your arm falls asleep, and it seems to be not part of you, but
something separate from yourself. People who have actually lost a limb
sometimes experience their sense of self ending at the stump, other times they

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experience what is known as a "phantom limb" that they feel is there, even
though the limb is gone.
A phantom limb is even useful to them when it comes to wearing prosthetics, as
it makes it easier to quickly start using the new artificial limb as if it was their own,
without the years of training that a martial artist may need to feel that an external
object is a part of his body. This left over body sense allows them to easily
extend their sense of self into the artificial limb.
You can even project your sense of self well outside your body. A video game is
a good example of this. As you move around a simulated maze, fighting
simulated monsters, you project yourself into that maze and identify with your
simulated body. Your identity is projected into the video game. Likewise if you
have ever operated a remote control toy car, airplane, or helicopter, you may
have noticed that it becomes easier to navigate it successfully once you can
project your sense of self into the remote object.
Some people even claim the ability to send their self out of their body and to
experience remote environments without going there. Although we find the
evidence for any actually extra sensory perception to be unreliable, it is
understandable that since our minds seem to have no problem projecting the
sense of self outside our bodies in some cases, that some people who try to do
this deliberately, will find that their minds fills in the missing details, such as sight
and sound. Just as a phantom limb will often feel pain, or itch, some people's
minds may feel obligated to add sensory details when the sense of self is
projected elsewhere without any actual sensory information being available.
Some of this sense of projecting self is almost certainly also used in modeling the
behavior of other people. We try to think, "What would I do if I were in his
shoes?"

4.3.2.2 Behavior Models

We touched on the concept of identity and behavior modeling in an earlier
chapter and discussed how we can model the minds of other people, our selves,
and even fictional characters. Now that we are trying to pin down the elusive
concept of identity, we need to come back to this topic and look at it from another
angle.
One of the interesting things about our sense of self identity in terms of being a
predictive behavior model for our own actions is that it can be wrong. A person
may believe that they will react a certain way in a certain situation, and they can
then surprise themselves. Even more interesting, is the fact that other people
who know that person can actually know that that person has an inaccurate
model of themselves. Other people can have a better mental picture of the total
person than they do themselves.
For example, you probably know a guy who claims to be a tough character. He
might say things like "If some guy ever pulled a gun on me, I'd just take it away
from him and shove it up his ass!" But you know that if he was ever actually
confronted by a mugger with a gun, he would just hand over the cash, and might
even wet himself.

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Or how about the girl who talks about how much she hates a particular guy, how
arrogant and full of himself he is, and how she can't understand what his current
lady sees in him. She may really believe that she doesn't like him, then she ends
up kissing him at a party, and then they are dating.
Part of the reason that self image does not always correspond to self reality, is
that it fails to take into account the desires of biological replicators. What your
genes want can be a very different thing from what your self image says you
want. Your identity is stuck in your body, but it need not always exist peacefully
with your body. You may often be at war with yourself.
The reason it is sometimes possible for external observers to more accurately
predict your behavior, than you can yourself, is that they are seeing your whole
body as you. From the inside, you have the illusion that you are a separate entity
from your body, and that you control it. From the outside, you and your body are
all one combined system.
Another issue is that you can have ideological organisms in your head that are
quite well entrenched in your psyche, and have a great deal of control over your
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behavior, but have not actually penetrated your sense of self. Even though your
identity is an ideological construct, it can be at war for control of your body with
other ideological constructs that have found their way into your mind.
For example, you may really want to travel and see the world, but your family
obligations keep you in the same home town where you were born. Your inner
identity wants one thing, but your identity as a good member of your family wants
another. This leaves you constantly unsatisfied if you stay put – or feeling guilty if
you chose to travel. The existence of two warring identities guarantees that you
will never be completely happy.
Some people can even develop multiple personalities with access to different
memories. Most people, however, only experience this to the lesser degree of
having different faces they put on for different groups of people, different friends,
family, lovers, co-workers, etc.
The thing that saves the attempt to pin down self identity from being a totally lost
cause is the fact that we have self reference. Some piece of our mind can
consider what is going on in the rest of our mind, and can choose to resolve
conflicts between different ideological constructs and biological desires. If we
bother to think about it, that is. This self examination is not always easy or
automatic, and it is a skill requiring hard work and practice to acquire, just like
any other skill.
In fact, it is clear that a lot of people don't bother to ever use self reference,
reacting to their environment without ever considering the reason for their
actions. This has been noticed by many philosophers.
An unexamined life is not worth living.
-- Socrates
If you have self reference, it allows more control of your actions. You can decide
when to react, and when to stop and think. But who is this person inside us who
makes the decisions? Who is the Decider?

4.3.2.3 The Homunculus

Attempts to peel away the layers of identity come up against a problem known as
the homunculus fallacy. (Homunculus is Latin for "little man.”)
The problem is this: We can keep digging deeper into our minds, looking for "the
decider.” Then we can ask, "Is this the actual inner person? But, can we go
deeper?" It's a lot like saying that the universe was created by GOD, then asking
where GOD came from. We can say that some smaller part of the whole mind is
the real Self, but we still end up with: Is there a person inside of the person?
The only way out of this setup is to say that identity is an illusion or trick that we
play on ourselves. That would mean that there is no real decider, but simply a
record of previous decisions that plays off of itself. Hmmmm…
In reality, however, we do have levels of self reference that allow additional levels
of decision and can let us break out of repetitive behavior. We can decide to
decide differently, or decide that what we thought we knew was wrong. This may
sound like a paradox – and in fact it is exactly that.

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Mathematician Kurt Gödel is famous for his proof that showed that no system
could ever be entirely complete or consistent once it was powerful enough to
produce self reference. The human mind starts out with self reference built right
in, so we should not expect to be able to ever entirely pin down the question of
identity. It will always be a paradox – so we suggest that you learn to love it and
move on.
Mental self reference, overseeing all the other functions of the brain, binds
us into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This paradox is the
magic of consciousness.
The total sense of self that we feel is a combination of several things:
• Body sense. The things we can control and feel. Our ability to
experience the world around us.
• Identity Models. Of ourselves and other people, objects, and abstract
concepts.
• Tendencies. Behaviors that have become habit based upon previous
thoughts and actions, real world conditioning, and repetition.
• Self Reference. Our ability to turn our thoughts back on themselves.

This last item is exemplified by our ability to ask, and even answer, the question
"Who am I?"

4.3.2.4 Free Will?

Whenever people start to think about the nature of identity or intelligence, the
issue of free will usually comes up.

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If, as we talked about above, our decisions are a product of pre-existing behavior
models we have created through previous experience and learning, then how is
this any different than a computer running a program?
The simple answer is that it isn't different, but that this is nothing to be concerned
about.
If you take a look under the hood of human consciousness, you find a machine,
and if you could fully understand this machine, you might no longer believe that
the things that it does are some sort of magic. So what? This doesn't mean that
you don't have free will. You make your own decisions. It doesn't matter that
"you" can be reduced to a number of systems that do real things in the physical
world to produce these decisions. Those systems are still you.
People who deny the existence of free will say that if you cannot make a different
decision than the one you are programmed to, or that if you do it is because of
some sort of random error, that you are not free. However, they do not offer any
way that their fuzzy definition of "free" could ever be realized.
You are a collection of evolving ideological systems. The decisions that you
make may be a direct product of those systems and any deviation from that may
just be random errors. This does not make you any less free, or any less you. It
makes you an evolving information system. You do not have an outside
perspective to show that your actions are predetermined – thus you have free will
from your own perspective.
You have free will unless you define free will as being something you can't have.
And even if you do that, it doesn't change anything about whom and what you
are. Your mind is the product of an evolutionary process, just like your body. You
are an evolving/learning information system.
To understand Free Will is to understand that you are not a programmed
robot, but rather that you are the program inside the robot – you are a
program that can re-write itself

4.3.3 Final Thoughts on identity

Let’s review what things are and are not your self identity.

4.3.3.1 "I" Ain't Got No Body

Although body sense is a component of identity, your body is not. As we pointed
out, your body sense can be projected into other things, and even remotely – it is
not always attached to your body.
While the technological means to do so have not yet been developed, your total
sense of identity can in theory be detached from your current body. The proof for
this is in the fact that it can be easily imagined. There is a whole genre of movies
in which characters switch bodies. These movie plot lines are only possible
because we can separate our sense of identity from our bodies.
Try a thought experiment. Let’s suppose that someone has, during the night,
somehow switched the mental process of John and Susan. John's body would
wake up in the normal bed, but its head would be running Susan's mental
processes. The first thought inside that head would be the thought's of a mind

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thinking it was Susan, and the thought would be "How did I get in John's
body?!?" it would most certainly not be "How did Susan's mind get in my body?"
The mental processes are the identity. If they could be duplicated, then the
identity would be duplicated. So in our search for the core of self identity, we can
ignore the physical body and just consider it to be the most immediate part of the
environment that the Self exists in.
The self is an information system.

4.3.3.2 "I" Ain't Got No Group

Despite feeling a sense of identity within the framework of some group of people,
this is not your self identity. You might think of yourself in terms of being a citizen
of a particular country or as a member of a certain church. But these are not you;
they are group labels you associate with. If you allow these things to define who
you are, then you give up control of your identity to whoever can make decisions
for the group.
If you decide that part of being you means being a good Catholic, then the Pope
can change your identity by redefining what it means to be a Catholic. If you
decide that part of being you is being a good American, then the President can
change your identity.
Identifying with a group moves part of your identity out of your own head, and
into someone else's, where you have no control of it.
If you want to control your own identity, you need to make sure that you do not
identify with a Group identity. If you like the individual ideas that a group holds,
feel free to incorporate those ideas into your sense of self. But do it one idea at a
time. That way if someone tries to change the definition of the group, they can
not automatically change you – you get to reconsider each new idea separately
and decide if you want it to be part of you.
So in our search for the core of self identity, we can ignore group affiliations. To
insure that you control our own identity you should reject such labels, and
consider the individual ideas that the labels try to package together. (Yes we
keep saying this over and over – but it is really that important!)

4.3.3.3 So What's Left?

If you separate yourself from your biological urges (easier said than done) and
from your automatic acceptance of new ideas from your group affiliations (hard
again, but doable with a little mental discipline), what do you have left?

• You have your sense of the things you can control in the world around
you. This is primarily your control over a physical body, but is not that
body. It is an information system.
• You have your knowledge, both direct experience and learned from
others. This includes your behavior models for other people, and even
yourself. This includes information about groups – but ideally, does not
place you inside any group.
• You have a record of previous thoughts and behaviors, and certain
adopted tendencies and habits of thought and action.
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 • You have your mental processes, including self reference, your ability to
use and rewrite your behavior models, and your ability to use and rewrite
your tendencies and habits.

If you can (using your self reference) stop unwanted biological impulses from
affecting your behavior, remove the negative effects of Group Identities, and re-
write your tendencies and habits the way you want them, then your actual self
will come to closely resemble the internal identity model of your Ideal Self.

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4.4 Your Ideal Self
The challenge of living up to your ideal self image is a life-long process. It is not a
goal to be achieved once. It is not a test that you can pass or fail. On any given
day, you will act in ways that are closer or farther from the self you wish you
could always be.
Do not be overly discouraged when you slip, nor overly self congratulatory when
you manage to overcome fears and tendencies that usually distract you from
your aim. Take it one day at a time. Keep at it.
Consider the goals of a person trying to lose weight and become more physically
fit. He might eat better and exercise more for several weeks, then one day, slip
up and give in to his cravings and eat a pint of ice cream. If he puts it behind him,
and continues for another few weeks of healthy life style, his momentary failure
of willpower has almost no affect on his goals. However, if he decides that he has
failed, he will resume his previous ways of overeating and minimal exercise and
soon all his previous work will be undone.
Likewise, if the dieting man should reach his target weight, and declare himself a
success, he may decide that he is done, and can stop his efforts to be healthy –
again it will only be a few more weeks before all his work is undone.
The quest for “intellectual health” is no different. You should never assume that
you are beyond falling into bad ways of thinking and you shouldn’t be too upset
over past failures. If you realize that you have slipped back into bad ways of
thinking or acting, don't be afraid to admit you were wrong. Don’t kick yourself too
hard. Just renew your concentration on deliberate, chosen thinking and behavior.
Changing over from letting someone else do your thinking for you, to thinking for
yourself is hard, but not as hard as Higher Powers would have you believe.
Maintaining that change over time, against the constant onslaught of voices
telling you to surrender your mind, is the harder part. You will find yourself
slipping. But if you re-evaluate yourself honestly and often, this is not a serious
problem.
But first you have to decide just what ideas make up your ideal self. You need to
know what your principals are in order to make sure that you keep living up to
them. You have to decide just what it is that you really believe.

4.4.1 What to Believe?

The first thing you need to do is take an inventory of your mind and all the ideas
in it. You must decide if each is good, bad, or unknown. The good ideas you will
include in your model of your Ideal Self. The bad ideas you will recognize as
things to be avoided. The rest of the ideas end up in an "I don't know" pile –
where you can occasionally pick them up, dust them off, and rethink them when
you have the time.
Remember that collective ideologies are a product of bundling ideas
together. So, when you evaluate any idea, remember to be sure that you are
accepting or rejecting that idea solely on its own merits – not because of
any other ideas it might be commonly associated with.

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Anytime someone offers up a new idea, or a change to an old idea, it
automatically goes into the "I don't know pile,” regardless of who it is offering the
idea. When you have an opportunity to spend the mental time and effort to think
it through, you will do so; until then it is an "I don't know.”
If you want to lend greater credibility to some people, and less to others, feel free
to do so, but do not let it affect your reasoning. The only purpose to labeling
some people as “wise” and others as “foolish” should be the speed with which
you get around to thinking about new ideas from them, and the amount of time
and energy you are willing to spend on it. If someone you have previously
labeled as Wise offers up a new idea, you might start thinking on it sooner, and
give it more time before dismissing it, than you would a new idea from someone
you think of as foolish. But do not let those labels overshadow your own personal
reasoning.
(OK, there are exceptions. In a life-and-death situation, you might not have time
for analysis. If there's a question, you have to go with the answer that comes
from the most reliable previous source. Ah well, real life can be sloppy. But take
the time when you have it. Think for yourself! Question what you are told!)
Also, do not be afraid to think about an idea and decide that you still don't know,
and put it back in the "I don't know" pile. If you do this a few times, you might
even want to put it in an "I know I don't know pile," that is seldom, if ever
considered again, unless you are really bored (or very drunk).
Furthermore, feel free to rethink ideas that you have decided are true or false,
when you have the time, or when you get new evidence. Do not be afraid to be
wrong. Admitting that you are wrong just proves that you are not a robot doing
the programmed bidding of someone or something else.
So where do you get the ideas to start with?
You already have a lot of ideas in your head. Start with them. You have collected
your memes from a number of sources, among them, the following:

4.4.1.1 Heredity
We inherit genetic traits from our parents via DNA. DNA is really just a set of
templates for building about 30,000 proteins. The full scope of the information
that can be transferred in those 30,000 proteins is largely unknown as we write
this. It could be much less than we had formerly expected or it could be more.
Right now, our knowledge of heredity is still limited, even if it is radically better
than it was a generation ago.
It is, however, certain that we inherit a lot of behavioral tendencies from our
parents. Some of those tendencies certainly impact on the ideas we hold, so we
know that there is a bleed over from the genetic to the memetic. The reverse is
almost certainly also true.
The very structure of your brain comes to you via heredity, so it is certainly
possible to inherit propensities toward certain ideas. Idea-organisms have been
part of our environment long enough to have exerted significant evolutionary
pressure on our genes. Since it is not always safe to stand apart from the
collective, the genetic tendency to think in terms of groups has been selected for
over many generations; those who were not drawn towards the collective would

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often have failed to pass on their individualistic genes because they were
prematurely killed by those with a stronger group mentality.

4.4.1.2 Modeling
Beginning in infancy, we gain a tremendous number of ideas, habits and
tendencies by copying other humans. In most cases this involves observing and
copying your parents and siblings, though other humans will generally suffice in
their absence – later we begin copying friends and heroes – even fictional
characters from books and movies.
Actually, modeling (copying) is a very efficient way of learning. It includes its own
safety system – if someone else is doing it with success, then it is probably safe
for you too. Because of this, we tend to do a lot of modeling.

4.4.1.3 Traumas
Unfortunately, trauma is one of the best methods (maybe the very best method)
of changing human behavior. Here we can easily cross the line from meme to a
semi-permanent physical change. We’ll avoid an examination of psychological
techniques for reprocessing and clearing traumas, but less severe learned
behaviors are also gathered from traumatic events and there is quite a bit of
overlap.

4.4.1.4 Displacement and Replacement

We are complex and very capable beings. We are more than capable of self-
organization at an unconscious level. Frequently, an uncomfortable void in our
area of our psyches will be filled by something replacing the missing piece.
For example: We contend that the removal of religion from European culture in a
radically short period of time (a single generation in many cases) caused an
unpleasant void in the general European mind. A variety of pseudo-religions
have been arisen in to fill this void.
There are many other well-proven variations of this, including the transference
that so frequently arises in psychotherapy.

4.4.1.5 Key Experiences

There are probably a handful of moments in your life that have had a profound
effect on you. This is, more or less, the reverse of trauma. Unfortunately, it is not
often as powerful. (This is probably because being afraid has strong survival
value.) These experiences, if positive, tend to verify the value of the memes
associated with them, resulting in them being strongly accepted. This is useful,
though the memes are often accepted without sufficient examination.

4.4.1.6 Conditioning
Conditioning may not be the end-all of human behavior, but it does cover a lot of
territory. Again here, conditioning provides memes that are not vetted properly.
Among the strongest conditioning is that of family or clan.
In the past century or so, the conditioning of institutionalized schooling has
displaced a good deal of family conditioning. Whether this is a good thing is quite
a separate subject but, when the caretakers of children implant a specific set of
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ideas for most of a child’s waking life between the ages of five and adulthood, we
can expect significant results.

4.4.1.7 Choices
The choices you make can have a profound effect upon your life from that
moment forward. In effect, many choices put you on one or another path, to the
exclusion of all others. In other words, important choices change the lay of the
land for many future choices. Choose wisely and with all possible information.

4.4.2 Examining Memes

"Don't put that idea in your head! You don't know where it has been!"
The big problem with picking up memes is not that the memes are wrong. In fact,
many of them are helpful. The problem is that we don’t do it intelligently. Because
of that, it takes extra work to identify, analyze and remove or modify the meme.
Memes such as "look before crossing the street" are very useful. Others are
inglorious wasters; memes of this type would include worrying, complaining,
shame, need for dominance, victimhood, blame avoidance, cheap self-esteem,
envy, inordinate fear of losing, presumption of ineffectiveness, the assumption of
a zero-sum world, fear of change, and others.
Even when memes are helpful, there is a problem that is often associated with
them. People do not analyze them for value but adopt them simply upon
another’s insistence or example. We think that this is also harmful, though in a
secondary way.
It is a long accepted fact of neurology that neural paths (such as circuits within
the brain) that are more-often used grow to become better pathways. Some of
you will remember the old electronic adage, "Current tends to take the path of
least resistance." That is what happens in our brains. Accepting a set of control
instructions once, without analysis, makes us more likely to do the same thing a
second, third, and fourth time. This is not a useful habit – being far to close,
literally, to "flying blind.”
Memes or susceptibilities that you inherit are certainly not analyzed and chosen,
they are accidents of birth. These are especially difficult because you got them
automatically. And they may or may not be useful. If you were lucky, you
inherited more good than bad from your parents. If you were unlucky, you got
more un-useful than useful. But in either case you had no choice, and in either
case you got them unvetted (without being analyzed). Verifying and/or improving
the group of memes you got is a good idea.
Memes obtained via modeling are a bit less problematic, since you chose them
for some reason. However, they may also have been obtained at a time (i.e.,
when you were three years old) when your critical analysis was far from well-
developed.
Memes gathered via trauma are nice in that they can be easily identified and
difficult in that they can be hard (but not impossible) to eliminate.
Memes that are obtained via replacement are interesting and sometimes
especially difficult. Not only are they accepted sometimes uncritically, but they
may also be deeply interlocked with a number of other memes. If a vacuum gave
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rise to this meme, the things that drew it in have roots. Usually this manifests
itself in the meme being a source of self-esteem.
For example, many people hold to political opinions, not so much because they
have invested a lot of critical thought, but because other people will say good
things about them. Wrong as a meme associated with such a situation may be,
uprooting it would involve having to reestablish the person’s self-esteem. Yes, it
can be done and should be done, but a lot of people will never do so.
Any simple symbiotic or altruistic memes can be reconsidered with little work.
Bundled ideologies offer most of the problems, but can also be a source of some
good ideas if you can break them apart and analyze each idea separately.

4.4.2.1 Borrowing Ideas from Ideologies

Now that you know you are allowed to pick and choose from the components,
those collective idea-organisms that are still in your head are not nearly as
dangerous. Feel free to metaphorically poke at them with a stick.
Break them apart. Consider each piece on its own merits.
Are you religious? What did your favorite prophet say that GOD told him?
What about science? Ideas that can be demonstrated to work would seem to be
the most useful of ideas.
What about the philosophies of people you disagree with? If a lot of people
believe something, chances are that it contains some symbiotic ideas and some
useful simple altruistic ideas for maintaining a peaceful culture. It almost certainly
also contains a lot of parasitic information, but any ideology that is more than
50% parasitic will probably die out fast, so those that stick around almost always
have something good to say too.

The anti-religious are just as at fault for bundling ideas as the religious. Have a
conversation some time with a devout atheist and bring up a religious parable – for
example the story of Solomon suggesting splitting up a baby to see who cared about the
child most. Some people are so adamant to deny the religious that they will not even
accept such a reasonable parable that shows an excellent truth, simply because it
originated from the Bible. Rejecting an idea based upon the book you find it in, is just as
bad as accepting it for similar reasons. It might be even worse, as this is really letting your
ideological opponents control what you think – allowing yourself to be defined by their
beliefs.

Certainly don't be quick to accept all the ideas of any Ideology, but also
remember not to reject, out of hand, the components of competing Ideologies.
There may well be nuggets of gold in that heap of dung.
So how do you tell which ideas are good and which are bad?

4.4.2.2 Recognizing Parasitic Memes

Before you can revise the memes in your mind, you have to recognize them.
Until you know what is influencing you, being able to change is made
considerably more difficult.

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We said earlier that parasitic memes behave as amoral entities, and seek their
own advancement rather than the individual’s. That means that they don’t want
you to think, to analyze, or to accept or reject them based upon their usefulness
to you as an individual. Until you notice them, they will control you.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely
believe they are free.
--Goethe
Here is a list of clues that a meme is seeking to replace reasoned thought in your
psyche. A parasitic meme is usually evidenced by the following:
• You have the impulse to disregard facts. For example, someone brings
you an idea and you don’t want it to be true, regardless of fact. In such a
case, there is either a meme fighting to remain dominant, or an
underlying mental routine that is being stretched. (We’ll talk about these
underlying routines shortly.)
• You feel that because someone rich, famous, wise, powerful, etc. said it,
it must be true, or because a lot of people believe it, it must be true.
• You get angry at someone for pleading their case, rather than simply
disagreeing with them. Again, this is evidence of a meme not wanting to
be challenged or the underlying structure wanting to remain inviolate.
Notice that reason is being pushed aside, and that your obedience to the
parasite is being enforced by discomfort.
• You choose a conclusion first then assemble evidence second. Notice
that reason and proportion feel like enemies in these situations.
• You have the will to oppose or hate something before you even
understand it.
• You want to be right, and have "your side" win the argument, rather than
wanting the truth to win the argument.
• You believe that it is important to convince other people of an idea.
Perhaps you even think that there is urgent reason for others to accept
this idea as soon as possible – that those who doubt are actually putting
themselves, and perhaps even you, in danger.
• You believe that you must either accept the idea, or you must accept
some other competing position that you know to be flawed. You believe
that there are only two possible choices, even when the positions
presented contain several different ideas. You don't seem to be able to
break these sets of ideas up and examine the ideas individually.

All of these are evidence of bundling of ideas from an Ideology with parasitic
components. When you realize that this is occurring to you it is a good clue that
you should throw out the whole ideology and start carefully rebuilding it from
simple individual ideas again.
Just because emotion or urgency is attached to an idea, certainly does not make
its false, but it is a good sign that more than just logic is going on. Try to remove
the hype and reconsider each idea rationally. Until you can think about an issue
with a cool head, it is unlikely that you are reaching the correct conclusion. You
may be pushed into illogical thinking or emotional non-thinking. The examples on
the list above are all cases of emotional reaction or of a logical fallacy.

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The example, just prior to the last one on the list, is a demonstration of a fallacy
called "Appeal to Consequences.” In the next chapter, "The Art of Thought,” we
have provided a list of the common fallacies of logic. You may wish to look at
these carefully. Any logical fallacy can be evidence of a less-than-benevolent
meme seeking to trump reason in order to extend its own existence.
The last example on the list above is a situation in which binary logic is being
forced on you. Parasitic ideologies often try to provide false binary choices. It’s
another example of the "You’re either with me or against me" scenario. This is
sometimes referred to as the fallacy of the excluded middle, and is a standard
idea-organism tactic.
Idea-organisms use a combination of multiple ideas under a single identity and
require you to accept all ideas in an Ideology or reject all of them – even the
good ones. This false binary logic can allow two bad ideologies to use each other
as the "only other option,” and force everyone into one camp or the other.
Always try to be very sure that there are not more possible positions than just two
– that there isn't a third option, or even any number of possible combinations of
ideas that you had not realized could be separated. Not all propositions are truly
statements of binary logic. There are often possible middle cases. Sometimes
there is a whole continuous array of choices. Not only that, but sometimes where
a single continuous axis is presented, there may even be an additional possible
axis, or multiple additional axes, turning the possible viewpoints into a 2 or more
dimensional continuum.

4.4.2.3 Multiple Axes

A famous example of presenting multiple axes (independent scales of
measurement) is the Nolan Political Quiz – also called "The World's Smallest
Political Quiz." (Take the quiz at www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html)
The political spectrum in the United States is often presented as a Right to Left
single axis, with the Republicans on the Right and the Democrats on the left as
the only viable choices.
David Nolan presented two axes, one representing government control in
economic matters, and the other representing government restrictions of
personal freedoms. He showed that with these two axes, Libertarians were at
one point of a square, demanding freedom of both economic and personal
matters, and that this was the opposite corner from Fascism in which both are
controlled.
In this layout, Democrats and Republicans occupied the other two corners, each
half way between Libertarianism and Fascism, each allowing freedom in one
arena while restricting the other. From the Libertarian perspective, each of the
two major political parties in the United States had it half right and half wrong.
This is actually a pretty likely state of affairs, and not at all a matter of chance.
When two ideological entities are pushing binary logic – working together
to restrict your choices to one or the other – both will have to be equally
about half symbiotic and half parasitic.
If the population is going to be split roughly evenly between two ideas, each of
the ideas must have some merits. If an idea-organism is going to control people

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in some respect – bend their actions to its own ends – it can not allow complete
freedom. Based on our theories of how idea-organisms work, two such
competing but complimentary political parties, each espousing freedom in one
domain, while controlling people through the other, would be an entirely expected
state of affairs. This is, in fact, what we often observe.
It is certainly not an uncommon state of affairs to have people split down the
middle on a given issue. Usually such an issue is really more than one issue.
Each side of such an issue will be unwilling to see the merits of their opponents
best arguments and each also unwilling to see the flaws in their own worst
arguments.
People are convinced by collective idea-organisms to think in terms of only two
possible choices, or a single axis. Even when they try to think logically, they find
that the weakest points in their philosophies are supported by the stronger points.
This shouldn't happen logically – as they should be able to separate the points
into independent issues. Then they could abandon their weaker points while
keeping their stronger ones.
You may not have noticed yourself doing this, but you have probably noticed it in
other people. When you are having an argument with a member of an opposing
political party – just when you are making a good point concerning some issue –
the other person will often switch to a separate issue upon which your two parties
disagree with each other – and quite probably one where your arguments are not
nearly as strong.
Since both of you have always been encouraged to think in terms of only two
possible sides, you each feel obliged to defend all the points of your Ideologies.
To admit the weakness of one idea seems to invite the defeat of all. Therefore,
switching from one issue to another seems like a reasonable argumentative
tactic, and logically unrelated ideas are used to support each other.
If your minds were free, each of you could admit to each other the strengths and
weaknesses of each different issue. In the end, if you did not feel bound to one
indivisible ideology or the other, together you could build a brand new Ideology
from just the strong points of each.
Mental slavery to all the points of any given Ideology creates divisiveness,
where as free examination of individual points within any "set of ideas"
allows people to find common ground and make intellectual progress.
Once your mind is free of the need to think in terms of large bundled groups of
ideas, you will often notice the idea-bundling of others – perhaps even find it
amusing. You might be arguing about some issue with a member of one of the
standard political parties and making some good points. Suddenly the other
person will switch to a totally different issue to attack you on. The funny part will
be that you will suddenly find yourself being attacked on a point you entirely
agree with, with the other person having the absolute expectation that you
disagree. In the party member's mind the two issues are linked, and they can not
understand how you can disagree with one of their points but actually agree on
another. This may even upset them more than if you were in disagreement on all
points, because you are not just questioning their set of beliefs – you are
questioning the idea that their set of beliefs is so special as to be one of only two
possible ways of thinking.

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This is an opportunity to help the other person open their mind. Point out what
they just did and why the two ideas are not linked. Discuss the way that political
parties bundle ideas, promoting the idea that there exist only two sides rather
than many sides of many issues. Explain how this causes people who accept a
two party system to always be wrong on about half of the issues all the time.
Political parties are, of course, a huge artificial collection of issues that are often
entirely unrelated. Thus, no one who has a free mind would ever identify
themselves as a member of a political party – not even the Libertarian Party.
Doing so puts other people (the people who speak for that party) in control of
your mind. We would highly recommend thinking as a libertarian with a small "l",
but suggest that you resist the urge to think of yourself a Libertarian with a large
"L". Don’t be a party member. Be an individual with your own ideas.
Political parties are certainly not the only case of binary logic or single axis
thinking being forced on people. The concept of multiple idea or multiple
continuous axes can be applied almost anywhere.
For example, many people think that belief in GOD or gods is a binary logic or
single axis sort of issue. The binary position is just Atheist or Theist, while the
somewhat more complex single axis model runs like this:
Atheist – Weak Atheist – Agnostic – Weak Theist – Strong Theist
This is more complex, and therefore likely more realistic, but does it really cover
all the possibilities? Consider the concept of "Agnostic.” Some people actually
identify themselves as a "Strong Agnostic" or "Weak Agnostic,” where a strong
agnostic claims that not only do they not know if there is a GOD but that you
don't know either – they are sure that it can not be known.
How does this fit into the above axis of faith? The answer is that it doesn't – not
without adding another axis. A more realistic picture of any person’s theological
position can be obtained in two axes.

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To find your position on the previous graph, simply ask yourself two questions –
one for each of the axes:
1. Religiosity – What is your best guess concerning the involvement
of a creator in the universe? Assign a ranking from zero to ten. Zero
being no creator. Ten being a creator who pays constant attention to
your every action and thought. (For example – if you believe that the
universe was created, but that the creator is not an old bearded man
who sits on a cosmic throne watching everything we do, but rather
something more like the extra-dimensional equivalent of a kid with a
chemistry set, you might assign yourself a "5" for religiosity.)
2. Uncertainty – How likely is it that you don't know and/or can't know
the nature of the creator of the universe? Again zero to ten. Zero
means you are absolute certain that your picture of the universe is
correct. Five means you don't know, but someone somewhere
might, or might be able to find out. Ten indicates that you believe
that no one can ever know the answer.

You do not have to stop at two axes – the more different issues on the nature of
faith that you add in, the clearer your picture of the real world possibilities
becomes. For example one might add an "Evangelism" axis. This would
distinguish Strong Agnostics who keep to themselves, from the ones that ring
you doorbell on Saturday morning and want to talk about how sure they are that
it is impossible for you to know whether or not there is a GOD.

We could even assign a different axis to each of the standard qualities of GOD –
we might want to know just how Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent
does each person think GOD really is? There are also many more possibilities
than just Theist or Atheist, and many more possible answers to the question of
creation than "Let there be light!" or the Big Bang. For example, some people
believe that we all exist in a computer simulation – how would they fit into your
definitions of Theist or Atheist?

There are even some good reasons to believe that we might exist in a computer
simulation. Observed laws of Physics look very much like computer programming tricks to
save memory and processor usage. The speed of light sets a maximum speed at which
information can propagate. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, based on wave/particle
duality, shows that the Universe holds off on resolving answers about reality until the last
possible moment. (This is known as "lazy resolution" in computer science.) Such a theory
would imply some sort of creator. But a GOD? One would expect a GOD to have better
hardware and not need to resort to such resource conserving programming techniques.
It has even been pointed out by noted transhumanist, Nick Bostrom that if we expect such
simulated worlds to ever be possible with our own technology; we are predicting that the
number of simulated worlds will someday be far greater than the number of real worlds.
And if the number of simulated worlds that will ever exist is much larger than the number of
real worlds, then the odds are highly in favor of us actually being in a simulation right now.

So there are a lot more possible ideas out there on any given topic than are easy
to keep straight in your head. Allowing your mental models of other people to
have a true range of ideas and beliefs gets very complicated very quickly – it is

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easier to label people and put them into broad categories. But that is not an
accurate picture of the real world.
Pretty much any simplification you allow in your thinking becomes a handle for
the idea-organisms to steer you into some alternate version of reality – one
where you end up working for their survival and replication rather than your own.
From the point of view of the parasitic idea-organism, the simpler your view of
reality is the better. If you see only one answer to any question ("All things are as
the Great Whatzit wills it!") that is ideal. If you see only two possible sides ("You
are either a faithful follower or an infidel enemy!"), that is good too.
Once you start allowing in-between positions, it becomes harder for idea-
organisms to manipulate your actions to their own ends. When you start seeing
Ideologies as being made up of multiple separate ideas, rather than an
insuperable whole – and realizing that each of these individual ideas might have
many in between positions – then your mind has the tools to discover and
remove parasitic memes.
Parasitic memes give you a simplistic, inaccurate view of the world. Symbiotic
memes, on the other hand, are always working towards giving you a more
accurate picture of reality. Unlike parasitic ideas, symbiotic ones survive and
thrive by being useful accurate ideas about how things really work.

4.4.2.4 General Principles

When picking and choosing your ideas, it is easiest to spot symbiotic memes –
ideas that benefit you are of course the ones that you want to collect. A few
simple guidelines are worth noting:
• Don't be afraid to try new ideas
• Continue to test your old ideas repeatedly

If new ideas are better, use them. If old ideas don't work, don't make excuses for
them. Don't be afraid to admit you were wrong.
Altruistic memes that create good environments for human interaction and
mutual assistance are very useful, both to have in your head, and to encourage
in other peoples’ heads. This is a dangerous game though, as this is the
borderline of where idea-organisms start to form, and before you know it, you can
be working for your ideas, rather than the other way around.
Let us present what we think are some good general guidelines to follow, in order
to have good altruistic memes, without allowing idea organisms to creep in.
• Keep them simple – If it’s complex, try to break it up into smaller ideas.
• Equality of rules – rules you enforce on others should also apply to you.
• Try to maximize overall creation of value and minimize overall loss.
• Do not believe that anyone or anything is a Higher Power than you.

4.4.3 An Ideal Higher Power?

Having mentally leveled the playing field, before we eliminate the concept of
Higher Powers, we should make sure we are not losing anything in doing so.

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Part of the process we are advocating involves always considering each idea on
its merits, neither accepting nor rejecting any idea without some thought.
Therefore, we should make sure to squeeze any useful juice out of the Higher
Power concept before we discard the skin.
One thing that the Higher Power concept seems to have going for it is its
usefulness in managing behavior modification. This need not always be
involuntary brain washing by a Collective, but can sometimes be voluntary
mental hygiene. When the person in question really wants to change bad
behavior that they feel they have no control over, the idea of accountability to a
Higher Power seems to allow them to regain control of themselves.
Let’s look at a couple of examples of making use of proven successful
techniques based on Higher Powers while making sure that your Higher Power is
self contained and therefore can not be used by others to externally manipulate
your behavior.

4.4.3.1 WWMISD
You've seen the WWJD bracelets, haven't you? WWJD stands for “What Would
Jesus Do?” They are tools to remind people to match their actions to an external
standard.
Here's how we borrow this tool and adapt it to our uses (and, yes, this is
ideological evolution at work):
Once you have an idea of what your Ideal Self should be like (and this is,
arguably, the real value of the Jesus bracelet – reminding you to think about how
an ideal person should act) you can make reference to this Ideal Self regularly, to
bring your actual behavior into line with your concept of ideal behavior.
This is valuable to you! Do this: Form an image of the person. Take your time –
weeks or months if you have to. Think about the person as you nod off to sleep
at night. (Trust us; this is the right time to do it.)
We call this mental image your "Ideal Self.” Don't worry, you can always modify
this Ideal Self if you get better information, or just change your mind down the
road. Just start working on building this identity. Make changes as necessary.
Once this image is in place, in any situation, you can stop and ask yourself,
"What Would My Ideal Self Do?" Maybe this sounds silly, but it is a very potent
tool. Use it. Apply it in creative ways.
Try it and see.

4.4.3.2 The 12 Step Program

Another of the success stories of self help programs based on reference to a
Higher Power has been Alcoholics Anonymous. This organization has helped
many people learn to live successful lives despite problems with addictive
behavior. Its 12 step program has been translated to help people successfully
overcome many other behavior problems that they have felt otherwise powerless
to deal with. This includes drug addiction, over eating, gambling, and many
others addictive behaviors.
This success should not be ignored, despite an integral part of the teaching of
such programs being the idea of accepting a Higher Power.
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This idea that a Higher Power is necessary to the process makes it hard for
individualists to buy into the workings of a 12 step program. However, we have
stated that we are determined to accept the results of experimentation – to not
reject anything that might be useful. And this has been shown to be a useful tool.
We will neither accept anything on faith, nor reject anything that is proven useful
based on our own ideology.
Ideology should always adapt to fit the results of real world experiments –
never the other way around.
Let’s start by taking a look at the 12 steps with an eye towards memetic
engineering while keeping in mind the reasons why we might want to discard
certain ideas that lend themselves to turning a collection of ideas into an idea-
organism.
These are the original 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had
become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as
we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to
do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will
for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all
our affairs.

Ok, so let’s take a look at what we have here and see if we can separate the
meat from the fat.
We can throw step 12 out right away. It is clearly a replication effort by this
collection of memes. If you want to spread the word, and it makes you happy, go
ahead – but never believe that it is a necessary step for your own personal
salvation. Just because we personally happen to get off on it and go around
writing books, doesn't mean that you also have to spread the word to stay happy.
You can be quite content in your own life without the need to bother other
people with the "good news."

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Now the main idea in the rest of these steps seems to be that if you can't do it
yourself, you will need the help of a Higher Power. At first blush it would seem
that there is no way to fit this into our theories that put the self at the same level
as, or even above any Higher Power. However, there is something we can try.
Remember that our Ideal Self is who we want to be, not who we actually are. So
in a very real way, our Ideal Self is something apart from us that we can ask for
guidance and help.
Unless you believe that GOD is actually speaking to you, your concept of God is
no different intellectually from any other identity model. It exists in your head. It is
part of you. When you think about what God would want you to do, you are
consulting and internal mental model. Your concept of Ideal Self is the same kind
of model and should therefore be able to serve as exactly the same purpose.
Consider that seeing the divinity in the words of a prophet or messiah is only
possible if we have divinity within ourselves to begin with. Otherwise we could
not recognize the truth and beauty of the gospel. Why think in terms of an
external divine person? Why not just pick the ideas that seem divine to us, and
include those ideas in our Ideal Self?
If you can do this, then you will no longer be under the influence of anyone who
claims to speak for a god or GOD, but you will continue to have access to the
same internal guidance that God can provide. You can receive the same sort of
guidance from your Ideal Self without sacrificing your individuality.
So let’s rephrase those 11 remaining steps in terms of our Ideal Self as the
Higher Power, remove the repetition (it looks like someone was padding to get 12
steps – not sure why), and see what we come up with.
1. Conceptualize your Ideal Self.
2. Decide how you are and are not living up to your Ideal Self Image.
3. Admit these faults in internal conversation with your Ideal Self and also
to another real world person.
4. Ask your Ideal Self to remove your shortcomings, while first being ready
to believe that this will work.
5. List all the people you have harmed, and make direct amends wherever
possible, in a way that will not hurt them or anyone else.
6. (Lather, Rinse, and Repeat steps as necessary)

This would seem to get to the meat of the matter, without allowing anyone or
anything else a hook into controlling your mind.
Step 4, would seem to be the most iffy, but we will offer some more detailed
ideas about how to actually change the patterns of your mind in the next chapter.
There is good experimental evidence that human beings can be
conditioned to believe or do anything, given the right external stimulus. It
should be possible to do the same from the inside – set the habits and
patterns of behavior that you want to have. Why not at least give it a try?

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 5
The Art of Thought
In the previous chapter, we talked about deciding what to believe in and about
creating your Ideal Self. In this chapter, we will talk about the tools of logical
thinking and how they can be used to move from simple core beliefs to more
complex ideas without making errors of logic.
When you were a child, and your ability to reason was not fully developed, you
tended to accept everything that other people told you. Maybe you believed in
Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the Boogey Man. As you grew older, you
developed the power of reason and you gained mental defenses against new
ideas. The more mature your reasoning processes became, the more skeptical
you learned to be concerning the things other people told you.

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You have learned to look for people’s motives, and see why it would serve their
own self interest to have you believe what they are telling you. This is certainly a
good defense against future exposure to bad ideas but how much was stuffed
into your head before you gained the ability to reason things out for yourself?
How many things do you believe now, just because you heard them from
someone before you realized that person capable of lying or of being wrong?
There are probably people whom you trust without question, at least on certain
topics where you believe they have more knowledge than you. You don’t stop to
ask yourself what's in it for them – either because it is too much work to figure it
out for yourself or because you have been taught to trust them without question.
These experts could easily be lying to you – but perhaps even more frightening is
the idea that they are passing on false information that they believe to be true,
because they heard it from experts that they trusted. Information that is accepted
on faith, without proof, can be passed down this way through generations, with
falsehoods creeping in unnoticed and unchallenged.
You may well still believe in certain icons that are no more substantial than
Santa Claus.
The only defense you have is to think for yourself. Whenever you accept or reject
an idea without giving it any real thought, you are being lazy and denying the
power of your mind. But as we have discussed previously, with a little bit of hard
thinking, you can smoke the culprits out and deal with them as you choose.
If you do not have the time or the inclination to do any hard thinking, then you
should probably be asking yourself why that is. Are all the ideas you accept
without critical thought simply so unimportant that it is not worth the time? Or are
you letting ideas go unchallenged that could make a great difference in your life?
Maybe even the difference between life and death?
Isn't it time you thought about freeing your mind?

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5.1 Free your Mind
The idea of Higher Powers is a very hard one for some people to get past but
until you can, your mind will never be your own.
The big problem here is that people tend to identify themselves in terms of
groups. They think of themselves as members of a group rather than as
individuals. The key to individual thinking is to make sure that your internal
models of yourself and all the people in the world around you are free from
illogical grouping. Not everyone can do this completely.
In the worst case scenario, one group idea assumes control over all others,
leading to fanatical behavior. In the “best” case no ideas of groups are present at
all – but this leads to difficulty interacting with the vast majority of other people
who have shared world views that include information about groups.
We will describe these various levels of group modeling like this:
• Fanatic Head
• Group Head
• Idea Head
• Geek Head

5.1.1 Fanatic Head

The mind of a fanatical devotee to some philosophy (in this case a religious
fanatic) might be modeled like this:

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To the fanatical mind, one philosophy is all consuming and dominates every
aspect of life. Groups of countrymen, family, and friends are thought of only in
terms of how they also relate to that single Higher Power.
This makes the commandments of that Higher Power almost impossible to
ignore. To be rejected by the icon of the one true faith would be to lose all sense
of personal identity and all sense of belonging to any group. Failure to obey any
command for any reason is risking becoming an enemy of everyone you know –
even an enemy of yourself.

5.1.2 Group Head

Next we have a more common sort of mental model of self identity. Group Head
is better than the previous Fanatic Head. Having more than one co-dominant
philosophy competing for his attention allows him some space in the gaps for
personal thought and ideas. But there is still a big problem with this model of self.
You will notice that Group Head accepts all the beliefs that are defined as being
a part of the various groups to which he belongs. They are all fully contained
inside his sense of self. Also, he rejects all of the philosophy of his enemies.

If his enemies make a discovery that could benefit him, he will automatically
reject it. If his allies jump to some stupid conclusion, he will be forced to jump
with them. (Yes – you have to drink the poison fruit punch. Sorry, but it is the will
of the Great One! ... No – not Wayne Gretzky – the other Great One...)
There is a better way to model your Ideal Self. It is more complicated, and thus a
little harder, but well worth the effort.

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5.1.3 Idea Head
Instead of accepting the beliefs of any group into yourself, you can be aware of
the individual ideas of any given philosophy, and then accept those that you
deem correct and reject those that you think are incorrect.
In this model, not only do you have room for personal thought and ideas,
but all the ideas in your sense of self are completely and truly your own.
Idea Head is aware that some other people share some of his ideas. He knows
that many people may even identify themselves as part of a group based on
ideas he also holds dear. But his ideas are still his own and no one else’s to
control.
Idea Head is free to change his mind about things without consulting anyone. He
decides for himself which ideas are true and which are false – which are good
and which are bad. He is his own person, answering only to himself.
The Idea Head model has several important features that are different from the
previous model:

• You are considering ideas one at a time, rather than whole bundled
groups of ideas. (We have talked about how this protects you from idea-
organisms and their parasitic memes.)
• You can share many ideas with Groups that you have good feelings
about, such as your Church, State, Family, and Friends – but all of their
ideas don't have to be the same as yours. You can admit that these
groups can be wrong about things sometimes.

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 • You can have very different ideas from people that you have negative
feelings about, but you can still have some ideas in common with them.
You can admit that your enemies can be right about some things
sometimes.
• Even more interestingly, you can see that some ideas you disagree with
(maybe the idea that strong collectivist thinking is a good thing) can be
shared by both the groups you like and the groups you don't like. You
can see that even groups you have strong good feelings for can share
some philosophy with groups you have strong bad feelings for.
• Most importantly – your self-concept is equal to your images of other
people and groups. It is neither made up of other philosophies, nor
contained by other philosophies. This allows you to place yourself
above, or at least on an equal level with, anything that would previously
have been a Higher Power.

The most accurate way to think is to completely ignore the concept of groups and
have a separate mental model for every individual person and the ideas they
hold. It is possible to have a mental model of the world that does not even have
broad group concepts such as "Enemies.” However, this is a very difficult way to
think and since other people commonly think in terms of groups, it makes relating
to other people more difficult.
But you should be willing to at least give it a try now and then to see how it feels.

5.1.4 Embracing Your Inner Geek

We mentioned before that people who don't seem to fit into groups seem to make
all the great discoveries. This is because they do not model themselves or those
around them in terms of groups. They are not good at following every fad
because they need to take the time to think every new idea through. They don't
just automatically do what the people around them do. They neither accept nor
dismiss new ideas without thought.
This allows them to do new and wonderful things sometimes.
However, there is a price. The drawback is that Collective Identities have learned
to persecute people that don't display the correct outer signs. People are forced
to host the Collective mind in order to survive or learn to camouflage themselves
well.
Society can make it very hard for you to think for yourself. It can be costly, and
sometimes even fatal. It is a hard choice, but we believe it is worth doing it, for
the sake of what you can be if you free your mind.
We cannot guarantee that you will be great just because you learn to think for
yourself, but we do guarantee that you will not be great until you embrace your
inner geek. You will never have any great new ideas if all your attention is
devoted to keeping track of what you are supposed to be thinking.
You can not be great until you are no longer afraid to appear foolish.

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But if you are going to place your own ideas at an equal level to the prophets and
philosophers of the ages, if you are going to stop letting other people tell you
what is right, you may first have to clean up that mess inside your head.
When was the last time you did any mental house cleaning? Odds are you are in
need of it.

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5.2 Cleaning House
Now that we have some idea of how to recognize parasitic memes and how to
choose the memes that are good for us, let’s take a look at how we can do a little
bit of mental house cleaning.
We are all influenced, sometimes heavily influenced, by the idea-organisms we
carry around with us. But we also have the power, if we choose to work at it, to
revise our collection of memes – to weed out those ideas that are not beneficial
to our goals. You are the decider, if you wish to be. In other words, you can be
free, if you wish to work for your freedom. Fighting for your mental freedom may
not be easy, but it is available to you if you want it.

5.2.1 Changing Your Mind

All of our outer actions begin as thoughts within our minds. Without signals from
the brain there is no movement of the muscles, whether those muscles are our
biceps for strength, facial muscles for speech, or abdominal muscles for sex. Our
inner world is what gives birth to our external circumstances.
No, this is not New Age hocus-pocus and there is no magic involved. Our internal
mental machinery is the cause of our every action and this is what produces our
results in the outer world. Changing one’s mental systems can directly change
the sort of results one is able to obtain in the world – whatever the field of
endeavor.
This being said, there can be serious obstacles facing us, some of which we may
not be able to surmount. A war, for example, can completely ruin the
development of our outer worlds, no matter how great our inner workings may
be. But, external obstacles aside, our inner world is where all of our results are
born. So, if we can fix-up our internal worlds, we can make serious changes in
our outer results.

Here is a harmless experiment you can do to prove to yourself that change is possible, and
to see how long it takes to accomplish: Fold your hands. You know... interlace your fingers.
Next, check to see which hand is on top; usually it is the left index finger that ends up on
the top of the pile. Now, reverse the order – if your left is on top, put the right on top, or
visa versa. This will probably feel uncomfortable. For the next several weeks, make
yourself use the reversed order. No exceptions allowed. At the end of that time, you should
be doing it automatically, and soon the original order will feel almost as uncomfortable as
the reverse order does now. We suggest that you do this right away and prove to yourself
that it works, and also as a proof to yourself that you are committed to actually making
some changes. (Such symbolic gestures are no small thing in the fight for you mind.)

Almost every modern self-help book or seminar endeavors to upgrade your

mental universe in order to improve your results in the outer world. And these
efforts are not essentially misplaced; as we’ve said previously, your inner world
gives shape to the results you produce. (This is assuming that external obstacles
remain at a manageable level.)
There is nothing wrong with most of the success seminars, but they do not
directly address problems associated with the ideas in our heads. Instead, they

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do it by delivering examples and inspiration to their students. This is fine, but it
only works part of the time. If a student will focus on their lessons with great effort
and consistency, they will probably get improved results. There are, however,
more direct and effective ways to do the same thing.
That said, a warning is in order: When you start tugging at deep old ideas in your
psyche, the experience can be painful. Here, "No Pain, No Gain," is true. But if
you’re willing to do the necessary weeding, your new, improved brainscape
should prove to be much more useful than the old one.
We will go through several methods of revising your memes in this chapter. All
are of use and all can be used at the same time. Remember, we are talking
about your personal happiness and effectiveness here; for us, at least, anything
that helps us along this path is something that we desperately want.

5.2.1.1 Force
The first method of changing your memes is simply to apply force against them. It
works like this:
1. You recognize an idea-organism that is sharing brain space and you
want to get rid of it.
2. You decide, resolutely and even violently, to remove it.
3. You keep yourself vigilant, watching for any appearance of this idea's
influences.
4. When you notice it, you immediately and forcefully shut it down. You
refuse to think that way and you replace bad thoughts with other
thoughts and ideas.
5. You continue doing this for as long as is necessary.

To remake your mindscape by force, you start at the ground level and work your
way up asking yourself where each belief you hold comes from. For each belief
that you find, imagine for a moment that the opposite is true. Does it make you
feel uncomfortable? Is it possible that you only believe it because it is
uncomfortable not to – not because you have good evidence that it is true?
It is important, not only to know what you believe, but to know why you
believe it.
Now, the above method requires concerted time and effort. On one hand, we
want to make this easier for you if possible. But on the other, if you’re not serious
about cleaning out the center of your being – if you don’t care enough to work
damned hard at it – then why the hell are you even reading this book? (It was the
cover right? We know, its funny – but now its time to try to get serious for a
while.)
This stuff ain’t for lazy people, amigo. If you’re not willing to drip sweat over this,
then maybe you shouldn’t even bother. You can live a lazy, semi-conscious life
and might even get through it without too much pain, especially if you lose your
memory when you’re old so you don’t have to think about what could have been.
When re-landscaping your brain, it is generally best to go one step at a time, or
at least not too many at a time. This leaves you with enough energy and doesn’t
require you to keep too many targets on your 24-hour radar screen. It also

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means that you are picking targets carefully. It is also possible to change multiple
memes at once, though this can be problematic.
Changing many memes at once is generally called changing paradigms. The
word paradigm refers to a pattern – a structure of ideas through which we view
the world – a group of memes that we accept as useful for understanding the
outer world.
The most commonly effective method of changing paradigms is religious
conversion. This is accomplished in the following general steps:
1. Dissatisfaction with the existing pattern of life. ("I’m not living right.")
2. Polarization of the choices. ("Eternal Heaven or Eternal Hell.")
3. A definite, unalterable decision. ("I give myself to Jesus for all time.")
4. A new set of ideas. ("Now I live by the Word of God.")
5. Continual support. (Gathering continually with other believers.)

These actions make it possible for a person to change a lot of memes at once;
sort of a batch change. The quality of the results from this process is primarily a
function of the quality of the new memes. Because the new memes are generally
not carefully vetted, the person may pick up some less-than-useful ideas at the
same time the old ideas are being replaced.
People who have been deprogrammed more than once seem to be the most
rational. A single religious conversion can change one fanaticism for another.
After a second conversion, people tend to get a sense that many whole
collections of ideas – contradicting each other – can seem equally true. This
makes people suspicious of such collections of ideas, and thus more resistant to
the effects of parasitic idea-organisms.
One way to help free your mind is to deliberately adopt a new Ideology,
then deliberately trade it for another.
Even deep unconscious habits can be changed by the force method. Generally, it
takes at least a few weeks of diligent effort to see results (much like the folding
hands example) but then the results come quickly and surprisingly easily. If you
have ever broken any bad habit (quit smoking or whatever) then you have
already done this.
When using the force method to remove idea-organisms, you will probably find
yourself instinctively using some of the other methods. Autosuggestion – that is,
speaking – is probably the most common. Go with your instincts. Talk out loud if
you feel like it. (May we suggest that riding alone in your car would be a good
time to do this, rather than in a crowded office.)
If some other action seems instinctive to you, try it out. As long as no one gets
hurt, who cares? It might be very useful. Any deliberate effort is helpful, whatever
the mechanism. Even if it doesn't work, it gets you used to the idea of deliberate
effort – this is very important.
Also, when using any method of meme reorganization, you will find various
associated ideas and images wandering around through your consciousness, as
if they were looking for a new place to stay. These are memes that were
somehow attached to the idea-organism you are removing, and they are floating
around searching for moorings. They may be useful or not. This is the perfect

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time to analyze them and to give them a place, consciously, or to kick them out
with a minimum of effort required.

5.2.1.2 Teleology
Humans are teleological. That means that we operate naturally by first seeing
goals then moving toward them. This is very convenient for us, once we
understand it. (There are also philosophical and religious studies of teleology,
which are not the subject of our discourse here. This is about teleological
motivation.)
You can see teleology in your physical movements: You first see your friend
across the room, and then decide to move towards him or her; you don’t plan
each step you take, rather, you see the goal and move toward it, with your
interior circuitry taking care of the details. The same thing happens to us on the
larger scale of seeing a condition we wish to reach. By seeing the final state, we
set our internal gears into motion for reaching it.

5.2.1.2.1 Seeing Your Goals

To use the teleology mechanism, you must develop a clear picture in your head
of what the payoff looks like. What exactly will you get at the end of the line?
What will your internal circumstances be? What will the external circumstances
be? Spend your time envisioning this. Daydream about it; look at it from every
angle; feel it, know it, and allow it to evolve into its own organic form. Once you
can feel the prize in your hand, your mindscape will begin to modify itself to
match the goal.
If you do this well enough, you will not only imagine the goal, but you will begin to
expect it. This is when things really start to change. Remember this: You don't
get what you want out of life; you get what you expect.
We’re not going to marshal a bunch of studies to support this statement, but it is
true nonetheless. Sure, a war or a bunch of contrary ideas that you hold to rigidly
may stop this process, but humans simply tend to get what they expect. This is
not to say that there is any magic at work here, but it is what tends to happen.
If we had to guess, we would say that the reason this happens is that humans
are capable of a great deal more than they realize. This means that expectations
are both motivators and limiting factors. People get what they expect because
when they get there they stop – they do not proceed any further. So, setting your
expectations high and keeping them in mind is important. Also, when you get
there, setting new goals and expecting to also reach them prevents stagnation.
This is probably the great strength that religious people find in prayer.
They regularly talk to God about the things they want, and they expect that
this will allow them to achieve those things.
Do the same with your Ideal Self. We strongly suggest some serious analysis on
your part. What do you really expect? If you find yourself expecting things that
you don't really want, kill those thoughts. Command your mind to do it your way.
Then, start expecting the best things. Meditate on them. Talk to your Ideal Self
about them. But don't hope, and don't wish. See them in your hand. Spend time
seeing them in your hands, in your life. Grow to expect them. Know that your
Ideal Self can get them for you. If you do, you are likely to get them.
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Expectation comes from visualizing the goal in sufficient depth, with a near-
constancy, and as an expression of authentic desires.
As we said earlier, if you can visualize your goals clearly enough, your psyche’s
ecosystem will reorganize itself accordingly. Here, again, you’ll find assorted
memes, newly disconnected from their moorings, floating along and looking for
harbor. Again, this is the perfect time to deal with them consciously.
You may also find certain Distributed Identities barely hanging on, and a type of
discomfort driving you to pluck them off their moorings. Go for it. If they don’t
make good sense, pitch them. (If they really do have a use, they’ll find their way
back soon enough anyway, so don’t sweat pulling them off.)

5.2.1.2.2 Seeing Yourself

Now, here is another key point: We have been talking about your Ideal Self. We
mentioned earlier that your brain holds not only images of the outer world, but
images of yourself. These self-images are very important. A bad self-image will
not harmonize well with the exalted goals you seek for yourself. In other words,
the pieces won’t fit well together, and you won’t get what you are working for.
Your internal image of yourself is not only built upon ideas, but also upon
observations. This is crucial, since you really can’t hide anything from yourself. If
you lie all the time, your internal image will contain that information, and you will
have a hard time trusting yourself. How much integrity you have or don’t have
may or may not be displayed to the rest of the world, but you yourself know, even
if you’d rather not. If you are untrustworthy, you’ll have a very hard time believing
in yourself. And if you do not even trust yourself, the higher levels of action and
growth are cut-off to you. Integrity matters – it matters a lot.
So, what if you don’t have a great image of yourself, based upon true
information? Well, you had better start there and start working on it seriously. If
the central mechanism is untrustworthy, forget about the rest of it being reliable.
Get true to yourself before trying to do everything else.

5.2.1.3 Reorientation
You may come across images and ideas that have a legitimate appeal to you,
but really do not harmonize with your new goals. In such cases trying to simply
uproot them is a problem; after all, they have legitimacy and real roots. A better
method is to reorient them, or, as some say, to reframe them. That means to
keep the roots, but to retrain the growth of the organism in a way that is
supportive of the main goal.
As an example: A friend of ours had a lot of pleasant and formative memories
from times when he lived in old tenement-type apartments. These were times
when he reordered his life – the roots of his success were formed when he was
in these places. So, he has a lot of good feelings and memories associated with
the dark, old apartments. That is an image in his mind that is so deeply tied to
things he highly values that it will not and should not go away.
On the other hand, he no longer wants to live in a tenement every day, even if he
might enjoy revisiting them every so often. Having the image of himself in the
tenement would tend to bring him back to it (by teleology), and he certainly does
not want that. So, what to do?
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We suggested to our friend that he change what surrounds the good image and
to give it a new look. Instead of seeing the dank apartment as a place to live, he
could see it as his secret hideaway. He could buy a large tenement building as
an investment and secretly keep one apartment for himself. This would be
supportive of his financial growth and would not undermine the legitimately good
feelings regarding the apartment.
There is another important visualization technique that we mentioned earlier in
this chapter: Modeling. By modeling your life on someone else’s, you can adopt a
lot of their internal characteristics. This is another batch technique, like switching
paradigms was for the force method.
There are many examples in history of one person becoming much like another
through close and prolonged contact, plus a bit of hero worship: Moses and
Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and many, many others. Modeling works, but there are
caveats.

5.2.1.4 Autosuggestion
Autosuggestion means talking aloud to yourself. In many ways this is similar to
building expectations by visualizing goals, but we list it separately because
speaking seems to have a separate effect associated with it.
Think of autosuggestion like exercise; developing and strengthening that which is
desired and squeezing and displacing that which is no longer desired. For
whatever reason, autosuggestion works. Again, you can expect to come across
varied memes that have loosened moorings during the process and again, this is
the perfect time to deal with them intelligently.
The classic objection to autosuggest is that "you’re only lying to yourself." Well,
that can be done, but we do not suggest it. As we mentioned above, self-honesty
is critical. Lying to yourself generally just gums-up the works, but you can safely
dream aloud and say where you are going. You can safely envision yourself in
the future. In effect, you begin to create your future by speaking to yourself.
Whatever the mechanisms, continued autosuggestion has worked so many times
that there can be little doubt regarding its general effectiveness.

5.2.2 Upgrading
This is where we begin to postulate a bit. Sure, we have support for the things we
are about to put forth, but less than we do for the things written above. So, since
we decided to be very open with you on our thinking, we decided to let you know
that we are getting a little bit more theoretical here.
There seem to be underlying brain structures and/or operations that give idea-
organisms more power over us than they "should" have. Here are two big
reasons why we think this is true:
1. A meme is only a packet of information, a mental tool. Yet removing or
even threatening a meme can cause significant discomfort. That may
indicate that it is somehow embedded deeply... too deeply. Certainly
some of the discomfort comes from the brain building circuits that are
based upon that meme. But unplugging the meme "shouldn’t" be a
trauma; it should be like removing an application program (think word
processor) from your computer, not like changing an operating system.
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 (Yikes.) For us, however, it is a lot like an operating system change –
difficult and time-consuming.
2. You are the "Decider." It is your function to decide which ideas you want
in your head. However, when an Ideology is rooted, it takes over some
of those responsibilities. When you question the choices made by this
idea-organism, you experience significant discomfort. In effect (and
probably in reality as well), the ideological parasite takes over one
section of your psyche and runs it as an automated routine. Your job of
analyzing and deciding is bypassed, given to another, and your
obedience is enforced by discomfort. Does this sound right to you?

From the above, we postulate that by correcting the operations of whatever

underlying mechanism is involved here; we can make everything associated with
revising one’s collection of memes much, much easier.
Exactly how might we do this? The same ways we’ve already mentioned:
Force: When you feel a sense of pain that says, "Don’t even try,” you say,
"Tough, I’m doing it. I will not back down."
Teleology: Envision yourself doing all the choosing, and enjoying doing it. Feel
the thrill of actually being in control of your own mind. Satisfy yourself that doing
this will increase your happiness and effectiveness; after all, no outside party is
going to make choices as benevolently as you will yourself.
Reorientation: When you start to feel worried about some aspect of this, slow
down, identify the concern (could take seconds or hours; sorry), then see if you
can reframe the essential need to have a different purpose or meaning.
Autosuggestion: Why wouldn’t you want to say, "I am in control of my own
mind"? Fear of responsibility is certainly a common reason, though not a good
one. Do you really think that an autoresponder routine designed by others is
going to help you? Feel the fear, say what you want anyway.
Remember also that being afraid to assert your own rights is a slave mentality.
This is your brain, your psyche, your life. Don’t be afraid of some "massa," who
uses pain and intimidation to shut you down. (This is not intended as a slight
upon real slaves, who have been subjected to horrible, warping physical and
mental incentives. It is an analogy to the fact that idea-organisms can make
slaves of us all.)

5.2.3 Removing the Hooks

We explained, in an earlier chapter, how ideological organisms are quickly
accepted and inordinately held to by people, because they offer cheap, and easy,
fast self-esteem. This type of self-esteem is inauthentic, coming from external
sources rather than internal sources. (Self-esteem should come from self, not
from others, and no one knows you better than you do yourself. Besides – it’s
called self-esteem – not other-esteem!)
In effect, cheap external self-esteem puts deep hooks into human minds. It really
is very similar to drug addiction, though it can be cured quite effectively.

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The cure, of course, is simply to run the sequence in reverse, and start building
authentic self-esteem. The real thing is much more solid and satisfying that the
cheap imitation.
How to do this:
1. Reject cheap self-esteem. If people say good things about you just
because you are part of the group, don’t allow yourself to be fooled by it.
It’s not real, and you can’t consider it real.
2. Analyze yourself and your actions. Was what you did a good thing?
Why? Were you being honest with yourself?
3. Be honest with yourself. Every mistake can be rectified, but if you are
not purely honest with yourself, you will not recognize the mistakes and
they will go unreformed.
4. Change bad behavior. Just stop doing it. Focus on good behavior and
when you slip, correct yourself. You control your own body and you
control your conscious mind. Do it!
5. Accept your goodness. Do not be afraid to admit that you have done
well or that you are a good person. Perhaps it would be better not to tell
everyone else, but do not neglect to tell yourself.
6. Enjoy your goodness. If you have legitimately done well, revel in it.
Feel good about it. Replay the scenarios in your mind. Replay and savor
your victories. Many people fear doing this; they think they’ll turn into
some type of braggart. This is unlikely. Besides, you are analyzing
yourself now; you’d notice and correct it, right? So enjoy!

Also, remember your concept of Ideal Self? When you do a full honest review of
yourself, your Ideal Self should be proud of you for some of the things you have
done that live up to your Ideal Self Image. That pride is authentic self-esteem.
Your Ideal Self Image should include being proud of yourself for maintaining the
mind you want to have and for learning to think clearly and correctly, according to
your own desires.

6.2.4 Bits and Pieces

Before we leave this subject of cleaning up your mental landscape, there are
some other scattered ideas that we want to make sure you have. These are not
the core, primary ideas, but they can be helpful. Here you go:

5.2.4.1 Self-Interview
Remember that you can interview yourself. We suggest that you do this the way
a lot of people do meditation – in a quiet, comfortable, interruption-free place.
Ask yourself questions and expect to get an answer; see what thoughts and/or
images float up to your consciousness. Again, no magic here, just using the
brain.

5.2.4.2 Dreams
No, don’t worry, we’re not going to try to tell you how to interpret dreams, and
we’re not at all sure they are "the royal road to the unconscious,” but they can be
interesting at times. Occasionally they are windows into some internal operations
or concerns. If so, use that information. Other times, they are reflections of daily
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events or simply errata floating off your hard-drive. Use dreams selectively, but if
you get a good clue from a dream, take advantage of it.

5.2.4.3 Redefining Yourself

Remember that the image you hold of yourself will affect everything else. So,
even if you do all the things we recommend, yet hold on to an image of yourself
as "the hard-luck case", "the one who has to carry the burden for the others", or
other such thing, your progress will become derailed at some point. Self-image,
like character, is destiny. All the things we’ve written about will help revise your
self-image, but you’ll have to allow the change, even if your friends and family
aren’t comfortable with it.

5.2.4.4 Clan Discomfort

You’ll have to disregard the expectations that other people have upon you. This
is especially important regarding people close to you. They are used to you being
as you are, and may have strong expectations. They may even be relying on you
in a sort of survival strategy.
You changing will scare them, or perhaps just make them uncomfortable. (If
you’re very lucky, most of them will applaud your progress, but problems are too
common for us to get your hopes up.) If you move forward too overtly it will make
other people feel bad. They fear your progress because it makes them look
inferior, and they already have more of that than they can bear.
Let’s be very clear – you don’t owe them anything, save to do them no harm. If
you moving ahead makes others feel uncomfortable, that’s their problem, not
yours. Move on anyway. Decide whether improvement or acceptance matters
more to you. It is likely that you’ll have to choose what is best for yourself over
the comfort of others – maybe multiple times.
Do not fear that you will lose all your ties to other people. Once you are secure in
yourself, others will gravitate back to you – they will even compliment you on the
very same choices they previously tried to discourage.

5.2.4.5 Acting
Most people don't really know themselves very well. They live the life they think
they are supposed to, not their own consciously chosen life. Their actions are
directed and even ordered by the approval of others, not themselves. They get
loud and drunk to show other people that they are vital and alive. They go to all
the right places - say and do all the right things at the right time. They may be
known as pillars of their communities – loved by all. But they do not get approval
from within. Many of them aren’t even sure what it would be like to be proud of
themselves.
This affects almost all of us to one degree or another, and you'll have to watch
yourself and root it out as it appears. You may have adopted roles early in life.
When you notice them, resolve to stop playing those roles. In this matter, inertia
is not your friend. William James wrote three rules for changing your life:
1. Do it immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.
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5.2.4.6 Self-referral and Other Referral
Self-referential people get their esteem from within, and will do things because
they, themselves, will feel good about it. Those who are other-referral get their
esteem from without and do things when they get positive feedback from others.
Be the first example, not the second. This goes very deep and is a very powerful
thing. People who are other-referral are subject to being miss-led all through their
lives and can be made to feel bad very easily. They also behave worse.
Self-referral people will usually do the right thing, simply because it is right. We
call these people "solid" or "reliable.” Not only is this an issue of honesty, but it is
critically important in business and other areas of life where reputation matters.
People who are other-referral tend to do the right thing only when other people
think they should – and only when other people are watching. That tends to make
them unreliable and variable.

5.2.4.7 Status-Seeking
We all like it when people think well of us and respect us. And there's nothing
wrong with enjoying that. There IS something wrong with requiring it. A great
many people live all their lives seeking status and envying people who have
more status than they do. It is neither healthy nor necessary to base one’s self
esteem on one’s position relative to other people.
People who seek status also tend to take a zero-sum view of status and try to
steal it from others by putting them down. If they can make you feel bad, they feel
a bit more powerful. This is very pervasive and breeds bad conduct almost
always.
The more you do the rest of the things we mention here, the more you should
have legitimate self-esteem. You will be the kind of person you want to be, not
what other people expect you to be. People will often think well of you, you'll
enjoy it, and it will be real, solid, and enduring.

5.2.4.8 Fear of Responsibility

Bear in mind that most people arrange their lives so that responsibility will not
stick to them. This leads them into a lot of stupid bargains. In actuality, the whole
thing is a mistake. If you disavow all responsibility, you also remove yourself from
taking credit from what you do well.
Don't allow yourself to fear responsibility – to run from it. Responsibility is
inseparable from individuality. Take them both; you'll be better and happier...
once you get over the shock.
There is a unique and odd comfort in blind acceptance. It removes all
responsibility from you and places it upon the thing you accept to run your life.
The same goes for complete submission to some religion or other ideology.
There is a certain pleasure offered here; relief, actually.
Don't fall for it! It's false. Choosing to let others do your thinking for you is still a
choice that you have made. You remain just as responsible, and your results will
suffer.

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5.2.4.9 Fear of Success or Failure
We have discussed how all wants and fears stem from the behavior of replicators
– biological or ideological. This can cause us to fear things even if they will be
good for us – because replicators fear change. This can cause you to fear things
that are new, even when logically you know no harm will come to you. Harm may
however come to certain ideas in your head. Those ideas will resist the change.
If you start your own business, ideas about being an employee in a company will
die. If you get involved in a serious relationship, ideas about being an
independent single person will die. This is the origin of both fear of success and
also fear of failure.
If you try and fail, ideas you hold about yourself – that you can accomplish
something – will be hurt, so to protect those ideas, you come up with excuses to
not try. That way you can keep on "knowing" that you could be great if you
wanted to.
Maintaining the status quo protects all the ideas in your head; shaking up your
world can dislodge some of them, so they try to prevent you from moving
forward.

5.2.4.10 Death of an Identity

Breaking up a relationship is a form of death for the identity of yourself in the
relationship: "Relationship You." (You may catch our allusion to the old Seinfeld
gag – but there is truth in this joke.) This is one reason why ending a relationship
can be so hard. After living with this other person for a long time, part of your
identity includes the other person. If you split, those Identities will be ripped out,
which feels bad.

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The same sort of thing can happen when changing jobs, leaving your home town,
and in many other cases. It causes us a disproportionate level of pain, seeking to
keep things the same. Remember that the discomfort you are feeling is due to
idea-organisms seeking to prevent you from changing. If it's the right thing to do,
do it anyway.
Note also that losing status is a form of death for Identities that are supposed to
have a certain status. Rising in position is also a threat to a long-established
status. Both fears of success and failure can be attributed to death of an identity
that is part of your self-image. People can also be very mean to one of their local
group-members who rise above them or falls below them in some way – so the
Collective Identities in other people’s minds are also an issue.
A marriage (or any relationship really) is a Collective. You really want to do
something as an individual, and yet you find yourself not doing it, because you
feel pressure from your idea of what you must do for your marriage. (This is not
the same as rationally deciding on what is best among options.) Obviously this
also happens for people with their families, social groups, racial groups, etc., but
it really does extend down to the level of any simple two person relationship.

5.2.4.11 Fear of Error or Ignorance

We're all wrong sometimes, and we are all ignorant of many things. These are
not things for which we should be ashamed.
For example: A boy is born in some backward, forgotten hill town. He grows up
entirely ignorant of the modern world. When he finally does get to the city, he is
woefully ignorant as compared to people raised there.
This is NOT a reason to be ashamed – it is an accident. On the other hand, if he
sees the knowledge of the city and runs back to the village in order to avoid it,
THIS is a reason for shame... or at least for guilt.
People who are willing to admit they could be wrong are MUCH more likely
to actually be right.
Shame locks you down and prevents forward movement. Reject it.

5.2.4.12 Grouping Ideas

Every hot new ideology seems to start with a kernel of truth, then expand it and
add a bunch of BS to attract more interest. People then tend to accept all or
nothing. Just because you recognize BS, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a kernel (or
more) of truth. Likewise, where you recognize truth, it doesn’t mean that
everything there isn’t also a lot of BS.
Symbiotic ideas start well, but a lot of hype gets added to the mix in order to get
them heard. Since this works, anything you are likely to hear has a lot of BS
mixed in. That means you have to consider all of your opinions, not just adopt
them.
This is also why intelligent folks can be radically divided. Each side has 50% BS
built into their ideas. Falling for the fallacy of labels, they can target the weak
parts of the each others’ philosophy and dismiss it all as untrue based on its
weakest links. Any time we accept labels – we are accepting 50% BS.

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Labeling allows groups of ideas to be taken as one – and this allows parasitic
memes to bundle themselves along with symbiotic and altruistic memes.

5.2.4.13 Substitutes
People tend to displace authentic virtues with cheap substitutes... a lot.
For example: A whole lot of people define themselves as "anti" something or
another. Why? Well, do you remember building fancy toy buildings when you
were a kid, then having your little brother or sister knock it over in a second? And
do you remember when you did it too? Destruction gets fast and easy results.
Complaining is a whole lot easier than Planning. Destroying is easier than
creating. It is much, much easier to be a critic than to be an artist.
And that's just one example. Authentic things are harder to find and develop. But,
damn... it's wonderful to know you have the real thing! It’s really, REALLY nice.

5.2.4.14 Easy Ideas

When people replace thinking with the memorization of slogans, ideas get
repeated for all the wrong reasons. What really gets ideas around is when they
are easy to repeat. Rhyming and rhythmic phrases, catchy tunes, use of
alliteration – all these things are memory aids, but also make the memes that the
words carry more likely to be believed and passed along. Madison Avenue ad
agencies use those catchy jingles for just this reason. This is what passes for
knowledge in the heads of many people – cute slogans that are easy to
remember. Do you really want the most dumped-down slogans of past
loudmouths running your mind or do you want ideas that are logically consistent?

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5.3 Logical Thought
Logical thinking and the scientific method are tools that can be used to analyze
ideas and conduct useful experiments. However, it takes some degree of mental
discipline to use these tools effectively. It is often easier to assume that other
smart people have done the thinking for you and just take it on faith that what
they tell you is true.
Even when you do start on the path to thinking things through for yourself, you
may often stop when things become difficult. When logical thinking calls into
question a long held belief, it often seems easier to dismiss logic than to work
backwards and untangle all the interdependencies that you have built up.
If you are willing to take the time, the tools we discuss in this section will be
useful to you.

5.3.1 Axioms
We would all like to have the answers all the time. But if you don't really have the
answers, the only way to work around your ignorance is to make something up.
You may think this seems like cheating – it would also seem to be a possible
source of false information. We have been talking about not taking things on faith
– this sounds like doing just that. However, if done properly, it's not. The way to
do it properly is by saying this:
We promise to always remember that we just made it up. We
also continually strive to reduce the number of things that we
are holding in our mind as ideas we can’t prove. But we will give
this idea the benefit of the doubt for now.
That is what an axiom is. It is something that we can’t prove and we know we
can’t prove, but we act like it is true anyway. It is a working assumption. This is a
very useful tool as long as we are willing to discard an axiom if we ever manage
to prove it is false. In fact, in logical thought, we don’t even think of our axioms as
being true or false – we think of other statements as being true or false based on
a given set of axioms. We must discard an axiom not only if we prove it false, but
also if we prove it true. If we prove it true, it stops being an axiom and becomes a
statement that we can prove or disprove based on our other axioms. We don’t
stop believing the provable ones – we just no longer consider them axioms.
We can only prove a statement true or false in relation to other axioms. We need
axioms, but we try to keep this set of made up stuff as small as possible so that
we can remember that it might just be bullshit.
It might help to look at your set of axioms as a logical tool kit – you want to keep
your tool kit as small as possible because it is something you have to carry
around with you all the time. You don’t want it to be too heavy. (The metaphorical
additional weight is the extra mental energy it takes to remember that each axiom
is something that may need to be discarded.) On the other hand, you want to
have the tools you need available when you need them, so you want your kit to
contain enough axioms to tackle any particular thinking job.
So where do you get these axioms from? How do you start assembling a tool kit?

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The most common way to create an axiom is to try things that seem universally
true to us. Axioms are just assumptions that we make – and you know what
happens when you ASSUME – that’s right, you have heard this one before, it
means you consider something to be true which is not necessarily true.
This can be dangerous, so we should look for axioms that seem to accurately
reflect the real world, and that we think will prove useful to our continued survival
and growth.
So far this is pretty easy. The hard part comes when we start working with our
axioms. Continuing to use axioms just because they seem true sounds like a
recipe for a logical train wreck, however, we also require that they cannot be
proved false. If a path of experimentation and logical reasoning, using our set of
axioms, produces a logical contradiction, then those axioms cannot be used
together. This process allows us to see which axioms can work together to form
a particular world-view, and that can be applied consistently to the observable
world around us.
For Example:

Axiom 1: GOD is omniscient (All knowing)

Axiom 2: GOD is omnipotent (All Powerful)

Axiom 3: GOD is omnibenevolent (All Good)

Experimental evidence: Bad things happen to good people

This is a classic religious mystery – a case where the axioms which a religion
asks us to take on faith seem to disagree with observed reality. If GOD can see
all evil, has the power to fix all evil, and does all good, then why is there still evil
in the world?
Logic dictates that such a conflict be resolved by either modifying the axioms, or
further experimentation showing that our evidence is faulty. Some possible
resolutions include:
• Change or remove axiom 1 – GOD isn’t always watching. In The Bible it
says on the seventh day GOD rested. Perhaps he is still asleep and isn’t
currently in omniscient or omnipotent mode.
• Change or remove axiom 2 – GOD'S powers are limited in some way.
For example, we might decide that GOD can not have two different
contradictory things happen at the same time, or must allow some rules
of causality. If faced with a choice of having some evil now lead to
greater good later, or allowing some small evil now to avoid a greater
evil later, then GOD will make a choice in favor of the greater good or
the lesser of two evils.
• Change or remove axiom 3 – GOD doesn’t feel the need to be good all
the time. Some or all of the time GOD leaves it up to us to be good or
evil while just observing us. God does not always get involved.

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 Sometimes GOD just gets caught up in watching the show. (This is
probably an easy thing to have happen when you are all seeing!)
• Question the experimental evidence – are we sure that bad things
happen to good people? Perhaps those people were really bad, and we
just can’t see as deeply as GOD. When your grandmother was hit by
that bus – is it possible she was on her way to a secret meeting of Satan
worshipers? Or perhaps the evil that we perceive is actually good for us.
Nietzsche said that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Maybe
GOD is just helping us build up some good spiritual toughness.

There are even additional unstated axioms here that can be questioned. Is their
only one universe? Perhaps GOD created all possible universes – with all
possible events happening. If so, then His powers are even bigger than we might
have imagined in Axiom 2 – given our unstated axiom that we exist in the only
universe. Then from our single universe point of view it would appear that GOD
was not omnipotent, whereas GOD would actual be more omnipotent than we
can even imagine.
So when you see how fun and complicated these theological debates might get,
it makes it all that much more understandable that Priests are willing to give up
sex to just stay up all night talking about GOD instead.
The upshot of all this talk about axioms is that logic is not useful for proving
anything to another person with whom we have absolutely nothing in common.
One needs a common consistent set of axioms in order to argue logically on any
topic. We cannot use axioms that they do not share with us to prove our point.
If the level of disagreement is so fundamental that we can not agree on the
axioms, we can only try to convince the other person that it is more useful to
some shared goal to see the world in a different way. We can only suggest that
another person try out our axioms – we can not offer any proof for them.
This is another way in which a set of axioms is like a tool kit – it may be that there
are different logically consistent sets of axioms that are useful for thinking about
different topics. While it would be nice to have one set of super tools that could
handle any job, axioms, like the tools for building a house, end up in the
equivalent of special kits like plumber’s tools, electrician’s tools, carpentry tools,
etc.
Changing someone’s world view is not so easy and the great conflicts in the
world are not always caused by arguments within a single world view. They are
often caused by conflicting sets of axioms. Resolving such conflicts is only
possible by showing that there exists no need for conflict, that actions taken by
the believers of one world view do not affect those believing in the other, or that
some course of action is available which is acceptable to both.
Surprisingly often, the actions are not influenced by axiom choice so much as
bad logical thought. So let’s take a look at what passes for good logical thought.
How do we build new truths from our axioms?

5.3.2 Syllogisms
The standard way to build new truths from known truths is called a syllogism.
This is a fancy word for combining two statements into a conclusion.

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Here is the standard example:

Premise 1: All men are mortal.

Premise 2: Socrates is a man.

Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

The general pattern of each syllogism is, as you can see, three statements. Each
statement contains a subject, a predicate, an assertion or negation ("is" or "is
not"), and a degree of certainty ("some" or "all"). In any syllogism, there is a term
that is shared by each premise that is used to connect the other two terms that
end up in the conclusion.
Given the 2 possible positions of the connecting term in each of 2 premises, and
the 4 possible combinations of certainty and assertion/negation in each of 3
statements – some fairly basic math (2 x 2) x (4 x 4 x 4) shows us that there are
256 possible forms for a syllogism.
As it turns out, only 19 of the 256 produce logically consistent conclusions, so it
is important to be aware that just stating something in the above manner does
not make it correct – indeed if that is all you have to go on, the odds of it being
correct are small.
Here is an example of a faulty syllogism:

Premise 1: Most politicians are veterans

Premise 2: Most veterans are honest

Faulty Conclusion: Most politicians are honest

This "three uncertain" example does not work because the uncertainty in each of
the premises produces the possibility of no overlap at all. This is made more
obvious by using the same form of syllogism with two true premise statements
that produce a nonsense conclusion. For example:

Premise 1: Most cats are milk drinkers

Premise 2: Most milk drinkers put milk in their coffee

Faulty Conclusion: Most cats put milk in their coffee

Trying to create a nonsense conclusion using the same form of syllogism is a

good way to test if it is valid form.
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5.3.3 The Scientific Method
So far we have talked about deductive logic, in which results are obtained from
the logical combination and progression of axioms. Perhaps an even more
powerful form of logical thought, however, is called inductive logic. Inductive logic
is the type of reasoning employed by the scientific method.
In inductive reasoning one starts with observations then formulates a hypothesis
concerning how such observations are produced. Experiments are then created
and formed to attempt to either demonstrate or invalidate the hypothesis. Only
after a hypothesis has remained unchallenged for quite some time does it obtain
the status of axiom or "scientific law" – and even then it may still be struck down
or altered by new evidence. Francis Bacon, one of the fathers of the scientific
method, wrote:
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and
discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to
the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of
which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and
middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives
axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and
unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of
all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
If science has been at war with religion, then this is the reason. Science uses a
chain of logic in the opposite direction from religion. The most basic axioms are
not written in stone until every possibility has been explored. It discovers specific
small truths first, arranges them into larger theories, and comes to its most
general truths last of all. This is quite backwards from a religious philosophy.
Religions ask one to accept the big answers on faith and to hold to that faith in
the face of all opposition.
The scientific method asks that observation and experimentation should be taken
as the ground upon which to build a structure of logical reasoning – that such
grand ideas as the source of all creation should be a pinnacle to be reached only
when the structure below is completely solid.
Religion, conversely, starts with fixed ideas about GOD and heaven, and builds
down towards the Earth we can observe and test. Where the logical structure is
not quite able to reach the ground, it is declared that some things man was not
meant to know, or that divine mystery is beyond us, or that GOD will never
supply proof that would make faith unnecessary.
Some have argued that science is just a different religion, and this claim is
strengthened because some who call themselves scientists will often become
fixed in their beliefs, or project beyond what they can actually demonstrate
through experimentation. Quite a few scientists have a hard time saying, "We
have evidence that this is true," rather than "We know this is true."
The scientific method demands that when new evidence is found which
contradicts the existing structure, the whole structure MUST be shaken to the
ground and rebuilt brick by brick. Some scientists become very attached to a
long-standing logical structure, becoming quite fond of standing on its loftiest
peaks. When new observations require demolition and reconstruction, such

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scientists can be found lying in the mud in front of the bulldozers, extolling the
greatness of the thinkers that came before them, much the same way the faithful
would speak of the prophets of their religion.
Other supposed scientists are drawn into the "either or" fallacy. When they see
some logical error, or contrary evidence, in a religious argument, they forget their
logic and jump to the conclusion that this proves the atheistic position, without
recognizing all the possibilities in between. Or they decide that religious people
are wrong to have faith in unproven ideas and that because the faith is wrong,
the ideas must also be wrong.
They fail to recognize that to deny something without proof is as much an
example of blind faith as it is to believe something without proof. It is as much an
act of faith to declare that you know that there is no GOD, as it is to be a true
believer.
The correct application of the scientific method allows a scientist to build up a
structure of ideas based upon an experimentally testable hypothesis. One can
not leap to any conclusions that one likes without the supporting experimental
evidence; one must find repeatable experiments that prove the conclusion.
Likewise, one can not reject such a structure simply because one does not like
the conclusion. Instead, we must create an experiment that shows its weakness.
This gives a logical structure great strength – in that each brick in its foundation
has been built logically, is testable, and need not be taken on faith. But it is also a
great weakness, in that any given brick can also be falsified and removed, and
this can bring the whole structure crashing down.
If there is a war between science and religion, it is like a robot fighting a
ghost; they can not touch each other; they do not share the same axioms.
If you are one of the faithful, real scientists do not reject your religious
observances to your God as being false. They reject your religion as being ill
defined, imprecise, not adequately tested or testable. They ask to see falsifiable
claims that can be tested. To them the key to truth lies in the opportunity to prove
falsehood. Unless and until you create quantifiable experiments that show that
through your prayer and faith, something testable happens, they will always see
your faith as irrelevant – not false, but if not potentially falsifiable, not worth
consideration.
If you are a scientist, the truly faithful do not reject your scientific methodology.
They reject your science as being incomplete, of not reaching out to embrace the
whole universe. They want to have all the answers, to have a complete
understanding of the universe, and to know that their lives hold true meaning.
Unless and until your structure of logic reaches the final theory of everything, and
unless that final theory produces deeper meaning, they know they will be happier
having faith in their understanding. If your theories do not give their lives
meaning, they will be seen as not worth consideration.
The two viewpoints are not incompatible. However, any attempt at combining the
two is an attempt to bridge the missing gap between the growing mundane
foundation of a structure on the ground and the peaks of a lofty magical castle in
the air. One can be a scientist and have faith in things one can not see. However,
when one starts either rejecting scientific models based on religious convictions,

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or gaining or losing faith in universal meaning based on scientific methods, one is
practicing bad science, bad religion, or both.
Some of the greatest scientists in the world have also been very religious, but it
is not an easy thing to look at the world both ways, and many have committed
errors of both science and religion in trying to do so. Einstein rejected models
based on probability theory, saying, "GOD does not play dice with the universe."
It just so happens that the end product of the probability-based models that he
rejected (Quantum electrodynamics) is a theory that has resulted in the most
accurate predictions concerning the physical world that humanity has ever been
able to make.
Why was this a sticking point for him?
We don’t know.
Surely Einstein did not believe that when he was at the craps table, GOD could
not predict or control his next throw of the dice. Then why did basing physical
predictions on probability theory at the sub-atomic level cheapen his concept of
GOD? His failure to allow his deity Omniscience and Omnipotence that could
transcend our concepts of uncertainty was bad religion, and his allowing this to
affect his pursuit of logical thought was bad science.

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5.4 Fallacies
Logical argument is actually kind of mechanical; mathematical, really. It uses
structured thinking to explain how a conclusion has to be drawn from a given set
of assumptions.
It is sometimes possible to create arguments that appear to logically prove
something, but really don't. Such an argument is said to be based on some sort
of fallacy.
It is important to be aware of the logical fallacies because they are found at the
heart of almost every deception you will ever face. That means that you hear
them on a daily basis. You will notice that a lot of these fallacies are still called by
their Latin names. This is because they were first noted as examples of faulty
logic a couple of thousand years ago. Despite the amount of time that people
have known them to be examples of invalid argument, people still fall victim to
them every day.
We will not go into a full list of all the identified fallacies here, but we will cover
the ones that are most commonly used. A fun drinking game to play is to listen to
any political or theological argument and whenever you hear and name a fallacy,
everyone else has to take a drink. Sadly if less that 50% of the statements made
in an argument contains a fallacy, it is a very well reasoned debate.
(This drinking game may well be the reason that philosophers are also often
notorious drunkards.)

5.4.1 Fallacies of ambiguity

Fallacies of ambiguity are used to create a false conclusion by confusing the
terms of the argument. Sometimes a term is used in a different way in one
premise than in another, or sometimes tricks of language are used to suggest
something false without actually stating it clearly.
By the way, a premise is anything that your argument presumes to be true. (The
tricky thing about premises is when they are assumed, but not stated.)

5.4.1.1 Accentus
A fallacy in which ambiguity arises from the emphasis (accent) placed on a word
or phrase, or choice of words, in order to say something without actually saying
it. For example:

"He is telling the truth this time."

The implication here being that he usually lies, but since no direct argument has
been made that this is the case, it can not be directly challenged, nor can the
speaker be said to be lying based on the actual words spoken.

5.4.1.2 Grouping and Dividing

• SWEEPING and HASTY GENERALIZATON
• COMPOSITION and DIVISION
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These are related fallacies that rely on the human mind's tendency to think in
groups of things. Each of these fallacies attempts to confuse people by mixing up
a group and its parts. The trick is to improperly apply the attributes of the group
or situation to a specific example, or visa versa. Division example:

"That Justice was on the supreme court when the court ruled in favor of abortion, therefore
he is pro-abortion."

However, based simply on the person in question being a member of a group

that through its internal rules expressed a certain opinion, does not mean that the
person held that opinion. The Justice might have been the author of the minority
opinion, or abstained from voting.
A similar example of the Fallacy of Composition would be to say:

"Judge Smith is one of the judges on the panel, and I know that he has expressed
sympathies for the defendant's cause, therefore the defendant will get a fair trial."

Of course, the other Judges involved could easily all share an agenda that would
be best served by having the defendant strung up by his thumbs, making the
fairness of the trial unlikely at best.
Political arguments regularly make use of the confusion of properties of groups
and individual members. This can even lead to the deliberate creation of new
group words and phrases that are specifically designed just so this logical "error"
can be exploited. For example:

"We know that they have Weapons of Mass Destruction!"

In this political example, the classification of a set of many weapons allows a

politician to say, "truthfully,” that they know a certain group has access to
"Weapons of Mass Destruction.” However, the intention here is, without actually
lying, to incite in the public the fear that would accompany saying that the group
had access to the most dangerous weapons on the list (nuclear weapons with
global delivery systems) even though the group is in fact known to have only the
very least dangerous weapons included in the WMD category, and possesses no
reasonable delivery system whatsoever.

5.4.1.3 Equivocation
This is an argument in which an expression is used in one sense in a premise
and in a different sense in another premise or conclusion. Or (and you see this a
lot in politics), terms that mean the same thing are used as if they are not the
same. Some silly and obvious examples would be:

"He removed some sand from the bank of that river; therefore he should be arrested for
bank robbery."

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"I did not have sexual relations with that woman." (She just gave me a blowjob...)

A less silly, though perhaps just as obvious example would be:

"We would never invade and occupy another sovereign nation. We simply intend to
liberate the oppressed people and stabilize the area for as long as may be required."

Neither obvious, nor silly is the argument:

"It is murder to kill a human. A fetus is human. Therefore it is murder to kill a fetus."

In this case, the word "human" is used to mean both a fully realized thinking
individual, and a collection of human cells that has the potential to be such an
individual. A fetus does have a certain level of potential, and it may indeed be
enough to make abortion immoral, but this argument doesn't make that case for
immorality fairly.

Both sides of the debate certainly feel that killing a baby is immoral, even though
a baby still only represents a certain level of potential to be a fully thinking
individual. However, this area – the span between potential and realization of
humanity – is precisely the issue that is open to debate. The above argument

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does not prove anything by trying to linguistically bridge the difference between
realized and unrealized potential.
To show why this is true, consider that the same argument could just as easily be
applied to individual sperm cells. They are human too – and each one represents
a potential thinking individual given the right circumstances. Even the most
radical pro-life activists have some cut-off point where they find the frustration of
genetic potential not enough to be called killing.
If they did not, you would see people standing outside high school proms with
protest signs like the ones pictured in the cartoon.

5.4.1.4 Reification
(Also ANTHROPOMORPHISM)
These are fallacies of applying attributes to an idea or thing that they do not in
reality posses. Commonly, this means treating an abstract idea or inanimate
object as if it had the qualities of an animal or human being. Example:

"This country gave birth to you. You should therefore show it the same love it feels for you,
just as you would your mother."

Obviously a country does not have the same feelings as a mother, and did not
give birth to you in the same literal way.
This fallacy is particularly interesting to us, in that it is the fallacy that we and our
book could be accused of. When we speak of ideological Higher Powers
possessing an agenda, this might be seen as reification or anthropomorphism.
However, one must remember that a central argument of this book is that the
information that makes up complex ideas is semantically no different than the
information that makes up genetic organisms. This is why we hold that
governments and religions can indeed be thought of as having "wants" and
"fears" that are at least as valid as those of a low level biological life form, if not
those of an actual complex animal or human being.
We also believe that this shows the concept of having a "want" can be viewed as
just the result of an evolved replicator promoting the behavior that has given it
survival value in the past. It does not matter if the replicator in question is genetic
or memetic.
We are not attempting to invalidate this fallacy completely. In fact we feel that
anyone who believes that some Higher Power is considering their best interests
is falling for this fallacy. Higher Powers can not think the way we do – they just
evolve such that they end up doing the things that benefit their continued
existence and replication. Any higher thought that helps them is done by
individual human beings in their service.
However, we are suggesting that a full understanding of information systems
should redefine the concept of life to address the memetic as well as the genetic.
Then real understanding might be gained concerning the level of life that idea-
organisms can really have.

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5.4.2 Fallacies of Misdirection
These fallacies are based on distracting one's opponents with issues that are not
really logically related to the proposition being argued.

5.4.2.1 Appeal to Consequences

This is a fallacy in which the consequences of believing a proposition are
introduced, rather than information concerning the truth or falsehood of the
proposition. Examples:

"If we decide that it is a constitutional right for everyone to carry a handgun, we will live in a
world of Wild West gunslingers, with people dying in the streets every day."

"If we decide it is not a constitutional right to carry a handgun, only criminals will have
guns, and honest citizens will not be able to safely walk the streets."

Neither of these statements have anything to do with the issue of

constitutionality. Rather than logic, they appeal to the listener to imagine the
effects of a given decision, and influence that decision based on the claimed
effects. These particular arguments are appeals to fear, which is very common
for this fallacy.
Another classic example would be a common religious argument that makes use
of this fallacy:

"Believe that what we tell you is true, and in the next life you will be rewarded; do not
believe and you will be punished."

Note that the act of considering the consequences of an action is not the fallacy
here. The fallacy is in appealing to the consequences as a way of sidestepping
some other rational standard of the truth of the argument. If the nature of the
argument is to choose between two courses of action based on their relative
merits, of course the consequences of each action are important and applicable.
If the nature of the argument is to determine the truth or falsehood of a premise,
however, the consequences of thinking one way or the other can not replace a
rational decision about the premise itself.

5.4.2.2 Argumentum ad Nauseum

This fallacy works on the belief that the more times something is said, the more
likely it is to be true. This is used in advertising where radio and television
commercials are run over and over again until you know the jingles by heart. In
politics, talking points are passed out to the faithful media mouthpieces so that
the same ideas can be repeated in the same words again and again and again
and again. In religions, the same prayers are recited and the same songs are
sung, so the ideas sink in through massive repetition of the words.
It may seem obvious that lies can be repeated just as easily as truths, but a lot of
folks are still regularly suckered by this technique of repeating falsehoods.

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Perhaps even more problematic is the fact that this repetition is not always
caused by any evil intent to spread bad information, but sometimes simply
because the bad information is particularly interesting or easy to repeat.

In the United States, many people decide what they should be afraid of based on the
information they get from the mass media. (TV news, radio, newspapers, etc.) The
problem is that the mass media has a commercial interest in being interesting as well as
informative. To avoid being boring, they regularly report on uncommon occurrences rather
than normal everyday events. This means that deaths from things that kill people every
day (like heart disease and automobile accidents) get almost no media coverage, while
things that are actually very rare (like terrorist attacks or deadly infectious diseases)
receive a great deal of media attention. Common threats are mostly ignored while rare
threats are talked about endlessly. This has the effect of projecting a threat model that is
exactly backwards from any reality of the dangers in our world. Unfortunately people also
regularly vote based on these media inspired fears and this affects the lives of other
people, even those who have more rational threat models.

5.4.2.3 Interrogation
This fallacy is based on asking questions that presuppose some fact, such that
the interrogated party must either seen to be accepting the fact, or evading the
question. A classic example is the question:

"Have you stopped beating your wife?"

5.4.2.4 Poisoning the Well

This fallacy is used to discredit an argument before it can even be heard.
Example:

"Only an idiot would agree that…"

5.4.2.5 Straw Man

This is also known as the fallacy of misrepresentation. The "Straw Man" is so
called because he is easily defeated. Where a real man requires a real victory in
battle to knock down, a straw man is easily pushed over.
One amusing example of this fallacy can be seen in modern TV commercials, in
which an entirely fictitious competing brand is invented to highlight the features of
the advertised brand. A humorous example of such an advertisement would run
something like this:

"At Good Guys Car Rental, we treat you with class!" Smiling agent opens door of luxury
car and hands keys to smiling man. "Not like those other guys." Ugly clerk pulls lever and
customer falls down chute into tiny economy car.

In modern political debate it is routine to hear politicians talking about their

political opponents’ plans and goals. When this happens, you can bet that their
version of their opponents’ plans do not match what their opponents would say.

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This fallacy has also been used throughout history by religious groups who made
claims about other religious groups that were not true. In some cases such lies
were used to incite violence and genocide against whole cultures.
Almost any argument that has people killed also includes the next fallacy.

5.4.2.6 Two Wrongs

This fallacy supposes that some proposition is true or correct because it acts
against some other false or wrong thing. This is the classic fallacy used to justify
horrific behavior. Example:

"We had to kill those innocent civilians because we are fighting against global terrorism."

5.4.2.7 Bifurcation
(also “False Dilemma” or “Excluded Middle”)
This fallacy presents only two possible alternatives when many actually exist.
People are very susceptible to this. Our minds seem geared towards thinking in
these terms – True or False, Wrong or Right, Black and White, Us and Them.
Collective idea organisms encourage this sort of binary thinking and exploit it.
For Example:

"Either you support the policies of The Great Leader, or you are a traitor who hates this
country."

This type of thing gets said a lot, even though clearly you could love the country
and still feel that the "Great Leader" isn’t doing such a great job of leading it. In
fact greater love for the country would mean more concern if you thought the
leader was doing a poor job – someone who did not love the country would not
care that it was being misled. A common religious example is:

"I know that GOD is my father and watches over me in heaven, because I refuse to believe
that I am the meaningless product of random chance."

Of course there are many more possibilities than just the two presented. There
are many more creation ideas than just the one presented by a single religion,
and if there is no creator, how does that make us meaningless? There are many
possible ways we can have both existence and meaning. It is not logical to put
forth only two choices – the God of one particular religion or an empty random
meaningless existence.

5.4.3 Fallacies of Source

These fallacies derive from the idea that the source of an argument affects its
validity. This is very easy illogic for people to buy into. We tend to think in terms
of labels, credentials and brand loyalty. However the source of a statement has
no direct bearing on its truth. A proposition is not true because it comes from a
credible source and is not false because it comes from a non-credible source.

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5.4.3.1 Age
• ARGUMENTUM AD ANTIQUITAM
• ARGUMENTUM AD NOVITAM

These fallacies suggest that something is true just because it is old (or new).
They are opposites of each other, yet both used regularly. Examples:

"It was good enough for my grandfather – it’s good enough for me."

"You’re not still using that old technology are you? Version 2.0 was released last month."

5.4.3.2 Wealth
• ARGUMENTUM AD CRUMENAM
• ARGUMENTUM AD LAZARUM

Again these are opposites. The first fallacy suggests that someone is correct
because they are rich – the second because they are poor. Examples:

"He must know what he is talking about; he made millions in the stock market."

"He grew up on the streets, so he really knows where it’s at."

5.4.3.3 Popularity
• ARGUMENTUM AD NUMERAM
• ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM

These fallacies put forward the idea that because a lot of people believe
something, it is true. Example:

"90% of the people on the planet believe in some sort of afterlife. They can’t all be wrong."

Of course 100% of the people on the planet also used to think the sun went
around the Earth – and they were all 100% wrong.

5.4.3.4 Argumentum ad Hominem

This fallacy gets right to the root of all fallacies of source – it is a direct attack on
the person doing the arguing, rather than the argument itself. It is an attempt to
disprove a proposition by discrediting its source, rather than actually disproving it.
Some political examples:

"My opponent is a typical 'Tax and Spend' 'Bleeding Heart' liberal."

"My opponent is a typical fascist conservative."

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5.4.4 Fallacies of Correlation
• CUM HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC
• POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC

These fallacies are attempts to show causation based on association. "Cum Hoc"
shows two things that happen at the same time, while "Post Hoc" is even harder
to spot as being false because one thing actually follows the other.
Things that happen at the same time might be related, but they might not either.
Things following each other might be related or might not be. Because things are
somehow associated doesn't prove that they one causes the other. They might
both be caused by something else.
As usual, these fallacies show up in political and religious argument, but they are
also the source of many bad scientific studies that are used politically. For
example:

"Gun control laws don’t work. In fact they can even make things worse by disarming
victims. Studies show that states with the strongest gun control laws have the highest
crime rates."

The argument here is that the gun control laws caused the high crime rates,
however, without more information; it could just as easily be that the laws were
passed in response to the high crime in the state. These laws may indeed not
work, but it might also be the case that crime would be worse rather than better
without the laws – nothing is proven by the simple correlation that was presented.
Even if the crime rates went up after the laws, the laws may have been passed
with expectations of a rise in crime based on some other factor. A proper
scientific study would make use of a control group – showing what happened in a
similar area that did not pass the same laws. Did crime go up there too?

5.4.5 Paradox
A paradox is not really a fallacy, but it can be used to support faulty thinking.
Paradoxes arise in any system that allows self reference – and concluding
anything based on finding a paradox is an error. A paradox is neither an
affirmation nor a contradiction. Its existence should neither confirm nor deny the
usefulness of any system. To make either claim would be a fallacy.
A paradox occurs whenever a new idea can be proven false if it is assumed true,
and can be proven true if it is assumed false. This excludes it from adoption in
your current set of axioms but does not mean that your current set of axioms is
flawed. In fact, if your set of axioms does not generate paradoxes occasionally, it
is probably not complicated enough to be useful for most things.
Actually, the concept of paradox is apparently not well understood if one goes by
famous examples. Here are two examples of supposed all time great paradoxes:
1. Epimenides the Cretan said, "Cretans always lie." Was he lying?
2. Can GOD create a stone so heavy that He cannot move it?

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Neither one is actually a paradox.
The first is trying to be an example of the simpler paradox, "I am lying," or, "This
sentence is false," but fails to complete the logical loop. The escape is that
Epimenides is lying as he does occasionally because the truth is that, "All
Cretans sometimes lie" and/or "Some Cretans always lie." His lying on this
occasion does not imply that, "All Cretans always tell the truth," which would
prove him not a liar and thus create a paradox.
The second is asking "Can an Omnipotent Being give up Omnipotence?" The
answer is trivially, "Yes." Giving up omnipotence is doing something, and an
omnipotent being can do anything – and can therefore do that. There is no logic
loop here. Giving up omnipotence does not refute that there was ever
omnipotence to begin with. It is no more a paradox than asking, "Can a guy
holding a pencil put it down." After he puts it down he is no longer holding it.
Even if you eliminate the passage of time between the two states of omnipotence
and denied-omnipotence, such as, "Can GOD do something that GOD can’t do?"
you don’t have a true paradox such as, "This statement is false" – merely a
fallacy of interrogation where the assumption of the question (that there are
things GOD can’t do) conflict with one of the axioms about GOD, namely that
GOD is omnipotent (can do anything).
A true paradox can arise only from self reference in the system. It can be shown
false if assumed true and true if assumed false, and is therefore neither true nor
false, without contradicting any axioms.
This is particularly intriguing when you consider that being human is all about self
reference. Our brains model the world and ourselves, while at the same time our
brains are part of the world and ourselves.
Now that is a thought worthy of being an all time great paradox.

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5.5 Bias of Our Culture
Since this book is about identifying, analyzing and sorting the ideas that float
through our brains, it seems only fair that we should come clean about our own.
This may allow you to better understand our ideas and make use of them, should
you choose to do so. It may also be helpful to you if you are reading a translation,
have a different religious/cultural background, or even have a different academic
or professional background.
On the other hand, cultural differences only really matter in terms of
communication, not as regards the ideas themselves. The rightness or
wrongness of an idea has nothing to do with what culture it arose from, only
whether or not it stands up to a comparison with reality. If it explains reality well,
then it is a good idea, and where it came from is unimportant. If we do our job of
communicating well enough, our cultural background shouldn’t matter.
All of that said, this book is the product of a specific cultural heritage that both of
the authors share. In this section we’ll explain exactly what that is, and we will try
to lay out the assumptions (axioms) that underlay the arguments in this book.

5.5.1 English Speaking

This book was written in the English language. If you are reading it in another
language, the accuracy of what you are reading involves the mind and skill of a
translator. This cannot be helped, but it does make the translator something of a
coauthor, which you may wish to keep in mind.
A second issue is that your language and English may differ as to specific words
and expressions. Translating is difficult. For example, in English, a non-violent
situation can be described as “peaceful,” even if many aspects of it are highly
chaotic. In several other languages, “peaceful” would clearly imply that
everything is under control. In most cases a good translator will deal with this
appropriately, but you may want to verify this for yourself.

5.5.2 Judeo-Christian American

Our culture is American (United States) and Judeo-Christian. Many examples in
the book will be based on this. For example, when we discuss God we are mostly
referring to the Judeo-Christian God. In other words, we’re talking about the big
guy who sits on the heavenly throne. When we discuss laws, we are referring to
the idea of Common Law or to the American law that sprang from it.
Since Judeo-Christian American covers a lot of specific ideals, we’ll list what we
think are the most central and unique of them:

5.5.2.1 Allegiance to Ideas

The ideas we share are held to be more important than geography or ethnicity.
America was (and to a large extent still is) far more of an idea than it is a place or
a race. There is no specific American gene pool, and American territory has
changed greatly over time (though not recently).
The central idea of America is that people give the government permission to do
things – not vice-versa. However manipulated and mangled this idea has

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become, it still has moorings. We feel that holding to a good idea is far more
critical than fidelity to geography or ethnicity. Ideas make or break us, but dirt is
for walking upon and ethnicity is an accident of birth.

5.5.2.2 Merit is Paramount

Or, stated differently, only the effectiveness of an idea or technique matters, not
its origin. Shakespeare wrote, "Adopt a virtue and it is yours." That is really the
golden core of Western civilization. The Greeks copied the best ideas from the
Egyptians, the Romans borrowed wholesale from the Greeks, the British took the
best ideas from several sources, and the Americans borrowed wholesale from
the English. "Take what works, wherever you find it, and use it for best effect."
would be an excellent description of our stance.

5.5.2.3 The Common Law

We believe in fairness and progress. One great tool for this is, and always has
been, the Common Law that we inherited from the English. The two central
statements of the Common Law are this:
1. Individuals should keep their agreements, and not defraud others.
2. Individuals should not aggress against, or encroach upon others.

The Common Law is based upon self-reference and integrity. Integrity and
reason trump everything else and all people are equal in the sight of this law.

5.5.2.4 Co-Dominance
We are comfortable with co-dominance. We do not engage in an endless
struggle to feel dominant over our friends, coworkers, etc. We tend to reject
purely dominant-submissive relationships. We may accept hierarchies in our
workplaces, but we do not accept this as applicable to the rest of our lives.
Where we accept authority, we do so only by voluntary choice.

5.5.2.5 Cooperation
We are the descendants of farmers, and from them we learned that helping your
neighbor works out best for all involved. We may not actually be obligated to help
our neighbor, but mutual assistance makes life better for both of us over time.
We are confident in our own abilities and do not have to snatch the last piece of
pie before our neighbor sees it. We can both make our own pies, and we can
both do it better if we help each other.

5.5.2.6 Delayed Gratification

We also learned from our farming ancestors that you have to save some of the
corn for next year’s seed. We have learned to restrain ourselves. We can take
less now in order to get more at a later date, even if "later" is quite a long way off.

5.5.2.7 Individuality Above Clan

While we expect mutual kindness to arise in families, we do not require the
submission of the individual to the clan, or even to the immediate family. (This
obviously does not apply to young children, who must be closely controlled by
their parents merely for their own safety.) We regard close family associations as
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a good thing, and sometimes even as a thing of beauty, but we reject family
control over the individual.

5.5.2.8 Reality Above Philosophy

Philosophy is a wonderful study, but it only becomes valid if and when it helps us
better deal with reality. The “beauty of an idea” is highly subjective and may not
have anything to do with the rightness of that idea. Ideas that match reality are
right, ideas that do not match reality are wrong, regardless of their “beauty.”

5.5.2.9 Rejection of Class

This is an American concept that we hold dear. We believe that class boundaries
are a great evil, holding humans in a sort of slavery to the accidents of birth. We
tolerate no class restrictions.

5.5.2.10 Basic Freedoms

Freedom of choice, thought, association and speech are sacrosanct. No one
touches these without offending, period. We hold that individuals are responsible
only to do no harm. Not only should they be free to live independent, unique
lives, but in doing so they make best use of their individual talents. The end result
is a world that is a better place than it would be if they had served some
mandatory cultural ideal.

5.5.2.11 Comfort with Inequality

While all men ought to be equal before the law, we do not expect them to
produce equal results. Some of us are stronger, some are faster, some think
more rapidly, some work harder, and some of us are more usefully trained. Our
upbringings vary widely. Our results will never be equal, nor should they be.
We are comfortable with that. We each, through both success and failure, build
our own lives as best we can. We are self-referential regarding our success.
What other people think of us is not our primary concern; what we think of
ourselves matters more.

5.5.2.12 Failure is not Permanent

We do not hold it a stain upon our souls to try and to fail. If we fail, we try to
understand why our venture failed, to improve our ideas, our methods, and our
personal virtues – then to begin again. We see even multiple honest failures as
little more than obstacles, and we deeply admire the man or woman who has
gone through multiple failures yet soldiers on and eventually succeeds.

5.5.3 Technical Professions

Our backgrounds include scientific education and engineering occupations. This
gives us a set of ideas that we live by and, indeed, feed ourselves by following.

5.5.3.1 The Scientific Method

We rely, fearlessly, upon things that have been verified and shown to be
repeatable. When used correctly, the scientific method works. We’ll stick with it.

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5.5.3.2 Logic
Logic is the science of non-contradiction. Self-contradictory statements have
shown themselves to be untrustworthy so many times that we choose not to
waste our time with them. In fact, we work hard to avoid them.

5.5.3.3 Confidence in Technology

We love technology. It keeps us comfortable, preserves and cooks our food, and
in general frees us from many of the mundane concerns of survival. We have
seen it blow through, work around or make irrelevant so many obstacles that we
doubt it little.

5.5.3.4 Non-Worship of Nature

Not only is Mother Nature a fairy tale, but Jack Frost regularly kicks her ass.
Nature kills almost as much as it nurtures. It’s almost funny to see Nature’s
idolaters clinging to their heating, air conditioning, cleaning and refrigeration
devices, desperately avoiding the glaring contradiction.

5.5.3.5 Linear Time

Time moves forward. While we are open to theories that predict a possible
backwards movement, we have yet to see proof. And we have certainly never
seen proof of circular time. Such concepts may be useful for unprovable religious
theories, but they have no useful place in our reality – at least not yet. Until then,
we assume that time is linear.

5.5.3.6 Objective Reality

We presume that we are applying our technical formulas to things that are real
and which will respond consistently. So far we have not been disappointed.

5.5.4 Our Axioms

We discussed axioms earlier in this chapter, as things which we hold to be true
even though we can’t exactly prove them. At first this may sound like a stupid
thing to do, but it really is necessary. For example, our first axiom is that reality
is, in fact, real. This is very probably true, but can we really prove that reality is
not some bizarre, cosmic video game? We don’t know how that could be done
without stepping outside of our universe. So, we accept, as an axiom, that what
appears to a sane man to be a rock is indeed a rock. If we ever gain the ability to
step outside of our universe we can verify this axiom; then we can call it either a
truth or falsehood. Until then, it is something we choose to accept without proof.

5.5.4.1 Reality is Real

This has to be the most overwhelmingly accepted idea ever to exist on Planet
Earth. In fact, it’s hard even to imagine an existence where this wasn’t axiom
number one. We are 100% reliant on reality being real every time we decide to
focus our eyes on something, take a bite of food, or even take a breath of air.
The guy who actually believes that reality is not real lives in the psycho ward.
He’s curled up in the fetal position because he thinks that the world is made,
alternately, of prune juice and silly putty.
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5.5.4.2 Our Perceptions are Accurate
The knowledge we get through our senses is good, even though it is limited.
When we see a rock, our perceptions are right, even though they may not tell us
everything about the rock. X-ray, infrared or other forms of analysis may tell us
things that our naked eyes cannot, yet that does not make our eyesight wrong,
just limited.
We must use our perceptions with sound reason in order to be sure. For
example, merely seeing the sun go up and down makes it appear to be moving
around the fixed Earth, but appearance does not make the simplest explanation
true. In this particular case, further observation and analysis provided a better
answer.

5.5.4.3 Humans are Individuals

This is another one of the things that is so overwhelmingly held, that to think
otherwise is hard to imagine. Why even bother to communicate if we are not
separate beings? We are so obviously separate beings that actually believing
otherwise would earn us a quick trip to a padded room. (Of course this would
only happen because we were defying a collectively held idea ;-)

5.5.4.4 Reason is Our Best Tool

Reason has led to all of our advancements, and no other source has really come
close. Even when inspiration provides some good clues, reason must be used to
bring the new thing into actual existence.

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 6
Beheading Leviathan
Reading this book, you may have come to accept the idea that the ideological
equivalent of multi-celled organisms can and do exist in idea-space. Further, you
may understand that these ideological replicators have evolved to influence us in
ways that are not beneficial to us as individual human beings. Even if you
succeed in eliminating Collective Identities from your own mind, the effects of
such parasitic idea-organisms will still be all around you. Other people, who still
believe in Higher Powers, will try to impose the will of those ideological entities
upon you.
Your next thought may be, "Well what can I do about it? How can I help to free
these other people from mental bondage?" Or, if you are a little more self
interested, your first thought might be "How can I use this knowledge that other
people don't have to make myself rich and famous?"
One answer is that you try to teach those around you. Maybe you could even
write a book about it – we did it already, but don't let that stop you, maybe you
could do it better. Also, movies, comic books, claymation cartoons, Doctor Seuss
style children's books – all of these would probably be useful for spreading such
an important idea.
But maybe writing and teaching are endeavors that are a little too abstract and/or
intellectual for your tastes, and/or you are not the artistic type. Well then, you can
always teach by example. Live your life in a way that reflects your refusal to
surrender your individuality to any Collective.
Collective Identities resist certain technologies (seeing them as threats). Perhaps
such technologies can actually help peacefully shrink the influence of collective
thought. Why not give it a try? Embrace those new technologies and ways of
doing things that Collectives seem to fear. If you are a technological type
yourself, you can even work on the invention and improvement of such
technologies, as well as just being an early adopter.
Perhaps the most important thing to do is not to hide your love of individual
liberty. Don't keep your head down or your mouth shut.
When you hear someone talking about how we all have to pitch in and make
sacrifices in a time of crisis, be the one saying that you are more than willing to
help people in need on a one on one basis, but you are not putting on a uniform
and goose stepping to marching music.
When your leaders call for you to suspend your right to think or have opinions,
and to simply follow them faithfully, you be the one to remind those leaders – and
everyone else who's eyes are glazing over – that those leaders work for you;
they are supposed to be representing your ideas, not telling you what your ideas
should be.
When those leaders try to scare you with hypothetical dangers, you can be the
one to rationally ask them, “Will this terrible new danger kill more or less people
per year than lightning strikes? Bee stings? Automobile accidents? Eating fatty
foods?”
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When those who worship the status quo trot out hypothetical horror stories that
could result from the new ideas, just speak up and say:
"Shouldn't we let those who are brave enough to try new things, do so
unopposed? If it works it could be great, and we will never know unless we
get out of their way and let them prove their ideas!"
Anything that empowers individual people and reduces enforcement by central
authority is going to help. Ideas that do not produce value can not survive in a
free market for long. If you want to shrink the Collective, then that is your goal –
more freedom – less restrictions on communication and exchange of value.
Perhaps we can someday shrink the Collective Identity to the point that it is an
amusing anachronism, and individual values and liberties are the driving force in
the world. But until then, there is a battle going on. The bad news is that it has
been going on for a long time, and the collective idea-organisms are still with us.
The good news is that we just might be winning.
What follows in this chapter is a collection of our best ideas on what you can do
to change the world to one of greater freedom for individuals. Give each of these
ideas some thought. If you like them, consider how you could help make them a
reality. And feel free to come up with your own even better ideas.
Don't ask us what you should do – figure it out for yourself.

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6.1 Who Should I Vote For?
Up till now we have been looking at collective idea-organisms academically. Now
we are taking a look at the Collective from the point of view of reducing the bad
effects it creates. We want to see if there is anything we can each do personally
to reduce its effects.
In the United States and other representative democracies, your personal power
over the government is your ability to vote for your leader of choice. But how do
you know who to vote for to increase your personal liberty and reduce the
strength of the Collective?
Let's start by clarifying the central issues of collective idea-organisms:
The first goal of any organism is to survive. The central issue in the eyes of any
collective is to keep humans as hosts. If the humans ever seriously turn against
it, the Collective is finished. This has already happened to a lot of particular
collective idea-organisms. History is littered with them. But this basic type of
idea-organism is still around and still hurting us.
Even deeper than issues that relate to any single Collective, is the strategy of all
Collectives. After all, parasitic idea-organisms exist only as free-riders inside of
human brains. If the humans ever figure out that their minds are being used
without their consent, there is a very real chance that they will rebel and then the
whole game will end. That would mean that all Collectives, everywhere, would
have to either justify their existence rationally, or fade into nothingness.
The central mechanism of using human minds without proper information and
consent is the one thing that Collectives must maintain. Nothing else matters in
comparison.

6.1.1 How Do They Think and Evolve?

And, while we're at it, how smart are they? I mean, if we are seen carrying this
book around, should we be afraid?
Idea-organisms reproduce and grow by taking over the operation of human
minds. To use an understandable (and quite accurate) analogy, they install their
software, take over a certain amount of memory space, and use the central
processor from time to time.
So, even if an idea-organism performs some adaptive operations in an individual
mind, this is only one node of a Collective with millions of nodes. How, exactly is
an idea-organism to communicate this new thought to the rest of the Collective?
Collectives develop new thoughts in a slow-motion process. It goes like this:
1. The little nodes (software running in a million individual minds) are
constantly exposed to new ideas from other humans.
2. When an idea comes along that gives the idea-organism some sort of
advantage, the node (again, this is the software running in any individual
brain) lights up. Its energy level goes up and it is compelled to pass this
idea along to other nodes.
3. The idea is then passed-along with increased energy and the first
vestiges of authority. "Everyone in Ephesus is talking about this idea."

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 4. As the idea is passed along, the authority grows. The new ideas are
recognized by the individual nodes, and each attaches some authority to
them as they pass them along.

As the process shown above continues, a meme is added to the Collective. This
is how Collectives think – in slow-motion.
Authority is the tool Collectives use to insure communication between nodes.
Awarding a person (or story) the status of authority is to say, "Accept this!" Notice
in yourself that the voice of authority comes with a strong discouragement to
applying reason prior to acceptance.
Collectives have no mechanism to achieve any serious level of intelligence. They
evolve like animals; they do not use self reference to cognitively adapt like we do.
They evolve by replacing memes, not by replacing genes. This gives them a
middle-speed pace of adaptation. Collectives adapt over decades, not over
millennia like genes, and not in moments like human minds. (Seriously changing
one’s mind is high-speed evolution.)
There may be good reason why communist states always resorted to 5-year
plans. That may be close to their shortest basic adaptation time.

6.1.2 How Do they Control People?

OK, how does this little outpost in someone's mind make them do what it wants?
Frighteningly enough, it isn't that hard and it's really effective.
Remember we talked earlier about self-esteem and how it influences people?
Well, this is how Collectives force people into obedience.
Above we spoke about how new ideas that fit well with the Collective get passed
slowly from mind to mind, and how new collective ideas turn their originators into
"voices of authority.” New ideas that do not fit well with the Collective receive just
the opposite treatment. If an idea or behavior of some individual does not fit in
well with the collective mindset – other members of the Collective give feedback
that stifles the idea. If the person persists, they label that person as an outsider –
a geek – a social outcast – perhaps even a criminal.
In fact this stifling of new ideas starts before the idea is even out of the potential
innovators mouth. Before a person can even voice a new idea, to see how other
people will react, it has to get past that person's own filters – the images in the
person's mind of how other people are likely to react.
These are the Distributed Identity Models that we discussed previously. They act
as a filter over what ideas the person is ever even able to express. In this way,
most people avoid even the slightest risk of public shame by not speaking up
when a new thought arises. They put new ideas quickly out of their minds for fear
of public ridicule. Only those with very weak Collective Identity infection ever do
speak up, and they are often subjected to huge societal pressures to shut up
again.
Humans are hyper-sensitive to shame, as well as being wildly overly-sensitive to
guilt. They are driven to cover these tender 'wounds' with whatever salves and
bandages they can find.

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Collectives are only too happy to provide such bandages.
Notice two important things from your own life experience:
1. At some point, you were almost certainly hurt very badly by being
publicly exposed as shameful. You were embarrassed by saying
something wrong, especially in front of an authority and his/her group of
followers. You felt small, weak, and vulnerable. (And God bless you if
you only experienced this as a child and were able to work out of it.)
2. Your first instinct when facing this situation was probably to say,
"Everyone else did it too!"

Now, think about that for a moment. Stop and re-read those two points. Are they
true? Was your defense from shame to hide in collective behavior?
This is one of the main hooks that the Collective uses to secure obedience.
As we said above, Collectives are only too happy to give humans a fast, easy
salve for their shame. And that salve is the shelter of authority. Earlier, we called
it "external self-esteem.” If many people are doing something, we are confident
that we will not be shamed if we go along with them. Voices with mass
acceptance are safe.
Conversely, there is almost nothing more frightening than standing alone. You'll
notice that public speaking is always mentioned as one of the greatest fears
experienced by humans. And being "afraid to speak alone" is perilously close to
being "afraid to think alone.”
Self-esteem and shame are the carrot and stick that collective idea-
organisms use to control their hosts.
Notice also that this is what prevents people from changing their minds. Once
this self-esteem band-aid is in place, they cannot bear to have it ripped off, much
less rip it off themselves. If you consider yourself a "good person" based upon
your political affiliation (and many folks do), then rejecting the ideas of your party
can be like ripping off the band-aid. And it can get worse if people will say bad
things about you after you express your change of opinion.
This applies to all Collectives, not just the political parties mentioned above:
Religions, tribes, families, all of them.
This is how people are forced to remain in their place.
Changing your mind takes guts, and may come at a price.
You will notice that the majority of humans make decisions based upon the
criteria above, far more than they do on the actual merits of any particular choice.
After all, their internal pain or comfort is all too obvious. Unfortunately, the
thinking of many people stops at somewhere close to this point.
There is one meme worthy of particular attention that is used for control by
almost all Collectives: The condemnation of "selfishness." The technique of
making individuals feel selfish and guilty is a great master-stroke for the
Collective. It makes them unwilling to defend themselves as individuals and
afraid to act in their own self-interest. There is an old martial arts phrase – "De-
fanging the snake." This is when you strike an opponent's weapon-hand, rather

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than just blocking the weapon. The opponent loses the weapon and "the snake is
de-fanged.”
In the same way, instilling a fear of selfishness is to de-fang the human mind.
Give this a bit of thought. Acting in self-interest is NOT the same as abusing or
exploiting others. But allow your self-interest to be removed “for the good of the
team” and you are sure to be abused and exploited.
(Of course the Collective – selfish in both nature and practice – is always fully
immune from such criticisms of selfishness. Cute, huh?)

6.1.3 Which Candidate?

From the standpoint of the Collective, any political candidate’s stance comes
down to a single issue: Increased Control or Decreased Control. Nothing else
really matters to a Collective. If they get more control, they can express their
nature freely. If they have less control, they will be restrained.
In the eyes of the Collective, political movements always break down into High-
control factions versus Low-control factions. What the Collective "wants" is a
mass society; all being conditioned the same way, feeding on a unified stream of
information, and being kept away from serious thinking by the same flashing
stream of entertainment.
Animals develop hunting strategies, and so do Collectives. For example, every
political party is the “party of liberty.” For God’s sake, Hitler and Stalin said they
were pro-liberty! Why? It convinces hosts that the party is on their side. (If
everyone had read this book, maybe the slogan would be, “We’re Pro-Host!”) A
promise of liberty makes the hosts more willing to sacrifice their own interests for
the cause.
People and ideas are promoted by the Collective when they do service to the
Collective. The candidate that voices the best way of making people “all pull
together” (especially if uncritically) becomes the new hero. The intellectual who
develops the strategy becomes a “leading voice.”
In one of his darker moments, one of our favorite authors, Ben Hecht, declared
that “thinking makes us monsters.” Well, not exactly. Thinking the ideas of a
Collective makes us monsters. Listening to Hitler’s logic, to Stalin’s, to Castro’s…
these thoughts make us monsters. Thinking as an individual – rare though it may
be – makes us useful and beneficial to our fellow humans. It angers brains that
are controlled by Collectives, but it improves the world we live in.
Collectives were much more comfortable in Dark Ages Europe than they are
today. So long as the hosts continued to reach the age of reproduction, all was
cool. Past that hurdle, ideological stability was about all that really mattered. It
has taken a lot of brave men and women, sometimes lashing out erratically, to
get us to where we are now. Bless their memory.
You might also watch for this: Authority figures for the Collective tend to speak in
terms of abstractions, rather than in terms of concretes. They talk of "upholding
the law," rather than of "locking people in cages." Or, they speak of a
"democratically-elected leader," rather than of a "thug who attacks dissenters."
This can be pretty hard to pick up when these guys are talking fast, but you may
find a useful tool for reviewing written arguments.

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Abstraction can be useful, but is not to be preferred over concrete reality.
Abstraction is only a tool, not a super-reality.

So, who should you vote for?

We suggest that you vote for the candidate who talks less about the team and
more about the individual players –- less about menacing groups of evil doers
and more about specific tangible wrongs. Vote for the people who see the world
in terms of many individual human beings trying to get through life, rather than
huge ideological constructs that must be either worshiped or defeated. Vote for
the ones who are really about allowing free behavior, not the ones who turn
freedom into an icon for which you must sacrifice the things you really want to do.
Vote for less control by the Icons over the individuals.
Vote for humans!

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6.2 Fighting For a Free Market
We have spoken about the nature of the Icon Problem: That once people have a
group of ideas in their head under a single name or image, they have trouble
examining these ideas individually for validity. This allows bad ideas to ride along
with good ideas.
This basic concept is what is wrong with collective governance and authority.
Bad government "services" receive spill-over good will from people who are
taught that the government as a whole is good. And since there is no competition
in these services, people may not even be able to see an example of how things
could be better.
If the government tells people that it is protecting them by not allowing
unlicensed, unregulated, operators, who are just in it for profit, why wouldn't
people believe them? Especially without visible examples of people who are “in it
for profit” doing it better and cheaper than people who do it because they get a
kick out of controlling other people's lives.

6.2.1 Hard Choices

If you want to beat back the creeping Collective, even just a little bit, one of the
best ways to do this is to either start or use free market alternatives to Collective
controlled services.
Even just using such an alternative service is a hard choice to make, because
what this means is that you will have to pay for something that is already being
given to you for free. (Well, they are actually stealing money from you and then
using it to pay for a service they are offering for free, but they are going to steal
the money from you anyway, so that makes the service seem like it's free.) Or,
you will have to use a service provider who is not paying the licensing fees, and
is therefore illegal – and you are risking fines or worse for your voluntary
economic arrangement. You may need to both ignore the free government
handout, and risk the government punishment to actually engage in free
economic behavior. This is the classic "carrot and stick" scenario that is so
effective in motivating people. There is a good chance that both parts of it are
being employed in an attempt to control any given industry.
It is unclear that you will necessarily be rewarded for this behavior, even if you
avoid being punished. Engaging an unlicensed, unregulated, unauthorized, non-
governmental, practitioner of some trade may cost more than the government
version or it could be that the service is inferior, and the reason that the person
doesn't have a license is that they are not very competent.
The only saving grace is that it should almost never be both. If the goods or
services in question are things that the government supplies for free, any
provider that is charging you will have to be much better than the government. If
it is just the case of an industry that is burdened with licensing and regulation,
any unlicensed provider is going to be much cheaper than those that are required
to foot the bill for the regulation of their industry.
If you are careful, you can do better working outside of the Collective
approved system.

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However, the Collective is doing everything it can to make sure this is not the
case. In an earlier chapter we talked about problems in the free market, such as
the "tragedy of the commons problem" or the "prisoner's dilemma" that were
caused by incomplete information. We mentioned that “altruistic memes”
sometimes enforce good behavior in such situations. Here we see the other side
of the coin. When it is an evolutionary advantage to the collective idea-organism
to make things worse for everyone, it will enforce behavior that causes bad
economic situations. Where the Collective is functioning properly in its own
interest, it will make sure that the best move for you to make in your own self
interest is in line with what it good for the Collective, even if some other path
would be better for everyone on average, should enough people resist the
Collective long enough to realize that better situation.
Actually starting a free market alternative business is hard. The Collective is
guaranteed to impose higher penalties on the entrepreneur for not doing things
the way the Collective wants them done, than it would impose on someone who
was just a customer of such a business. This is a necessary strategy for the
Collective, as the rewards to the individual who works around the Collective's
rules (and create greater value for everyone) are very significant, thus the
deterrents to such behavior must be stronger. Where a customer might just be
reprimanded, the business owner will be fined. Where the customer would be
fined, the business owner jailed. Where the threat to the Collective is great
enough that a customer would do jail time, the entrepreneur might be
permanently incarcerated or even killed.

It is not impossible for the free market to take back an industry from the Collective. In the
United States, it was illegal for any private concern to deliver packages and compete with
the US postal Service. This did not stop FedEx from doing it anyway, and getting the laws
changed. Now there are numerous package delivery services that have raised the
standards of package delivery back to free market levels. In principle, this could be done in
any industry where some company was willing to take the risk of violating existing law to
provide a better service and benefit everyone in so doing, and could demonstrate that
obviously better service before getting shut down by thugs with guns.

So, working outside the system is not going to be easy. But if you are willing to
try, there are things that can be done. The key thing you can do is to use your
voice. Your power of communication is your best defense and offense when it
comes to doing battle with The Leviathan. Remember that the Collective is a
creature of information, and your best weapon to weaken the beast is the right
information spread to the right people.

6.2.2 Lazy Minded People

OK, this is the section where we tell the ugly truth.
People always complain about lying, deceiving politicians. (Heck, we do it too.)
But in any type of half-functional republic or democracy, that is misplaced anger.
The people who elect the lying politicians are the guilty parties.
Most people do not think much. They follow the patterns set by folks around them
and remember slogans that get them nods of approval. If you are thinking a little

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bit here, you're tying a couple of things together... keep going... That's right! They
serve the dominant DIs of their place and time.
All of the things mentioned above – which you must know that people do –
makes those people... suckers! Dupes. Chumps. That may seem like unkind
terminology, but what shall we do? Make it so soft and smooth that no one ever
really gets a kick in the ass?
Until those (many) folks start to think and to take control of their own minds, they
will remain suckers and will continue to do the same self-defeating things. And
because you must share a world with them – you will suffer the consequences
along with them!
It is time for you to start telling people that they are acting stupidly – living by
auto-pilot and fearing to be themselves. If you think you are not like that, then it is
time for you to start kicking those other people in the ass (metaphorically
speaking of course). If you fear you might be like that yourself, then it is time to
kick yourself in the ass – to start making some changes.

6.2.3 War of Words

If everyone realized that freedom of individual choice was superior to using
collective force, the world would be a better place for all. Since that is not where
we find ourselves, the real key is convincing people. That is done by talking
about it, and by demonstrating that it is true.
Educate people in the science of economics. Where economic principles
disagree with "common wisdom,” we find that common wisdom is speaking the
words of the Collective – calling for more rules and less freedom. Economic
science shows that freedom of thought and actions produce the most good.
If you use a non-governmental or unlicensed product or service in lieu of one
authorized by the Collective, and it works out well for you, tell people about it.
Recommend the solution to your friends, and tell everyone how superior it was to
the authorized alternative. Let people know that options exist for them beyond
what the Collective wants them to know about.
When people do things that demonstrate individual liberty, tell them how proud
you are of them – make them feel good. A Collective Identity expressing itself in
people will cause just the opposite reaction, and this must be combated. Instead
of telling them how foolish they are being, compliment them on how brave they
are being. It is your liberty they are extending too.
When someone argues the position of the Collective mindset, argue back. Argue
for the importance of personal liberty and freedom. Those infected by the
Collective will be jealous and resentful of those working outside of it. Express
your displeasure to anyone that is perpetuating the idea that conformity is more
correct or safer than free will. If someone is trying to degrade someone for being
weird or different, laugh at them and ask them why they are so insecure as to
need to be normal.
Weirdness breeds new ideas, and new ideas are the best way to retain individual
freedom. Freedom is most easily found by creating new situations to which the
Collective has not yet had a chance to adapt. Economic freedoms, having been
removed, can be regained with new business ideas and new technology.

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6.3 Engineering Freedom
One of the major themes of this book concerns the fear of technology that is
exhibited by collective idea-organisms. Different technologies frighten different
Distributed Identities for different reasons. Communications systems, however,
are of particular interest to all Ideas that cause collective behavior.
Communications systems are the nervous system of the Leviathan. Without them
it can not maintain its identity across multiple minds. On the other hand,
communications systems can also carry competing ideas, allowing them to grow
strong enough to overthrow the dominant ideas. Communications systems are
therefore both required and feared by the Collective.
We have talked previously about different types of communications systems, and
how they affect the ability of collective idea-organisms to control the flow of
information in a society. Central broadcast of information favors the growth and
survival of collective Ideas. Central control of information gathering likewise
increases the power of central authority. Central authority is weakened when
people can communicate easily person to person, and when people can easily
gather their own information.
Even more dangerous to central authority are communication systems that easily
let any individual communicate a message to multiple interested parties at the
same time – to broadcast their message. We see evidence of this in the way
central authority has controlled such technology as radio and television. Either of
these technologies could be used by any individual to communicate with many
interested listeners. To prevent this free proliferation of uncontrolled ideas,
almost every government on the planet has strictly controlled and licensed these
mediums, turning them into central point technologies with a few State approved
broadcasters and many mute listeners.
Even the United States, a country with the concept of free speech written
into its founding document, has decided that new technologies allowing far
reaching speech must be controlled and licensed.

The First amendment of the Constitution of the United States says "Congress shall make
no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Yet somehow, congress
routinely passes new laws controlling speech that are enforced by the F.C.C (Federal
Communications Commission), and new copyright legislation that abridges freedom of the
printing press, record press, CD press, DVD press, etc... One has to wonder what part of
"shall make no law" they do not understand.

If you want more liberty, greater freedom of communications is a fine place to

start. If you are an engineer or entrepreneur, you should work to develop
systems that increase the abilities of individuals to control their own information,
and to exchange information with whomever they wish. If you are not in a
position to create such systems, then you can at least be an early adopter –
using and spreading such systems quickly. Do not let central authority tell you
that using such systems is wrong. Stand up and demand your right to free
communications. This is almost certainly a path to greater freedom.

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6.3.1 The Internet
The Internet is a distributed system that denies central control. Ironically, the
protocols that allow it to operate in a decentralized way grew out of the fear of
atomic war that the United States Government was using as its current
boogeyman to keep the people scared. Conflict between Collectives allowed
freedom to creep in.
Collective idea-organisms are currently adapting as fast as they can to try to
control this system that was designed to defy centralization. Whether it can be
controlled will depend on what individual applications are invented and used by
people everywhere.

6.3.1.1 File Sharing

File sharing systems are a great way to share information. This technology is a
natural growth of the interconnectivity of computers that is the Internet. Almost by
definition, what it means to connect two computers is to be able to share files
between them.
So what is the problem? Why the controversy? How could anyone consider this
sort of activity illegal?
The problem lays in the obsolete idea of Copyright. Before the invention of the
printing press, authors wanted people to copy their content and share it freely, as
this increased their fame and made it more likely that they would receive
commissions and or patronage. This was the business model for the creation of
art for a long time. But with the invention of the printing press, governments
began to try to control the growing spread of information.

Copyright law was actually first invented as a means of controlling the publication of
religious ideas. During this time the "patent" was a tool of central market control that
granted monopoly rights for the selling of a certain good or service. The first copyrights
were based on patents granted to printers’ guilds. The concept of "intellectual property"
was created later as an attempt to maintain these controls in a time of greater individual
rights and freedoms. As the idea of "property rights" came into its own, the idea that these
regulations protected a different non-physical kind of property was encouraged.
Labeling the central control of ideas as "intellectual property law" distracts from the fact
that it is actually a system for reducing property rights. Each copyright or patent granted by
the government places yet another limitation on the patterns into which you can legally
arrange your own personal property. It would be both more accurate and historically
appropriate to call such legislation "pattern monopoly law.”
The economic idea of "property" applies to scarce resources. Patterns are not scarce
resources. They can be infinitely repeated. Such a system of regulation creates artificial
economic scarcity and gives collective idea-organisms a way to slow and discourage the
new ideas and technologies that threaten them.
The only scarce resource involved in authorship or invention is the ability to claim credit for
one’s work. Plagiarism might be viewed as theft of intellectual property. But making copies
of an existing work without claiming credit does not resemble theft in any way.

If the first printing presses had been as fast and as far reaching as the current
Internet, the idea of copyright would never have even come into being. That
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being the case, trying to enforce such systems now that the Internet exists is
foolish. However, progress in information reproduction technology was once slow
and business models developed back then that only work if control over the
reproduction of a given work is treated as a legal property right.
These business models have continued to the current day when our technology
for reproducing information has grown to the degree that this business model is
untenable. As the ease of reproducing information increases, the cost of
enforcing an unnatural control on information flow increases. This is why we see
Corporations in various media publishing businesses lobbying the government to
try to make good, useful technologies illegal.
This case of corporate Collectives trying to prevent technological change is not
unusual. The business models of many industries often find themselves
threatened by environments created by new technology. Another type of
Intellectual property – "patent law" – is more commonly used to repress new
technologies for a time. A Corporation fearing certain technology that targets its
ability to sell a product to people is no different in principal from a Nation State's
restriction of transportation technology that threatens to reduce people's territorial
instinct, or a religious idea-organism resisting medical technology that reduces
people's fear of death.
In the end, because the technology is, in fact, symbiotic, and useful to
individuals, the technology wins out. In the United States, more people already
use file sharing systems than vote in the elections for the congressmen who pass
laws trying to make file sharing illegal.

To truly understand how ridiculous it is to continue to attempt to enforce the artificial

scarcity that copyright creates, first imagine a world where we all decided that each atom
of CO2 that you breathed out of your lungs was your property because it had been created
by you. No one else could use it in any way without paying you. If a farmer's plants
absorbed it, he would have to pay you, etc... Now try to imagine the costs of enforcing
such a system.
Enforcing intellectual property law is like that, but even worse. Individual molecules of CO2
are at least discrete items that never spawn more molecules of CO2, and they travel
through the atmosphere relatively slowly. Whereas we now have technology that allows
information to spin off nearly unlimited multiple copies of itself at a rate measured in
encyclopedia sets per second, and that information can travel around the globe at the
speed of light.
As the speeds of our information technology increase, the costs of enforcing Intellectual
Property Law are increasing exponentially – going toward infinity.

The current state of the art in file sharing is the Bittorrent system designed by
Bram Cohen. The beauty of this system is that bandwidth load is shared among
all the users downloading the file. This allows crucial information to be quickly
distributed to the whole world, without requiring the original source of that
information to have large bandwidth capabilities.
Kudos to Bram and all the other people who worked on Bittorrent! They have
created exactly the kind of information system that makes life hard for collective
idea-organisms. Check it out at www.bittorrent.com

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The next step in file sharing technology may be Internet distributed file systems –
with every user’s data spread across multiple computers all over the world, and
with cryptographic solutions that make it impossible for agents of collective
authority to trace where a specific file is actually stored, or find out whom is
accessing what.
Every new file sharing system that increases the number of interested "listeners"
a single individual can easily and cheaply communicate information with
simultaneously, or reduces the ability of any central authority to monitor or
obstruct information flow, increases our level of free communications – our
freedom of speech.

6.3.1.2 Cutting the Wires

Currently the wires, through which the Internet is connected, are mostly owned
by government or corporate entities. These entities will naturally try to use this to
facilitate information good for their survival and replication – to restrict information
deemed bad for their purposes.
This has lead to the fight for "network neutrality" in which legislation was sought
to prevent the owners of the wires from charging different rates based on what
information was contained in the packets they routed. This legislation was not
passed, which is not surprising, as it is a rare law that increases freedom.
It also might be argued that whoever owns the wires should be able to use any
pricing model they want. Perhaps then, a better path towards free information
flow is to just stop using those wires.
Wireless routers have been created that can find a path to route packets from
one side of a city to another, without ever "going to ground" through land lines. If
there was a way to make the operation of such wireless routers commercially
good for those operating them, they might proliferate across the entire world,
creating an Internet run by the end users, with no larger entities trying to control
any part of it.
At the least, having such an alternative would put pressure on the owners of the
wires to not adopt pricing strategies that would cause their customers to want to
use a different system.
The key to such an arrangement would seem to be a routing system that allowed
electronic payment information to be passed along with the packets, so that
everyone would pay a small amount to the owner of each hop on the network
route to have their packets forwarded. Such "micropayment" systems have been
one of the ongoing goals of developing electronic currency systems.
A system that would instigate the growth of private node wireless networks
across every major city would prevent Collectives from throttling the
communication of unapproved information.

6.3.1.3 Free as in Beer

Another way that collective idea-organisms are fighting for control of Internet
communications is by using "Intellectual Property" law to control the protocols
that Internet systems use. This is equivalent to telling people that they can not
say certain things, because you own the language that they are using to speak,
and you refuse to license it for the speech they want to use it for.
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Consider email – one of the most popular uses of the Internet. Servers that
exchange email can be run by anyone. No one pays a licensing fee to exchange
email. Every server is an equal participant in such exchanges. This makes email
extremely powerful and useful, but it was only possible because no Higher
Powers were there to try to keep this protocol from equally empowering
everyone. It was developed by geeks for other geeks when no Collective was
interested in what they were doing.
Now collective idea-organisms are very interested in the Internet. Any new
protocol must be filtered through collective ideas about business models, national
security, etc... If email were to be invented today, rather than being a free
protocol that everyone could use on every server equally, various corporations
would all be creating their own proprietary version of email, and insisting that
they were going to win over the market so that all electronic messaging would
eventually take place only on their servers.
Government would get involved too – having seen that the Internet was the
future of the world, various government agencies would all want to have a piece
of it. The post office would say that email was letters, and insist that people use
electronic stamps and pay the government for each email. Law enforcement
would demand, in the name of national security, that a copy of each email be
sent separately to each interested enforcement agency. It would be impossible to
create the email system we have now, while paying any attention to these
collective interests.
The email system that we currently use could not be invented today. Ten
years after the modern Internet started to be widely used; you could not get
people to think in terms of free distributed protocols.
Later protocols, such as instant messaging, and IP telephony, show the
infiltration of the idea-organisms. Rather than a single protocol that anyone can
use, providers want everyone to use their own system and servers, and actively
resist any attempt to bridge the systems and make them inter-operable. These
technologies will never truly come into their own until any new provider can use
the same common protocols without fear of legal action, and no one entity
controls the "center" of the system.
Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project (a precursor to Linux) in 1983 and
also founder of the Free Software Foundation in 1985, recognized that software
protocols that were monetarily controlled tended to damage the shared
experience of computer use. That the concept of monetized "Intellectual
Property" just slowed down the progress of computer technology.
For the Internet to continue to evolve as a tool of individual freedom, rather than
a tool for information control by the Collective, this flawed concept of Intellectual
Property must be ignored by innovators. It is bait used by the Collective to gain
control over information flow. The trick is to convince people that it is in their own
best interest to be able to control their inventions. This provides a handle for
central control and suppression of technologies that would otherwise increase
individual freedom.
In the world of Open Source Software, the analogies "Free as in Speech" and
"Free as in Beer" are often used to distinguish between "without restrictions" and

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"without cost." The protocols for any electronic communications system must be
"free as in beer" in order that the system also be "free as in speech."
There is even individual financial self-interest in seeing past this collective control
trick. If you are a programmer, and you give away your protocols, they are more
likely to be widely adopted. It is quite possible for you to do very well financially
based on your reputation as the creator of a protocol that everyone uses. On the
other hand, if you patent a protocol and no one else ever uses it, you gain
nothing.

6.3.2 Surveillance and Location Monitors

In order for central control to be effective, good information must be available
concerning the people to be controlled. Additionally, the people must also be
denied such information about their controllers.
In his book, "1984,” George Orwell described a State that kept its citizens under
constant video and audio surveillance. This imagined dystopian nightmare state
was a place of harsh central control and almost zero personal liberty.
Many have paid attention to the cameras pointed at the citizens in this fable, and
blamed them for the problems of such a system. However, the lack of cameras
pointed at the rulers is also an important part of the story, and one that seems
less frequently pointed out.
However, the idea that the problems of central authority lay in the lack of ability of
the regular individual to monitor the actions of the agents of central control is a
very old one. It is classically embodied in the Latin phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?" or "Who watches the watchmen?"

6.3.2.1 The Watchmen and the Watchers

Cameras continue to become cheaper and more abundant. Walking in the
downtown area of any large city in the United States, one is almost always on
camera. Many are quick to point to this and predict that Orwell's nightmare
society is becoming a reality. However, the truth may be exactly the opposite.
Instead of cameras controlled only by the State, we are seeing an explosive
growth of personal cameras. Every cell phone has one now. Every private
business has its own security cameras. Instead of a world with increasingly
draconian law enforcement made perfect by constant surveillance, more often
than not, it is the bad behavior of law enforcement that is caught on camera by
individuals.
On March 3rd, 1991, L.A. Police stopped Rodney King for speeding, and when
he failed to comply with their instructions, beat him severely. It is debatable
whether or not this particular beating was justified based upon standard police
procedure, but there is little doubt that such beatings for failure to respect police
authority were quite common at the time. What made this particular beating so
extraordinary was not the degree of injustice or severity of the beating, it was the
fact that the public got to see it blow by blow.
More and more such cases of authorities being caught “on tape” doing something
wrong have happened since then. Also, more and more cases of individuals
committing crimes have been recorded, and the offenders have been punished
based on this evidence. As cameras get cheaper and more plentiful, bad acts are
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harder to hide. This is true whether such are committed by cops or private
citizens. This may be leading to a world where there is no difference between a
cop who does something wrong and a private citizen who does something wrong.
Both will receive proper feedback in the form of punishment that fits the crime
committed.
It does not matter that each time this sort of thing happens it receives less
national attention. The attention can be very local, and the effect will be the
same. When people are under observation, or might be under observation, they
will not often do things that they would not want other people to know about.
In a 1994 Wired Magazine article, noted libertarian Sandy Sandfort suggests that
police be monitored when on duty, both by cameras and by positioning systems
tracking the motions of each individual part of their bodies:
Today's audio-video technologies make it feasible for juries to
vicariously relive police actions. Imagine the courtroom scenes
if a police helmet was equipped with a tiny video camera,
perched like some mystical third eye in the center of the officer's
forehead. Add a supersensitive microphone next to each ear
and, sprouting from the top of the helmet, various
communications antennae. Imagine if everything the officer saw
and heard was captured for later review ... single-chip, coin-
sized versions of their [motion detection] units will be made
cheaply enough for each officer to wear several on their
uniforms and equipment – wrists, elbows, ankles, knees, heads,
torsos, hips, guns, nightsticks. An officer's every move will be
captured. Unlike video, this technology works in the dark and
does not depend on the direction the cop's camera is facing.
With such a recording, many crucial questions can be answered
The technology to do this exists today. It is just a matter of properly developing
the system and using it. If we are going to allow a government to police us,
trusting them to properly use the violent powers we grant them, shouldn't we also
require that we all be able to carefully watch these watchmen?

6.3.2.2 Security without Authority

We should need fewer police as individual surveillance increases. Fewer crimes
are likely to be committed when everyone knows they are always "on the record.”
Technology that allows people to call for assistance from anyone willing to help
also decreases the need for police presence.
Cell phones are starting to become equipped with positioning systems. These
systems are useful for letting your friends know where you are, but could also be
useful to bring you help when you are in trouble. Every mobile phone could be,
equipped with a distress button to be pressed in an emergency. Such a panic-
button could send a call out to nearby phones of registered “Good Samaritans.”
This could provide help to the scene of any crime or accident faster than any
central authority.
This kind of technology has the potential to reduce the need for central authority.
It allows the return of a situation where every person has equal rights again, and
none are promoted to higher class citizens by virtue of carrying a badge. It allows

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everyone to be both protected and a protector as they choose. This technology
could lead to a safer world.
Do you want to increase liberty? Build systems like the ones described here and
make them popular to use.

6.3.2.3 Physical Privacy

"But what about my privacy?!?" you ask, horrified by the above description of a
world with more and more cameras and mobile phones that keep track of your
every move.
Author David Brin, writing on this topic in his book "The Transparent Society"
suggests that as cameras become smaller and cheaper that privacy will have to
disappear – but that it is ok, we will learn to live with it – just as long as everyone
has access to the cameras, and not an elite few who control us. He describes
citizens living in the future world like this:
They realize that -- out of doors at least -- privacy has always
been an illusion. They know that anyone in town can tune in to
that camera on the lamp post over there... and they don't much
care. They perceive what really matters... that they live in a
town where the police are efficient, respectful, and above all
accountable. … Above all, one thing makes life bearable -- the
surety that each person knows what is going on, with a say in
what will happen next. And rights equal to any billionaire or chief
of police.
Brin’s idea is that the need for privacy dies away in a world where transparency
becomes the norm. People who are thought to be keeping secrets are shunned,
and everyone becomes more accepting of all forms of behavior.
There is some evidence that this is already happening. Our standards of
acceptable levels of nudity and profanity in public media constantly slide towards
the more permissive. Famous people are caught more and more often with their
pants down (both literally and figuratively) and this changes the opinion of the
average person about what is acceptable behavior.
It is even starting to seem that you can not be a real celebrity until you
have a private sex tape released to the public.
Do we think that privacy will die, and that this is a good thing? Not completely.
We think that private communications might be able to stick around, even in a
world of cheap and tiny cameras, and that they probably should. We see
communications privacy and physical privacy as two different issues.

6.3.2.4 Communications Privacy

Remember when we talked about simplifying possible viewpoints erroneously
into some single axis, when multiple axes could be involved? This is such a case.
The fight of Privacy vs. Transparency does not need to be a single axis. Physical
actions and communications can have entirely separate levels of privacy or
transparency.
The physical world of actions is not necessarily the same place as the intellectual
world of words. While cameras get smaller, cheaper, and more plentiful, this
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does not necessarily stop people from communicating secretly. In the world of
information encryption and security, there is a concept called a "trusted
computing base" or TCB which is the area that needs to be secure in order to
exchange information privately. This TCB could conceivably get smaller and
easier to hide just as fast, or even faster than the cameras.
Currently, if you want to send a secure encrypted text message, you must type it
in a room free of cameras which might record your computer screen or the
motions of your fingers on the keyboard. You must also have a screen that is not
producing radiation that can be read through walls, or special walls that block any
such radiation. Your computer must be free of malicious software, and your
encryption program must produce an unreadable message for anyone but the
intended recipient. The area that must be controlled and secure is the size of
your office and perhaps even some area beyond the walls.
This is a very big space to try to secure against cameras that become cheaper,
smaller, and more plentiful. Eventually, cameras the size of specks of dust may
be floating around in the air and clinging to your skin like microscopic burrs. It will
be very difficult to regularly use encryption, if its successful use requires a trip
through a chemical wash down and into a special chamber that prevents any
information escaping via sound or electromagnetic waves of any spectrum.
If privacy ever becomes this difficult, we will have a similar, if inverse, situation
from the 1984 scenario. Rather than a case where only Big Brother has spy
cameras, it will be that only Big Brother has the defenses to stop the cameras
that we all have.
Fortunately, the answer to this problem is already in the works. As the trusted
computer base gets smaller, it also gets harder to compromise. Eventually,
people will have computer screens built into their glasses, and then after that,
feeding the display directly into their brains. With no visible display, it will be
impossible to covertly read over a persons shoulder, no matter how small or well
positioned the camera. Eventually no keyboard will be necessary, with finger
motions, sub-vocalizations, or direct brain connections. As we blend computers
with our own minds, we should be able to retain private communications even as
cheap small cameras mean that we lose all physical privacy.
The end product of this could be the world of totally physical transparency with
total intellectual freedom. In such a world, you could never kill someone and get
away with it. You could not publicly claim that you despise certain behavior, while
secretly doing what you claim to hate. But you could speak your mind
anonymously, and argue academically for the validity of any behavior – thus
(hopefully) increasing tolerance for all consensual human behavior.
Are you looking to increase liberty? Why not create systems to make sure that no
central authority can ever stop people from communicating freely and privately?
Or at least try to use existing encryption systems. (Check out www.pgp.com)
If you are more ambitious, think about the effect it would have on the world if
easy to hide computer/phones could link up to low level satellite network.
Imagine if people all over the world were to receive these devices for free, and
could suddenly all access a variety of ideas from around the world, rather than
just listening to what their local government officials and/or religious figures were
telling them.

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For much less than the cost of one “regime change” the United States
Government could afford to create such a network and distribute the necessary
personal communications devices around the world. This would bring free
speech to countries that badly need it and provide a crucial tool for people
everywhere to reduce bad government. This would truly be a gift of liberty, rather
than hypocritically trying to force a more libertarian culture at gunpoint.
Such a world-wide private and personal communications network would be
very cheap on the scale of what large countries spend on their military –
and used world-wide, it would make a lot of that military unnecessary.
If you want to bring better governments to the whole world, maybe you should
work on making this kind of system a reality.

6.3.3 Online Money

Technologies for private communications – encryption and anonymity – are very
important when it comes to the idea of online financial transactions. In this day
and age, money is really just a form of communication. Its all about promises of
payment made by one person to another that are understood to be freely
transferable to any third party.
Free value exchange is a form of free speech.
Before understanding how electronic currency can be different and better for our
freedom, one must first understand the history of currency and how collective
idea-organisms have exploited it from the beginning. In fact, Higher Powers have
been so completely intertwined with the history of money that some of the first
banks were also religious orders. Jesus was even noted for chasing money
lenders out of the temple.

6.3.3.1 History of Money

The concept of money is old indeed. Currency is defined as whatever thing is
commonly accepted as payment for goods and services in a society. Tobacco,
alcohol, seashells, and various metals are all examples of things that have been
currency at one time or another in various places throughout the world. Standard
measures of a currency commodity have often been produced by trusted
authorities for ease of trade – the minting of gold and silver coins in certain
denominations is one of the longest standing traditions in this regard.
Very early on, idea-organisms discovered that control over currency helped them
survive and replicate. A couple of thousand years ago, when asked if
government taxes were justified, Jesus Christ is reputed to have pointed to the
Icon of The Caesar on a coin and said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..."
meaning that if these coins that people accepted as currency were issued by the
government, and people chose to use them, then the government could make
rules concerning their use – including asking for tax payments in such coins.
The next form of currency to become popular, and supersede the use of coins,
was that of promissory notes. This was based on the idea that an organization
who had gold in two cities, far apart in travel time, could accept gold from a client
in one city, and issue them a note to have gold paid to them when they reached
the other city. This made the client less prone to theft, and carrying around paper
was much easier than heavy sacks of metal. It soon became convenient to just
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trade the paper. To do this, the paper currency was marked to be paid to the
bearer rather than any specific individual. Money became 'stealable' once again.

6.3.3.2 Modern Money

Higher Powers were involved in this system almost from the beginning. Religious
orders, as well as governments, have issued paper currency. Why did the
authorities take over so quickly? Because of two things:
1. Controlling people’s money helps control people’s actions.
2. Authority lent credibility to the new system. When new things arise,
people fear to approach. But if the great (insert Higher Power name
here) backs this... well, it must be OK.

There was actually a free market in paper currency until the prevailing
governmental Collectives realized that minted coins were no longer the currency
of choice, and started driving other organizations out of this business. Then, as
usual, without any competition allowed, governments began to destroy the
product.
In many nations, hyperinflation was caused by issuing currency without controls,
and today, perhaps still the strongest currency in the world, the United States
dollar, is no longer a promise of anything, other than being accepted as payment
of United States taxes. (For the record, this occurred in 1971. Richard Nixon
signed a law removing the link between the U.S. Dollar and silver metal.)
Today almost every nation-state has laws declaring that only they may issue
currency. But what does this really mean? Currency is not controlled by edict of
the state, but by what the people are willing to accept in payment.
Any promissory note is a form of paper currency. Coupons from the local donut
shop that entitle the bearer to a free donut are a currency backed in donuts, and
in theory, a thriving economy that accepted these coupons as payment could
spring up if the local government currency became degraded enough and no
other useful alternative existed.
In fact, the lawyers of the local donut shop are aware of how perilously close they
are to violating law here, and there will often be fine print on the coupons

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declaring that they have no cash value, to make them somehow "non-monetary.”
This is a legal fiction. There is no qualitative difference between a coupon backed
by delicious fried sugared dough product and a pre 1970s U.S. dollar backed by
silver.
Government issued currency that is not backed by anything is, in fact, less
intrinsically stable than the donut coupon, assuming that the donut provider is as
reputable as the government (not necessarily a particularly huge stretch in the
case of some governments).

6.3.3.3 Future of Money

Today, electronic information systems offer a possibility of a new kind of money.
Paper money is really just information about who is promising what to whom.
This information does not need to reside on paper. Value can be stored in
digitally-signed contracts or held in account balances on computers. In fact,
electronic account balances on the computers of government licensed banks,
already account for a huge percentage of the US currency "in circulation.”
However, just as file sharing allows people to communicate freely with each other
outside the information distribution channels approved by the government,
church, or corporation – the Internet also makes it possible for people to freely
exchange information concerning who owes what to whom. It is only a matter of
time before the proper electronic systems are available, and people realize that
they can do business with each other quite well using exchanges of electronic
contracts and account balances, without resorting to anything created by the
government. The ideal electronic currency system would have no hierarchy built
into it, and anyone should be able to act like a bank, a mint, or simply an owner
of electronic contracts.
Once we have a free electronic currency system, people will no longer have
a moral obligation to "render unto Caesar.” The currency won't be Caesar's
anymore – it will be ours.
Want to free the world from enslavement by the Collective? Help develop a
distributed system that allows people to exchange value freely and privately
without restriction. Make the protocols freely available to anyone who might want
to use them.

6.3.4 Markets and Wagering

Modern business ventures are often made possible only by purchasing insurance
to remove risk from the project. There is no discernible difference between the
insurance industry and any other wagering on an unknown outcome of events.
However, in many countries an artificial distinction has been drawn between
insurance industries and other wagering businesses that are prohibited.
To make this a little clearer, consider that a professional football team in the
United States is a business, and this business does better if the team wins.
Therefore, it seems likely that Lloyd's of London would be willing to mitigate a
team owner's financial risk by allowing them to buy insurance against a losing
season. However, looked at from the point of view of United States law, this team
owner would be betting on the outcome of a sporting event – in fact, betting on
their team to lose which is considered particularly bad.

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Government prohibitions on gambling offer an excellent insight into the hypocrisy
of the Icons of central authority. In the United States, because gambling is said to
be bad for people, private numbers games have been made illegal. However,
once private numbers games were criminalized and run out of existence, the
government was quite happy to step in and offer state run lotteries that offer
worse payouts than the numbers games had. Additionally, note that churches are
allowed to run bingo games and some other wagering events that a private
individual would be fined or jailed for offering to the public.
Even the stock market is just another type of wagering. When you buy a stock
you are betting that the price of the stock will go up – when you sell you are
betting that it will go down. Such markets are a source of great economic good in
the world, by providing liquidity to property holdings of all sorts. They have been
around for a long time, and have long ago fallen under strong central controls.
But there are some other interesting types of markets that are on the verge of
being constructed. These new types of market may lead to changes in the world
that no collective idea-organism is prepared to face.

6.3.4.1 Idea Markets

Price feedback is a key factor (perhaps THE key factor) in the outstandingly
positive results of free markets. The individual values of all participating
individuals combine to set the value of any given commodity.
People with a strong opinion are generally either quite knowledgeable or
brainwashed on the subject. The influence of idea-organisms can cause this
brainwashing and distort the market, but only for a very short time where no force
is used. This is because the brainwashed quickly lose their shirts, while the
knowledgeable do quite well and continue to play the game. Thus we can expect
in a free market that the price of any given commodity reflects an extremely
accurate evaluation of this commodity's real value. It is probably even accurate to
say that this is the definition of real value.
A free market can not only point out the correct valuation of a commodity, but
with a little economic trickery, can be turned into a sort of oracle to answer
difficult questions. The trick involves creating a commodity that represents each
of the possible answers to a given question, and letting everyone trade shares in
these commodities. Where the market settles is an indication of the relative
probabilities that the group as a whole assigns the answer to the question.
While an idea market "oracle" is not by any means supernaturally accurate, it can
be superior in predictive capabilities to ANY other method of making a decision.
This is so because anyone with a potentially better predictive system benefits by
entering the market – thus lending their expertise to it.
The more people who are allowed to participate in an idea market, the
better it works. When everyone is allowed to play, no system can make
better predictions.
Polling a group in any other way does not have the same effect of separating
claims of confidence from actual confidence, as the market system does. When
people have to "put their money where their mouth is" the best guesses of the
most knowledgeable people come to the forefront, without any need for some
central authority to decide who is the most knowledgeable. These results lead
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directly to the idea that a larger group can make better decisions than any
smaller representative group, or single leader, no matter how the representatives
are chosen.
This means that we do not need leaders at all, just free open markets set up to
ask the right questions in the right way. The questions asked need not even be
issued by any central authority; they can be posed by any party willing to pay to
seed the market for the answer to a given question.
Are you looking to build something of value for all of mankind? Why not this?

6.3.4.2 Disaster Markets

In 2003, DARPA (a US government research agency) started working on a
system for placing wagers on terrorist activities. The idea was that it would help
forecast these very difficult to predict acts. When the press and various
politicians got wind of this, it was shot down, being generally criticized as an
incredibly ill-conceived idea. However, none of the people talking against the
idea demonstrated any knowledge of why it might or might not work. They just
seemed to think that two bad words like "terrorism" and "wagering" when put
together must make a really extra bad idea.
Not only would such a market have been very likely to produce useful
information, but it might have had side effects of a world-shaking nature. These
effects would certainly be bad from the viewpoint of collective idea-organisms,
but perhaps very good effects for individual liberty everywhere.
The world-shaking side-effect would be that these markets would interfere with
the events they were set up to bet on. In much the same way that the existence
of fire insurance leads to some unexplained fires (from which people collect
insurance money), the existence of a market in which people can bet on the
outcome of specific real-world events, leads to some different outcomes for those
events.
People who are in a position to influence a particular outcome will bet on the
thing that they can make happen and then will act to make it happen. Therefore,
people who want a certain thing to happen need only bet against it to increase its
chances of happening – they are “sweetening the pot” for those who are in a
position to influence events.
This is why the NFL doesn't want people betting on football – they want the
players, and not the betters, to determine the outcome of the game. Of course
these "side-effects" are totally counter-intuitive from a betting standpoint – you
would bet on the team you want to win, right? But from an insurance or market
economics standpoint it makes perfect sense to receive money when something
you don't want to happen occurs and to pay money when things happen the way
you want them to. This is hedging your value – it's what insurance is all about.
It turns out that the creation of general wagering markets that allow betting on
"bad" things like people's deaths and acts of terrorism, or on good things like the
invention of a new technology, may be an incredibly powerful use of market
forces. Such markets might allow groups of free individuals to exert more power
in the world than any system of law and government would ever allow.
Let’s look at the story of one man's ideas about how that might happen.

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6.3.4.3 Assassination Politics
In August of 2001, James Dalton Bell was sentenced to 10 years in federal
prison for the crime of "stalking.” In 1996 he had released an essay on the
Internet entitled "Assassination Politics.” One might think that these two facts are
unrelated, except that if you read the trial transcripts and the applications for
search warrants in the development of the case, Bell's writing on this topic is
mentioned repeatedly. There is little doubt that Bell's writing of this essay played
a significant role in both the fact that charges were brought and the extremely
harsh sentence he received for offenses of an entirely non-violent nature.
The charges that he was convicted of (and received a ten year sentence for)
were two counts of "stalking a federal agent.” Bell's defense was that he was
conducting his own investigation into illegal conduct by the agents in question,
whom he claimed were engaged in an illegal investigation of him based on his
political ideas. The question of whether Jim Bell is now a "political prisoner" of
the United States Government is certainly open to interpretation. However, it
bears mentioning that no one has ever been jailed for more than three years for
stalking a US citizen who did not carry a badge or hold political office, where no
restraining order was violated. Also that, based on their own testimony against
Bell, the agents in question were in fact following Bell before he started following
them – and were perhaps surveiling him initially with no legal authority to do so.
In Bell's controversial essay he argues that a free market using untraceable
electronic currency and allowing wagering on the time of death of any person
could replace the need for any other use of force in the world – that armies would
no longer be needed – that the concept of Nation State might even fade away,
leaving us all just free individuals living in a better world.
The mechanism by which this would occur is a grim one. The betting pools being
a way of sanctioning the assassination of leaders who do not really serve the will
of the people. However, his hypothesis is quite compelling and one can't help but
wonder if a world in which very bad leaders were routinely killed might not be a
better one than a world where young people are routinely sent to their deaths in
uniform.
It is also interesting to note that a distributed market system, calculating who
deserves to die, does not set up the kind of cycle of violence that a system of
nations trying to police each other does. There is no obvious way to retaliate
against millions of unconnected individuals worldwide who all voted against
someone, each with small amounts of money. Hence this kind of violence would
not beget more violence – it would not go on and on in countless retaliations for
retaliations for retaliations...
Furthermore, the power of the idea is such that one can't help but wonder if a
related, but less violent mechanism, might not be developed – a system that
might use market forces to depose bad leaders without actually killing them.
Regardless of whether you believe that Bell's idea is a "good" one, it is certainly
an interesting one. It may not be something that could be done morally, and
certainly never legally, but it is also something that is illegal for the wrong
reasons. It is illegal (or would be made so as soon as anyone tried to implement
it) because it threatens the status quo of the Collective, not because it is by any
real measure a worse system than what we have now.
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Our current world legal and political systems certainly contain a large dose of
violence. There is no reason to believe that Bell's system would be worse as
measured in number of deaths. In fact, there is logic to the idea that it would be
better. It would shift the feedback of violence away from the innocent and onto
the people who actually start the trouble. Of course, it is not easy to get the
people who make the rules to allow for a system that makes them pay the price
for their bad choices.
Optimizing the equation of power is all about maximizing control while
minimizing accountability. Those who would develop systems to do just
the opposite are a bigger threat to the collective idea-organisms than any
number of human deaths.
If you really believe in liberty over central authority – maybe this is the system
you should develop. But before anyone is killed, we suggest first trying out a
market for hitting people in the face with a cream pie. It would provide some
negative feedback without the finality of an assassin's bullet. Maybe it would be
enough to just embarrass bad political leaders rather than killing them. Maybe it
would be enough to just hurt their reputations.

6.3.5 Reputation Capital

Reputation has always been a major force in the world, and it is just gaining more
power as information systems become more extensive.
We already live in a world where anyone who is about to do business with
someone else can type a name into a search engine to find out what other
people have to say about that person. In certain cases, there are already
agencies that distill this information into an easy to digest number – credit
agencies being the most obvious that comes to mind. If someone wants to lend
money to another person, a credit score is a good indication of how likely they
are to be paid back. Feedback from previous business transactions is used to
evaluate them to other potential business partners.
Other societal problems can certainly be solved in this manner. One method that
does not exist yet, but would seem to help society greatly, would be a rating for
how litigious a person is. That is to say, how likely they are to sue another person
or business.
Many people complain about the increase of frivolous law suits, and this would
seem to be a good way to deter them. People who might otherwise engage in
frivolous law suits would have to consider how it might affect their ability to do
business in the future.
Of course if it reduces the amount of work for lawyers, they will almost certainly
try to make it illegal. Their claim will be something along the lines of how it
deprives the little guy of its right to sue the big corporations, never mind the fact
that big corporations would seem to have more at stake in protecting their
reputations than any little guy.
Evil can be reduced by penalizing misdeeds through loss of reputation.
Good can be increased by rewarding correct behavior through increased
reputation. It therefore makes sense that a very efficient reputation system
could replace centrally controlled systems of law enforcement.

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In a small tribe, a transgression punished by making the transgressor an outcast
was almost the same as a death penalty. We live in a complex world with a lot
more people, but we all still need other people to survive. If information flow
became nearly perfect, and a person was truly and justly tagged with all their
misdeeds, the societal market feedback should provide a commiserate
punishment in terms of lost opportunities for any transgressor.
A truly heinous offense might even lead to the offender dying from lack of ability
to trade for necessities, all without any enforcement cost, other than the loss of
whatever value that person might have provided. But in the less extreme case,
that person would just be required to provide more good to make up for any
offense, and that extreme case could only happen when a person was deemed
incapable of producing further positive value.
We have looked at a couple ways for central authority to be successfully
replaced by equal individuals all acting freely, at the right time, with the right
information. If information technology can make sure that the right information is
available to the right individuals at the right time (and perhaps you can help make
this a reality), then all we would have to do is reduce bad laws until all individuals
are free and equal.

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6.4 Rolling Back
Even if we are correct that new technology and individual action can effectively
replace central law enforcement, the systems that are already in place will resist
this technology. If they can't control it, they'll make it illegal.
Collective force will tend to be used against any system that would replace
collective force.
While it is obviously better for us to replace expensive systems that don't work
well with cheap ones that do, the collective idea-organisms that have grown up
within those old systems will fight for their lives. In fact, even as these
technologies are becoming available, rather than government shrinking, it is
growing larger, sometimes by inspiring fear of the very technologies that could
help replace it.
How can we stop the growth of the Collective, let alone roll it back?

6.4.1 Revolution
The classic answer to the question of how to roll back bad laws is revolution.
Power systems get set up to perpetuate and grow (evolve to survive and
reproduce) and when they start to do more harm than good, people get angry. If
the system does not have the proper feedback methods for that anger, such that
real change can be accomplished when it becomes clear to people that it is
necessary, then working outside the system becomes the only way. However,
getting enough people behind the idea of a revolution, such that they can act
together to make it happen, can only really occur in one way – that is with the
growth of another Collective Identity.
This is why, when a Collective does have a revolution, it immediately becomes a
mythical thing – itself an icon. The leaders of the revolution set up shop, start
creating their own bad rules, and continue to operate in the name of The Great
Revolution. Anyone who opposes them is labeled ”counter-revolutionary” even
years later when they are someone again in the position of wanting to change a
bad system – just like the founding fathers of the current system were.
Of course the worst thing about revolutions is that they are rarely bloodless. Even
non-violent protest usually results in quite a few deaths before the powers that be
get the idea that breaking heads won't get these people to go back to work for
them. So where a slower, more peaceful method of reducing government and
rolling back laws can be found, it is almost certainly preferable to one that
involves killing people.
We should add that “revolution” is mostly just a word that people toss about to
make themselves feel important or enlightened. An actual revolution is almost
always an excuse to seize an existing system and to become the new boss. This
is much easier than building something that is new and better.
But should you ever find yourself in a situation where a whole new set of laws
can be re-written, a really good place to start is to write a constitution that
specifically limits the powers of the government. Experience shows that it will
only be a few generations before your words are being interpreted to mean

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exactly the opposite of what you were trying to say, but that is a few generations
of freedom that people would not have gotten otherwise.
When you decide to grant power to government, start by thinking "What
powers would I allow the government to have over me if I knew that my
worst enemy in the world was going to be in charge of this government?"
This is the only reasonable way to look at it if you want a society where it is legal
to be different. The people who end up in charge of government are always the
people who take great pleasure in controlling the actions of others. This is
because the center of authority holds the greatest reward for such people or,
more accurately, for the ideas they carry. Allowing the center of power to be a
place from which ideas can be imposed on others turns it into a magnet for
parasitic ideas.
This means that your leaders are either the people who are most infected by
some Collective Identity that wants to use the center of power to replicate itself or
they are entirely unscrupulous people that don't really believe in the system but
enjoy the feeling of exercising power over other people’s lives. Sadly, the latter
are almost preferable, as they at least have understandable human wants and
fears.

6.4.2 Political Reform

Let us assume that you live in a place that can be changed without resorting to
violence. You should first consider yourself very lucky if, during the last revolution
in your country, the new government was set up with some feedback mechanism
by which you can do something about out of control bad government. Next,
consider the following items as possible places to use that mechanism to start
reforming your government.

6.4.2.1 Changing Political Incentives

Politicians and Police are just like anyone else; they are trying to make the world
they live in a better place for themselves. If the system in which they are required
to work aligns their self interest with making the world a better place for everyone
else, then things will get better. If it does not, things will probably get worse.
If you have any say in government at all, then some sort of incentive system is
already in place, but it is probably not directly tied to the results you want. For
example, you may be able to vote to elect politicians who you think will do a
better job. However, this incentive is not linked directly to the results, but rather,
to what the average person thinks the future results will be.
You may want to live in a city without crime, but the politicians and police may
find that their jobs are actually better rewarded when there is a lot of crime to
scare you into voting for them and spending a lot of money to get rid of that
crime. If the crime goes away, you may forget why you need them.
The political argument will be that the more crime there is, the more money you
need to spend to get rid of it, but this is actually a reverse incentive. You actually
end up paying the politicians and police more when there is more crime. Basic
economics would tell you that this is not the way to reduce crime.
Instead, think about setting a fixed law enforcement bonus. Now, if there is no
crime, or all crimes are solved, all the police and politicians involved get that
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whole bonus. However, if there is crime, or unsolved crime, that bonus is
reduced according to some formula. (Of course you would need independent
crime statistics; else the police and politicians might just under-report crime.)
A bonus like this presents a direct economic incentive to your employees (that's
right, they are your employees) to perform the task for which you are employing
them. This is the way results are encouraged economically.
The additional benefit is that it also sets limits on the government in terms of how
much they can ever do. They do not get more money when enforcement costs
are rising; they get less. They are forced to give up on ideas that are not working
rather than just spending more money on them. This is a very good thing, as it
prevents runaway government.

6.4.2.2 Applying Limits

Some other ways to put direct limits on government are "term limits", "time limits",
and "word count limits":
Term limits prevent any politician or policeman from serving in office for longer
than a set period of time. This is done to ensure that government is being
conducted according to a system of limiting rules and is not based on
relationships between the specific officials. From a memetics point of view, what
this accomplishes is to help break up the formation of smaller Collective Identities
within some portion of the government.
“Sunset clauses,” are time limits on laws. If every law is required to expire after a
short time period, politicians are kept busy re-arguing the case for old laws,
rather than passing a lot of new ones. Old laws can die away gracefully when
they have outlived their usefulness, without the issue having to be specifically
addressed. Laws can be tested for a while and then allowed to die out if it is not
working well – and this can happen without anyone having to seemingly be in
favor of the problem that the law was originally intended to cure. (Could anything
be more eminently sensible?)
Anyone who has ever made a real attempt to read through all the law of any
modern country knows that there is way more law than there needs to be. In
practice this means that only some of the law is ever enforced, and that people
are constantly doing things they don't even know to be illegal. This gives police a
great deal of power, through selective enforcement, to harass people that are
different. They can enforce laws against "outsiders" that they would never even
think of enforcing against their friends. Sunset clauses would help to reduce law
to just what was actually always worth enforcing.

If you have never actually read a piece of legislation, you really should do so. Trying to
muddle through the legal-eze of even the simplest bill is a real eye opener. It is also fun to
note how little the content of the law can resemble the title of the proposed bill –
sometimes the law seems to be the exact opposite of the title. Its like they are deliberately
trying to be confusing and long winded. Your representatives almost never actually read
the laws they vote upon. They have people to tell them what to vote for – how to do their
jobs.

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Another method of limiting the amount of law is to actually limit the number of
words that can be used. Some historical tribes were said to have had a single
man who had to memorize all of the law and recite it at a meeting once a year.
Anything he forgot was no longer part of the law. This put the effective limit on
the word count of all laws within that which a single man was able to memorize
and recite in a reasonable time period.
Word count limits or clause limits on each particular law are also a good idea
because they prevent laws that are so long as to be unintelligible, as well as
preventing laws from being passed in groups, where riders are constantly added.
Such riders allow two laws that only 26% of the people in the country would
agree with to get 52% of the vote when they are packaged together. This is how
special interest groups get legislation passed that almost no one is happy about.
Each political representative says, "I'll pass this for your constituents if you pass
that for mine." Bundling the laws makes sure that the politicians don't have to
trust each other on this. It is likely that a lot less bad legislation would be passed
if they did have to trust each other.

6.4.3 Reducing the Bureaucracy

Picture the Leviathan. How much of the beast is teeth? Not much as a
percentage, huh? The teeth are the scary parts, but they are small parts. Most of
Leviathan is bone and soft tissue.
In the same way, most of government is not what you think of as "The
government.” There are dozens – hundreds – of bureaucracies. There are
buildings full of unionized, impossible-to-fire people, each getting a paycheck,
insurance, and a pension. THIS is government. THIS is what takes roughly half
of every productive person's labor.
Certainly many government employees are decent people who are kind to
animals and call their mothers regularly. But if they were working for any other
type of entity, they'd never survive as they do. If the bureaucracy were reduced,
they would have to find work with employers who were actually able to fire them
if they failed to produce. Actually, that would be the compassionate thing to do for
these folks. They'd feel a lot better about themselves in the long run – even in the
medium run.
Leviathan's mouth grabs the food, but the rest of the body demands it of the
mouth. Until these armies of unfireables are disbanded, Leviathan's hunger will
be undimmed, and we might all end up in its belly.

6.4.4 Local Laws

Government systems are based on a hierarchical structure of power – the idea
that laws at the top level overshadow laws at the lower level. This is terrible for
individuals. The smaller the group for which a law is intended, the more likely it is
to actually be in tune with the feelings of all the individuals in the group
concerning what should and should not be illegal.
An ideal system of law would let each person select the things that should be
illegal. Then you would be bound to respect both your own law and that of any
other person you interacted with. Of course such a system would involve a
multitude of complex interactions that we probably don't yet have the information

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systems technology to deal with, and would still have all the usual problems with
publicly shared resources.
The next best thing would be to just reverse the current system of jurisdictional
hierarchy. Having the laws of smaller jurisdictions override the laws of the larger
jurisdictions is a general recipe for liberty. For example, in your own house, you
would automatically be allowed to do whatever you wanted to do. If your local
community was OK with you walking around naked, then you could do that too,
even if the average community in the country did not like the way you look naked.

When the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1787, it gave certain limited
powers to the U.S. federal government, but it continued to allow the individuals States to
make almost all of their own laws. In fact, the understanding was that the States of the
union were, in most respects, still individual Nation States.
This ability for citizens to choose the laws that they wanted to live under, simply by moving
to another nearby State, created some competition between States to actually have the
laws that the people wanted. It also allowed laws to be tried in one State, and the effects of
the law, good and bad, to be observed before being adopted elsewhere – and before they
became part of the Distributed Identity of "The Law" in everyone's minds.
There is no doubt that this ability to have competing lower level laws played a part in the
great success of the United States. However, the seemingly inevitable process of central
government strengthening its power has lead us to the more historically usual centralized
power structure, in which the Federal government tries to claim the right to override State
law in every situation.

Getting from the current top down system to the reverse would be difficult (see
revolution above) but local laws that explicitly refute higher level laws can still be
used as a political tool to express a smaller Collective’s dissent against the
higher governmental structure. It is even possible to pass local laws making it
illegal to enforce the higher level laws, although, like any effective tool for liberty,
once discovered, the higher Collective will make this additionally illegal.
Your best chance for liberty might be to move to a local jurisdiction with other
people who share the same opinions that you do. This will allow you, and those
of like mind, to become a shining example for the rest of the world of how your
perfect system can work. If the rest of the world will leave you alone that is.
If the structure of law were bottom-up rather than top-down, experimental
communities could test new systems of law. This would allow many attempts to
produce better laws, rather than one giant experiment that hurts everyone
whenever it fails. Letting different people try lots of different ideas is the best
chance we have to find better ways to do things. Of course the collective idea-
organisms do not want new ways – they want to enforce their status quo.

6.4.5 Planned Libertarian Communities

One way to achieve liberty is by getting together with a bunch of like-minded
people, and forming your own community, where you all agree never to allow
collective thinking to get in and mess with your freedom. The idea of such a
planned libertarian community is that with like minded individuals, a minimum of
government would be allowed, and when the society did better because of it, it
would be a shining example to everyone. (Of course there have been quite a few
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historical examples of the benefits of limited government, and yet government
keeps growing everywhere.) Some people have suggested creating a new town,
but others think bigger, wanting to buy a small semi-defunct country.
The idea of taking over one State of the United States has even been suggested.

6.4.5.1 The Free State Project

Beginning as an article entitled "Announcement: The Free State Project"
published in 2001 by Jason Sorens, The Free State Project has a membership of
over 7000 people (as of the time of this writing). The stated intentions of the
project are to move 20,000 libertarian-minded people to a single small state
where their political activities could be enough to swing the political climate of
that state towards true free market capitalism. The initial article even suggested
that the end goal could be succession from the United States to create a new
country, although that has not been seriously promoted as one of the goals.

If you are interested in getting involved with the Free State Project, visit their web
site at www.freestateproject.org
As of late 2006, the Free State Project has yet to reach its goal of 20,000 people,
and (unless motivated people like you decide to get involved) it may never
actually get there. But the idea has certainly taken hold in many minds. Once
New Hampshire was chosen as the state, splitter factions that liked other states
better immediately began to advertise their own Free State initiatives.
Even Non-libertarian groups borrowed the idea. A group called "Christian
Exodus" declared that it would make South Carolina the "Christian state.”
In an essay entitled “The Most Sincere Form of Flattery,” Amanda Phillips,
President of the Free State Project, wrote:
The Free State Project (FSP) is worthy of imitation. It has had a
remarkable life so far. Begun as the brainchild of Jason Sorens
in a discussion forum, it has grown into the full-fledged
movement for liberty it is today. The FSP forums are an
unending source of discourse on liberty and discussions on how
to attain it. Across the country, members work on spreading the
word.

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Needless to say, if you don't like Libertarians and happen to live in New
Hampshire, or you don't like Christians, and happen to live in South Carolina,
these calls for mass migration to your state are probably somewhat annoying.
That said, we can't resist getting in on this act. So here is our suggestion for a
mass migration of like minded people:

6.4.5.2 Free D.C.

Washington D.C. (District of Columbia) is the capitol of the United States. It is not
a state, nor is it inside any state, having been set aside so that no state would
receive favoritism by being the home of the national capitol. It has no senator and
only has one non-voting representative in the House of Representatives.
Now it would seem counter intuitive, as this might be considered the "belly of the
beast" by libertarians, but here are some reasons why we think all libertarian
activists should immediately get together and move to Washington D.C.:
• Population – D.C. has less than half the population of New Hampshire,
so any influx of libertarians would have more effect.
• Taxation Issues – Libertarian activists could immediately stop paying
taxes and fight the IRS under the slogan of "No Taxation without
Representation" – which should still be a fairly popular slogan, even if it
hasn't been used since the Revolutionary War.
• Publicity – things that happen in the capitol make the news more. While
the US congress has the power to override the district local government,
if it had to do this every time it was in session, it would make a
continuous point about local laws. Also, the cameras are already there
and during a large part of the year the press in D.C. is bored and just
looking for something to do.
• Access – By being there at the heart of things, libertarian values might
rub off on politicians. If young DC politicians only had libertarians to
socialize with, they would at least have to pretend to be libertarian, and
some of it might stick.

If the libertarians did it successfully, the Christian exodus people might decide
they had to go to D.C. too, and then other groups with any sort of ax to grind.
Wouldn't it be great to see United States political big wigs have to live and work
in a city full of libertarian activists, interesting religious groups, and who knows
what other strange and wonderful people trying this same trick to their own
purpose – also an over 50% racial minority population. Imagine being a federal
level politician in a city that became a magnet to all sorts of people with fringe
viewpoints. It would not be easy to have to always play the "straight man" in such
a crazy environment. This could change the character of the average type of
person who sought out high level political office – almost certainly for the better.
But if moving to a new town and getting involved in local politics seems like a lot
of work to you then you ain't seen nothing. How about starting your own country?

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6.5 New Frontiers
If changing your current government is not an option, perhaps you should
consider starting a new one somewhere else. This might do more than just give
you more freedom. It might make more freedom for everyone.
In David Friedman's book "The Machinery of Freedom,” he talks about the idea
of government services being absorbed into the free market – including the use
of force to protect individuals from crime. His idea is that central authority could
disappear if overlapping jurisdictions for the legitimate use of force became
normal. This amounts to private police forces protecting their customers based
on a set of rules their customers choose. He uses the following analogy to
describe the effects that might be observed if there was a real market in
government services and citizens could easily switch providers:
Everyone lives in a house-trailer and speaks the same
language. One day, the president of France announces that
because of troubles with neighboring countries, new military
taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly. The
next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a
peaceful but empty landscape, the population having been
reduced to himself, three generals, and twenty-seven war
correspondents.
That example may seem a little weird, but to some degree there is actually a
market in governments today. Governments can be considered as businesses
that provide a certain set of services for a price. Governments vary in quality and
price paid for these services in Property, Liberty, and sometimes even Life.
It is theoretically possible to go into the government business yourself, but there
are significant barriers to entering the industry. You need to do something as
costly as overthrowing an existing government – or find some unclaimed living
space (or in some cases space claimed by people with inferior technology to your
own will do) and colonize it. In the former case, you inherit the old government’s
customer base; in the latter case you will have to start marketing right away to
build a new clientele.
The cost of switching service providers in the government arena is very high, so
you have to offer a significantly better deal to start winning customers (citizens)
over from other governments. Your potential new citizens will need to see a large
advantage to your new way of living that is worth paying this high cost of
changing providers. Governments claim monopoly rights for providing their
services in a certain geographic area. Barring some way of breaking that
monopoly, a physical move is required to change providers. In the worst cases,
dodging bullets and climbing over barbed wire topped walls will be a necessary
part of the cost to switch government service providers.
For the moment, only rich people are in a good position to switch countries in
search of a better deal. But despite these significant economic barriers, if a better
government exists, and the citizens of other governments know about it, it does
put some pressure on all governments everywhere to provide better services
and/or reduce prices.

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6.5.1 The Frontier Effect
There is historical precedent for this competitive pressure in the government
market. Whenever in history there has been an accessible frontier for people to
move to, older governments have had to relax their controls or lose citizens.
The most recent significant instance of this was the "New World," in which people
moved to the western hemisphere in great numbers, seeking new land and new
liberty. During this migration, not only did they set up freer ways of living where
they went, but the countries that they were moving from also showed a significant
trend towards increased liberty as well. For a large part of its history, The United
States of America was a frontier in which liberty thrived. Only when there was no
frontier left did things start to move in the other direction and a national Collective
Identity based on geographical boundaries starting to gain significant strength.

6.5.2 Start-up Countries

Within the past hundred years, just about all the land on the planet has been
claimed by one nation state or another. As a result we have a handful of large
nations capable of exercising military control over other countries – a larger
number of nations that could not field such a military effort, but could probably
resist any larger invader indefinitely, at great cost to that invader – plus a
scattering of very small countries that exist only at the pleasure of larger nations.
At this point in history, new nations arise only through revolution or civil war in
existing countries. Efforts to start a new country from the ground up like a small
business have, in almost all cases, met with failure. For those interested in
startup countries, the book "How to Start Your Own Country" by Erwin Strauss is
an excellent collection of case histories of various start up country projects.
These case studies show the difficulty of finding places where making new land
is possible, or of navigating the global political climate. From the point of view of
looking at government as an industry, this indicates a very high barrier to entry,
as well as a high cost for customers in changing providers.
Experimentation in this area seems to indicate that building a new country from
scratch and then attracting citizens is not a particularly doable thing. This is not
really surprising, considering that this is not the way it has ever been done
historically. The usual way is for a bunch of people, who don't even know they
are starting a country, to move into uncharted territory in an attempt to make a
living. Such pioneering homesteaders, setting up their lives in the new world,
created new freedom for themselves – and through the effects of competition
between governments, also increased freedom for every one else.
It would be nice to recreate this effect, but as it was pointed out earlier, all the
available land has been claimed by governments – even where they are not
using it, and no one lives on it. Governments are not interested in experimenting
with new ways of living. Even though such experimentation could offer new
information to us about what is good and what is bad about the ways we
currently live, from the point of view of the Collective Identities that steer
governments this would be very dangerous. It would allow competition and might
lead to the creation of new competing Distributed Identities.
So if there is no land to homestead, where are today's pioneers to go?

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6.5.3 Seasteading
A number of the ideas for startup countries have had to do with colonizing the
oceans. However, they have mostly all suffered from the idea that you need to
build a new country all at once. This causes all their plans to look like:
1. Get enough money together to build floating inhabitation for 10,000
people. (A billion dollars is the usual figure mentioned.)
2. Build a floating city-state.
3. Declare nationhood.
4. Wait and see if anyone else wants to move there, to live under your new
improved government system where only you are royalty.

Obviously, they all fail at step 1.

The Seasteading concept is a little different. The idea behind Seasteading is to
make the technology available for a single family to move to the ocean, and
make a living, for something near to the cost of a small building on the land.
Floating “houses” would allow pioneering seasteaders to just “hit the trail" and
find their spot on the ocean to start farming fish or engaging in any sort of work
that does not require too much space or dirt. They don't have to declare
"nationhood." They can just start living their lives and see how it works out.
The Seasteading plan looks more like:
1. Get enough money to build your own floating home (maybe $100,000?
That is 1/10,000 of the billion dollar figure above.)
2. Build your floating home.
3. Move to the ocean.
4. Wait and see if anyone else decides to follow the example of living freely
and become your neighbor.

Any plan that only requires people to get involved a few at a time, and invest
reasonable sums of money is, of course, far more likely to see some real results.
With modern information flow, the lives of any pioneering seasteaders would
become well known to landlubbers. Their increased freedom would become a
standard to measure land based governments against. If and when there were a
lot of seasteaders, they would quite likely link together in larger groups. However,
because each seastead could be moved easily, they would have exactly the
conditions described by David Friedman in "The Machinery of Freedom" excerpt
above with his analogy of a nation of house-trailers.
For seasteaders this would not be an analogy, it would be real. They could all
literally float away from any government that tried to enact bad laws, leaving the
bureaucrats to fend for themselves with no citizens to tax. This is exactly the sort
of freedom of movement that a Collective Identity based on physical territory can
not tolerate. Therefore no similar Collective Identities would likely ever develop in
a seasteader community.
Seasteading could be highly beneficial for individuals everywhere, forcing
governments to compete with better services (including more freedoms) at
lower cost (fewer taxes).

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Each seastead would be like its own mini government, and seastead owners
would be "captains of their own ships.” In terms of the analogy we made above –
looking at government as a business with a high barrier to entry and a high cost
of switching providers – the advent of seasteading could vastly reduce both of
these costs. Should seasteading make it cheap to start a new government, and
cheap to switch to a new government, all governments would feel pressure to
provide better services at a lower cost.
Seasteading might also help change the paradigm of legal jurisdiction and central
authority. Unlike collections of sovereign states on land, collective bodies that
were the equivalent of the governments of Seastead cities, or nations, could not
apply top down laws, but would, rather, have to concern themselves with
interactions between sovereign Seasteaders.
This is the way the United States Government started out, with its authority over
sovereign states filled with sovereign individuals, limited to interactions between
those states. However, the federal government eventually extended its power
over the States, because there was no way for the States to easily "float away"
(as was proved with a bloody civil war). In "The Machinery of Freedom,” David
Friedman writes:
It took about 150 years, starting with a Bill of Rights that
reserved to the states and the people all powers not explicitly
delegated to the federal government, to produce a Supreme
Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs
is interstate commerce and can be regulated by Congress.
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But perhaps the idea of seasteading can change all that. If the current highest
power Collective Identities are based on the idea of Geographical control of real
estate, they might well be influenced by the culture of a place that has fluid
connections between properties. There is some reason to hope that this might
work out well; after all, most of our planet is actually covered in water. It is also
worth noting that many of us expect the human race to get off this planet some
day, and any political systems we find that work for living on that water will be
more applicable to the large open areas of outer space than are the current rules
of central authority known to dirt dwellers.
The Founding Fathers and Mothers of Seasteading might be known farther into
the future than the Founding Fathers of any nation, as the political systems they
create for pioneering the "Next Frontier" will be far more likely to fit the needs of
the pioneering spacesteaders on that "Final Frontier" – certainly more so than the
rules of any dirt-bound nation.

Some possible candidates for inclusion in the group of "Founding Fathers" of Seasteading
are Wayne C. Gramlich, Patri Friedman, and Andrew House, (See their intellectual work in
this area at www.seastead.org) but it remains to be seen what pioneering spirits will
actually be the first to make the move to the high seas, and to set up the first systems for
self government there. Anyone who wanted to throw a large chunk of money at this idea
might well be buying immortality. (The kind where your reputation lives forever – we will
talk about the much cooler kind of immortality, where you actually get to live forever, later
in the book.)
Interestingly, Patri Friedman is David Friedman's son, and Milton Friedman's grandson. If a
line of great libertarian thinkers can be, unhypocritically, called a "dynasty,” they have one
going.

6.5.4 Space Colonization

Beyond living in every possible climate and terrain, on land, sea, or floating in the
air, human kind seems likely to eventually leave the planet of its birth and move
on to the rest of the Solar System. Perhaps, eventually even other stars and
other galaxies. If this exodus does indeed occur, it should be a time of
unprecedented liberty. Expanding in three-dimensional space, the frontier only
gets larger as you move outward. And those who choose to live in the gaps,
between planets and stars will never lack for a place to move if the neighbors get
too "noisy.”
The first step in this process is to have some group of brave people lift civilization
out of its gravity well by its own boot straps. A community on the moon at 1/6
Earth gravity would be a start, but a community living in orbit would solve more of
the general issues for survival of our species in space.
We hope to live long enough to see this process – and if we can slip some
increases in the right technologies past suppression by the Collective, we just
might. God Willing...
In the next chapter we will talk about some possible future technologies that
might help humankind get to the stars, and might let you live long enough to see
it happen. These are technologies that we may never see unless we can reduce
the suppressive effect of collective idea-organisms.

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 On the Death of Friends
[Shortened Version]

And there was a time, not long ago

When the dream was young, we would go
Together. The stars would be ours
And all the planets, even Mars.

But time was wasted, getting there.

We trusted others and had no fear
That they would work to open space
Not just for us, but the human race.

We watched and waited, helped and worked.

But in the program, corruption lurked.
Pork and fools, timidness and more,
Not opening space, they were the door.

Years went by and little got done,

And still we waited, children of the Sun.
We knew somehow that real soon
We would go together, dancing on the Moon.

But time was passing and took its toll,

In years, and lives, and parts of our soul.
Our friends are dying, one by one,
No more to ride with us and share the fun.

We still will go, though they will not.

And those that delayed us should be shot,
For stealing the dream and taking away
The friends who were going with us someday.

-- Jim Davidson
Full version of this poem at
www.indomitus.net/ondeathfriends.html

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 7
Playing God
Scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something
is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that
something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to
venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.
This chapter is about the development of new symbiotic memes taken to the
extreme – to the point where they might seem magical.
The technologies we discuss in this chapter may seem like far out science fiction,
but most of the reason they seem unbelievable may be because they idea-
organisms in your mind are afraid of them. Such fantastic future science will at
least shake things up for your idea-organisms, and may in fact kill many of them.
Therefore, you may find yourself not wanting to believe that these things are
possible, or thinking that they are somehow bad things.
However, they are not only possible, but might even happen fairly soon, so long
as we don't let the Collectives suppress or control technological development.
Since the quest for fire, mankind's journey has been one of gathering knowledge
and developing new technologies. New technologies are developed to fulfill a
wish. We are constantly striving to make our environments more comfortable,
and to enable us to do things better, easier, and at less cost/effort. This quest
has lead to technology so advanced, that if a boy scout, with his full kit packed
for a camping trip, were transported back in time, primitive man would probably
worship him as a god, and if one of those primitive men was brought forward in
time to view a modern city, he could easily be convinced that he was getting a
look at heaven.
Our urge to extend our individual capabilities and improve our lives through
harnessing new, symbiotic ideas, has lifted us to great heights as a civilization.
However, the very ideas that bind us together into a culture have a natural
tendency to resist new ideas that upset human limitations. Some idea-organisms
replicate themselves by claiming to fulfill wishes that technology has not yet
fulfilled, or in ways that go against wishes we might have, and such idea-based
entities fear the progress of knowledge in directions that will actually fulfill such
wishes.
In this chapter, we will discuss some of the technologies that human beings are
currently developing, or may be able to develop, and the good that they can do.
We will also discuss which DIs will fear those technologies the most, why they
will fear them, and how they attempt to suppress them through unwarranted fear,
disapproval, and collective force.

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In the previous chapter we ended with the idea that mankind's future may be to
colonize outer space. However, the technologies required to get there will be
quite advanced, and not all of them will meet the approval of all the prevailing
idea-organisms.
Certainly nature worshipers will find it unnatural to leave the home planet,
abandoning Gaia. Nation states will worry about which country will control the
territory of the moon, mars, or even all of outer space. No doubt racial and ethnic
groups will complain about an imbalance of representation among astronauts.
And many of the necessary advances in technology, that we will need to take this
next step into space, are certain to have those of religious faith worried that we
are "Playing God."

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7.1 Suspended Animation
One technology that may be necessary for mankind's eventual journey into outer
space – and one that has certainly played a part in many fictional stories that
feature future technology – is the idea of suspended animation. Interstellar
distances are so great that even light, which travels faster than we could ever
travel according to current theories of space-time, can take many years to travel
between even two "close" stars. So, authors who wanted to set stories in
civilizations that traveled between stars have often used the idea that human
beings could temporarily be "turned off" for the duration of an interstellar voyage.
The idea was that if a person could be put into Suspended Animation, even if the
trip took many, many years, no time would pass for the person at all, and they
wouldn't have aged a bit when they were revived at the end of the journey.

7.1.1 Annoying God

As long as such technology had remained purely fictional, it would not have
bothered anyone. However, making this technology actually work is sure to anger
certain religious idea-organisms. The reason for this is that one of the biggest
replication strategies for religions involves removing fears about what happens
after death. This usually takes the form of some sort of idea about an immortal
soul that goes someplace else when the body dies.
The idea of suspended animation blurs the line between life and death.
If it is possible to suspend human beings, and then at some later point reanimate
them, in the interim, are they alive or dead? Even more intriguing, is the idea that
it might be possible to use some method of suspension before the technology
that would allow reanimation has yet been invented. If you have people in
suspension and the technology to revive them exists in theory, but has not yet
been made to work in practice, are they alive or dead?
In this case, the answer to whether or not they are really dead has to be that it is
unknown. If they can ever be revived, then of course they were never dead.
However, if they can never be revived, or will never be revived, you can make a
pretty convincing argument that they were dead all along. It is therefore
impossible to say if they are dead or alive. They exist in some in-between state.
Like Schroedinger's cat, they are caught in an uncertain situation.
There is actually no theological reason why such technology should bother any
religious person or institution. There are several possible theological answers to
this question. Perhaps the soul knows the outcome of the experiment, and leaves
the body only if the person will never be reanimated. Perhaps GOD knows the
outcome and removes the soul if the body is actually dead. Maybe the soul can
even leave for a while, and then come back if the person turns out to not really
be dead.
Catholic dogma seems to suggest that the soul lies in the grave with the body,
and only goes to heaven after the dead rise on judgment day. So Catholics in
particular should have no problem with frozen bodies that might be either dead or
alive. They will either be reanimated before judgment day by some new
technology, or will rise with the rest of the dead on judgment day – should that
day happen to come along before such technology is invented.

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Additionally, the Catholic Church has already strongly condemned the
destruction of cryopreserved human embryos, indicating that a soul is present in
those embryos. If they believe that embryos in cryostasis are still viable living
human beings, how could they not believe that an adult human being in
cryostasis is not also still a viable living person?
However, it is quite likely that despite these quite logical points, religions will do
everything in their power to resist this technology. (That is, if it becomes popular
enough to warrant their attention.) The reason for this is that any hope of
forestalling death in this manor has the potential to cut into the mind-share of any
religious idea-organism.
If people believe that future technology can revive a person who has been in
some way suspended, the next idea is to use this to cheat death. If you are going
to die of something, you can just have yourself suspended in the hope that in
some future time the technologies to reanimate you and to also cure what is
killing you (even if that is just old age) will be invented. This idea opens a
potential doorway to physical immortality.
Furthermore, once you grant that such is possible, does this not morally compel
us to make the attempt to suspend each and every dying person? As long as
there is a possibility that they can be returned to healthy life, are we not ethically
bound to try to save them?
There is no good reason why GOD would have a problem with immortality;
however, the idea of GOD (which we are referring to as God) is going to have a
big problem with it. God the idea-organism is promising an afterlife in exchange
for believing in him. Any alternatives for avoiding death are a threat to God’s
ideological existence. If everyone starts thinking that technology can make them
immortal, they will have less reason to host the God idea-organism.
God certainly still has some other tricks, like maybe saying that Armageddon will
come eventually, so you can't use any technology to escape judgment forever, or
suggesting that without God you have no true purpose, so you had better believe
in God or feel like everything is random and meaningless. But even with those
other replication strategies, Suspended Animation is a technology that would do
some harm to some of God's current ability to continue to survive and grow. It
also certainly doesn't help that being suspended almost sounds like a burial
ritual, which is something that religions consider to be their domain.

7.1.2 Experiment in Progress

On one hand, our theories about collective behavior brought about by Distributed
Identities predict that religions should come out strongly against this technology.
On the other hand, there is really no good theological reason for them to do so.
This is the first verifiable prediction that we have made. Previously we have just
been talking about the history of collective ideological organisms, not predicting
what events their existence should cause in the future. Theories that any good
scientist might previously have dismissed as being not “falsifiable,” even if
somewhat compelling, are now real science. An experiment is in progress.
People are working on suspended animation, and making regular breakthroughs.
This technology is becoming a very realistic possibility. So now we can just sit
back to watch, and wait, and see how God will react to this threat.

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If religion is really about following GOD, then suspended animation should by
seen as pretty harmless stuff. There is no reason why this technology would
threaten GOD. However, if it is God the Distributed Identity (the living idea-
organism with its own reproductive agenda) whom religious people are really
listening to, then at some point they should start to get seriously upset about this
sort of technology.
If we are right about the nature of God and other collective idea-organisms,
we should soon see some serious public disapproval, and probably an
attempt to make this technology illegal.

7.1.3 Early Thoughts on Suspension

Throughout the ages, various great thinkers have speculated on whether it might
ever be possible to preserve a corpse well enough that it might some day be
returned to life. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United
States of America, had this to say in a letter to another scientist:
I wish it were possible... to invent a method of embalming
drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled
to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent
desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years
hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed
with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to
be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But...
in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too
near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our
time to its perfection...
-- Benjamin Franklin, April, 1773
The idea of suspending a human being after death for later reanimation may
actually predate the historical record. It seems that ancient Egyptians had some
notion that this is what they were doing for the bodies of the Pharaohs, through
the process of mummification. (Hollywood movies with walking mummies give us
proof that the idea of the Pharaoh's return, if not the actual Pharaoh, did survive.)

7.1.4 Rethinking Death

Religious miracles aside, many people have been brought back to life throughout
history. As early as the 1500s, it was known that inflating an apparently dead
person's lungs with hot air from a fireplace bellows could sometimes revive the
person. Drowning and hypothermia have come to be known as ways of dying
that are not necessarily permanent if the right techniques are applied to a victim.
Children drowning in cold water have sometimes been returned to health after
over an hour with no heartbeat or sign of body heat.
As our understanding of the ways in which the human body shuts down in
response to trauma have increased, it has become obvious that many people
who were once thought dead, were actually in a state from which they could have
been revived – with more knowledge – with better technology. Modern medical
technology often allows us to keep patients alive on machines indefinitely. We
continue to hold out hope, as long as there is any reason to believe that the
functions of the brain are still working, or might start working again. Modern

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declarations of death are often just a case of deciding when it is too much effort
to continue the fight.

We now pull people back from the edge of death so regularly, that there are even common
stories of near death experiences. People brought back from the brink talk about seeing a
tunnel of light. Some religious people point to this phenomena as evidence of an afterlife,
claiming that such people are seeing the "tunnel to heaven." Oddly they don't point to a
supernatural cause for other similar shared experience caused by nerve trauma. The
phantom limbs that amputees experience are not called "Soul Limbs," the tingling after a
loss of circulation is never explained as "Angels dancing on the skin," and no reference is
made to the "bells of heaven" ringing in one's ears following a painfully loud noise.

Brain death is more of a realistic modern indicator of death than a lack of heart
beat. A modern doctor will still not declare time of death on a patient whose heart
is beating but this is a holdover from an older definition of death. Just as new
knowledge and technology have lead to past definitions of death being
invalidated; even newer technology will almost certainly do the same thing to our
concept of brain death.
One possible answer to this question of "When is dead, really dead?" lies in the
concept of "Information-theoretic Death."
Information theory expert, Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D. defines death this way:
...if the structures in the brain that encode memory and
personality have been so disrupted that it is no longer possible
in principle to restore them to an appropriate functional state
then the person is dead. If the structures that encode memory
and personality are sufficiently intact that inference of the
memory and personality are feasible in principle, and therefore
restoration to an appropriate functional state is likewise feasible
in principle, then the person is not dead.
As long as the information that describes you completely has not been
lost, some theoretical future technology might be able to restore you to life.
For Example, if you were to fall into a machine that is designed to cut pigs into
precisely sized cubes of meat so that they can be included in cans of delicious
brown sugar baked beans, you are in much better shape than your friend who
falls into the machine next to it, which happens to be set to puree. Since the chop
setting follows predictable patterns, it might be possible to determine where each
cube belongs. With some theoretical technology, you could be glued back
together alive and well. Your friend, however, has probably been agitated to the
point that no amount of computing power could figure out which bit goes where.
Obviously you are both screwed in terms of current medical technology, but in
terms of some future medical technology, you are not information-theoretically
dead. Just because all the King's horses and all the King's men can't do a job
now, doesn't mean that nobody will ever be able to do that job. (Horses have
never been very good at performing medical procedures anyway – so including
them in any attempt would no-doubt be a mistake.)
If someone has the presence of mind to shovel the pieces of you into a time
machine and transport you to a 25th Century hospital, you might be put back
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together there with little difficulty. Unfortunately, there is rarely a time machine
available when you need one, and after your heart stops the clock is ticking.
Some time shortly after circulation ceases, the body starts to decay. Sometime
after that Information Theoretic Death is going to be reached.
However, we have learned something from revived hypothermia victims. The
colder the brain gets, the longer it takes for Information Theoretic Death to occur.
This is because what we think of as heat is really just the motion of molecules.
The more they are moving around, the sooner they can get from an ordered
pattern of information to a chaotic arrangement that can no longer (even
information-theoretically) be returned to that ordered pattern.
We have found our time machine. If you need access to 25th Century
medical technology to cure what ails you, your best bet is to be frozen. But
you need to be frozen colder than the average deep freeze.
You know how if you leave food in the freezer for a long time, it ends up tasting
funny when you cook it? That is because molecules are still moving around.
Chemical reactions are still occurring. The food is still going bad, just very slowly.
Likewise, if your brain is not being kept much colder than the average deep
freeze, you are still dying – just more slowly.
Fortunately, it turns out that technology already exists to get you cold enough.
Liquid Nitrogen can be produced fairly cheaply, and is so cold (-195 C) that if
your body is cooled with it, all chemical reactions stop. As long as you remain at
that temperature, it is possible to preserve the information in your brain forever.
You are in suspended animation. This technology has been named "cryonics."

Pictured here is one of the earliest cryonics storage tanks ever built. It has kept
patients suspended at The Cryonics Institute in Michigan, since the late 1970s.
We are pretty sure that the little electric fan on the right hand side of the picture
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has nothing to do with the process that keeps the patients cold. Sean visited the
facility in June of 2002, and he swears that there is a giant tank of liquid Nitrogen
in back of the building that could keep this tank – as well as the many other
patient storage tanks – cold for months between refills.
Liquid Nitrogen can be brought in by truck from anywhere, so power outages are
never an issue.

7.1.5 History of Cryonics

The modern quest for a real world technology for suspended animation began in
the last half of the 20th Century. Some historical milestones in that quest have
been:
• In 1956 Robert A. Heinlein writes the novel "The Door Into Summer," in
which the main character journeys into the future through a process of
being frozen and revived.
• In the 1962s, physics professor Robert C. W. Ettinger publishes "The
Prospect of Immortality," in which he lays out the arguments for a means
by which people could be suspended at liquid helium temperatures, and
kept in suspension until some future technology might be able to return
that person to life, full health, and perhaps even youth.
• In 1965, the word “cryonics” is coined by Karl Werner to describe
suspended animation through extremely cold temperatures, and is used
in the name of the first cryonics organization, the Cryonics Society of
New York (CSNY) founded by Curtis Henderson and Saul Kent.
• In the mid 1960s, several other Cryonics Societies are also founded in
the United States – one in Michigan and several in California.
• In 1966, Japanese scientist, Isamu Suda, demonstrates that cat brains
could be frozen, using glycerol as a "cryo-protectant,” and when carefully
warmed, months later, EEG readings demonstrate a degree of continued
brain functions.
• In 1966 Walt Disney dies at age 65 of lung cancer. While he is not
actually cryonically suspended, he apparently talked about the possibility
of cryonics, and this leads to a long standing rumor that his body is
being "kept on ice."
• In 1967, Dr. James Bedford was the first human being to be cryonically
suspended by the Cryonics Society of California using liquid Nitrogen.
• In the mid 1970's several non-profit organizations are started in
California, and Michigan to provide long term storage of suspension
patients.
• In 1986, in the book "The Engines of Creation,” K. Eric Drexler describes
how a future medical nanotechnology might someday be used to heal
tissue damage and reverse aging. He also mentions that such a
technology might be used to revive people from cryonic suspension.
• In 1996, Timothy Leary, famous advocate of psychotherapeutic LSD
use, while dying of cancer, publicly states that he is going to be
cryonically suspended. He changes his mind at the last minute, and is
finally cremated instead, but as with Disney, there is an ongoing rumor
that he is in suspension.
• In the late 1990's cryobiologists discover methods of perfusing tissue
with certain new cryo-protectants such that they can be cooled to
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 extremely low temperatures in a glassy vitrified state with minimal
crystallization.
• In 2000, existing cryonics organizations begin to take advantage of
vitrification technology to significantly reduce freezing damage in
cryonics patients.
• In 2002, Ted Williams, American Baseball legend, dies and is placed in
cryonic suspension. This is the first time a very famous person is
actually suspended, and a media circus ensues (see below).
• In 2005, a company called 21st Century Medicine announces the
development of a new cryo-protectant for vitrification that allows them to
successfully vitrify a rabbit kidney, lower the organ to stasis
temperatures, then later warm the kidney and transplant it into a living
rabbit as a functional organ.
• As of 2006, over 100 human beings have been put into cryostasis, and
well over 1000 persons world wide have made arrangements to be
suspended with one of several existing cryonics organizations.
7.1.6 Growth of an Idea
The idea of cryonics is certainly still new. (A few thousand people signed up for
cryonics worldwide constitutes a very small minority opinion.) But good ideas
tend to take off exponentially – growing amazingly quickly.

Take a look at this graph of members of "The Cryonics Institute,” which is just
one of several cryonics organizations in the United States. The graph shows two
curves. One curve is for patients who have actually been suspended, and one is
for people who have made suspension arrangements – that is, have prepaid or
otherwise arranged funding for suspension with a life insurance policy, or the like.
Membership data for a cryonics organization should certainly be a good indicator
of the rate at which the idea is catching on. Looking at this graph we see the
familiar "hockey stick" shape for an idea that is taking off exponentially. If the
growth of the idea is indeed exponential, then being "frozen" in liquid nitrogen

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should very shortly become a quite normal third option for funeral arrangements,
along side the more usual current options of being buried or burned.

7.1.7 Media Spin

The case of baseball legend Ted Williams being placed in cryo-stasis sparked a
lot of media controversy. Because Ted Williams himself, as a famous person,
had an extended Distributed Identity, many people felt that they "knew" that Ted
Williams would never do something so out of the normal. This may have seemed
like "bad press" for cryonics. However, when your ideas are different than the
main stream, it is hard to get good press, and it is often said that “any publicity is
good publicity.” In the end, this attention to cryonics only increased the number of
people signing up for such services.
It is the nature of media to magnify the impact of any set of events. This means
that the spin they put on a story, will be based on what will attract the most
attention. This is not necessarily even a factor of purposeful distortion on the part
of the media. When many various slants on a set of facts are offered, the one
that attracts the most attention, quite naturally, gets repeated often.
In the case of Ted Williams, suggestions were made along the lines that he was
only being frozen to preserve his famous DNA so that it could later be sold. His
son, who had arranged the suspension with the thought that he might be saving
his father's life, was painted as a villain who was taking advantage of his father. It
was as if Ted Williams, as a "national treasure,” somehow belonged to all of
America, more than he belonged to his family, or even to himself. No media
source bothered to research cryonics organizations, and find out that preserving
DNA for later retrieval was not the purpose of such a suspension.
Because the media slant will always be towards the most interesting, any media
piece on cryonics that is initiated by the news that a celebrity has signed up, is
bound to be slanted towards the idea that it is some sort of scam, and that the
poor beloved celebrity has been duped. The one exception to this rule would be if
the celebrity in question was famous for being universally hated. If a "bad"
celebrity was known to be undergoing cryonic suspension, then the exciting slant
would be towards the idea that this bad person was going to live forever. In such
a case, the idea that cryonics might be something that actually worked would be
the far more interesting slant for the media to portray.
It is only a matter of time before some death row inmate, guilty of horrible crimes,
asks to be cryonically suspended after the state executes him. When this
happens, the TV news will suddenly start assuming that cryonics is a sure thing.
We will see them asking some poor member of a victim's family "How does it feel
to know that your loved one is gone, but that this killer is going to live forever?"
When this happens, we will see both a surge in people signing up for cryonic
suspension and also the start of efforts to make cryonics illegal.
There is something odd about the way people think. They are often more willing
to believe that something is possible when it means that something bad will be
the result; that someone else is getting away with something. If you present it as
good news, saying "A scientific path to immortality has been discovered!" people
will not believe it. But if you tell them that some villain is escaping a death

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sentence, they will inexplicably find the possibility much more credible. People
just seem more willing to believe bad news than good.
Whether it is professional baseball players or convicted felons, the media
exposure of cryonics is bound to increase, and more and more people will find
themselves considering the Pros and Cons.

7.1.8 Calculating Cryonics

So what are the Pros and Cons in the cryonics equation? What are the costs?
What are the Odds? How do you decide if it is worth it for you to sign up to be
frozen someday?
Robert Ettinger, often called the "Father of Cryonics,” had this to say:
Clearly, the freezer is more attractive than the grave, even if
one has doubts about the future capabilities of science. With
bad luck, the frozen people will simply remain dead, as they
would have in the grave. But with good luck, the manifest
destiny of science will be realized, and the resuscitees will drink
the wine of centuries unborn. The likely prize is so enormous
that even slender odds would be worth embracing.
This sounds something like a poetic version of Pascal's famous Wager.

7.1.8.1 Pascal's Wager

Famous mathematician Blaise Pascal said that since doing the things required by
the church to get into heaven took up only finite resources, but the reward of
eternal paradise was infinite, that it made sense to "bet on GOD" from a risk-
reward point of view. However, Pascal's assumptions are faulty. The main flaw in
his logic is that there exist more than just one religion, and therefore, multiple
ways to "bet on GOD." In fact, there is no guarantee that any existing religion has
it right. In theory, the choices of behavior are infinite, thus the cost of doing all the
things that might work is also infinite.
It gets worse – some of the things that religions ask you to do may contradict
each other. Behavior that one religion says is required for infinite reward may,
according to another religion, bring you infinite suffering. Pascal's conclusion
should therefore have been, with no other reason to believe in a particular path to
GOD, that any such cost would be too much.

7.1.8.2 The Cryonics Equation

Below is a commonly presented logic diagram for the choice of cryonics.
It looks pretty simple when presented this way, but the real question is "Is the
chance of living worth the cost of betting on
Cryonics?" Unlike Pascal's Wager, the
reward being offered isn't some infinite
reward – it is just more life.
Some people's gut reaction is that any
amount of life has infinite value, but that
just isn't true. You make economic
decisions every day in which you place a
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finite value on your life. When you chose to get in the car and drive to the
movies, rather than staying home and watching TV, you are calculating that the
additional value you receive from watching a movie is worth the additional
chance of dying on the road. Staying home is definitely safer, so if you really
placed infinite value on your life, you would never choose a ride to movies over
watching TV at home.
On the other hand, there is probably no amount of money that someone could
give you in exchange for a 100% chance that you would then immediately die.
This is because the scenario where you are dead and rich offers you no
additional value. What's the difference between dead and rich, and dead and
poor?
So when your life is thrown into the pot, some weird things do happen to the
value equations of the bet. This is simply because you need to be alive to
appreciate any value gained, and death may be legitimately regarded as a loss of
all value you have. Even if you value the idea of what may happen after you die,
based on your actions today, money is still something that you can only
appreciate while you are alive.
Ultimately, the amount you should be willing to pay depends on how much your
life is currently worth to you and how likely you think it is that cryonics will work.

7.1.9 What Does It Cost?

The current (2006) cheapest price for cryonics storage is about US$30,000. This
buys you the cryonics storage procedure, plus indefinite storage time until revival
becomes possible. The most expensive option on the market, which includes
additional bedside support team, possibly faster emergency response, and the
satisfaction of knowing that you are spending the most you can spend, runs
about US$160,000. This may sound like a lot of money, but when paid for by an
insurance policy, it does not come to very much money per month.
Cryonics is particularly cheap when you consider that many people are
willing to regularly tithe 10% of their incomes to the competing afterlife
provider of their choice.

Using an online Life insurance calculator, we find that a 25 year old female in the United
States can cover the minimum cryonics option with $30,000 of life insurance for a price of
$22.80 a month. A 25 year old female is not the average case. The cost to buy such
insurance increases if you are male, and if you are older. Fortunately, the amount of
money you make also statistically increases if you are male, or older. Cryonics looks to be
very affordable, unless you wait until the last minute to make arrangements.

If you have a lot of money, think about this: Maybe you can take it with you after
all, despite what everyone says. Some of those who are signed up for cryonics
have worked out legal trust arrangements to hold onto their assets while they are
inconveniently dead.
If you don't have a lot of money now, who knows – maybe that thing about
putting a penny in a bank account for a few hundred years earning compound
interest really does work, and you could wake up super rich.

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We doubt the “untold riches when you wake up” theory, but the prospect that one
might wake up at all intrigues us.

7.1.10 Legislating the Afterlife

The cost of cryonics is currently very affordable to the average first world citizen
– and would seem to be well worth it if you believe there is even a small chance
that it might actually work.
Of course cryonics is a relatively new idea, and the government hasn't had a
chance to really start regulating it yet. When this happens, there will be rules and
regulations, licensing, and maybe even prohibition. Government regulations
already play havoc with the costs of medical care, prescription drugs, and all
sorts of other things that people sometimes need to stay alive longer. If they can
literally "tax us to death,” why should we not expect them to also be able to keep
us from having an afterlife?
Actually, one jurisdiction in Canada has already made cryonics illegal. In 2004,
British Columbia passed a bill which contained the following section:
A person must not offer for sale, or sell, an arrangement for the
preservation or storage of human remains that is based on:
(a) cryonics,
(b) irradiation, or
(c) any other means of preservation or storage, by whatever
name called,
and that is offered, or sold, on the expectation of the
resuscitation of human remains at a future time.
Earlier we predicted that religions would work to have cryonics outlawed.
However, the above law seems more geared towards preventing what the writer
of the law must have been too close-minded to see as anything but fraud.
Although perhaps that law writer's religious beliefs did play a role in the thinking
(or lack there of) involved.
But we are not going to declare that "we called it" yet, as there is reason to
believe that the law was not instigated by religious beliefs.
Any lawyer who gave this law a close read would have to agree that it not
only outlaws cryonics, but also outlaws the burial ceremonies performed
by most churches.
If a Catholic Church (or any other religious institution) charges money to have the
body of a believer buried on "holy ground" with the idea that this will somehow
aid in that persons resurrection and journey into the afterlife, they have certainly
violated this law in terms of its prohibition against "any other means of
preservation or storage, by whatever name called ... that is offered, or sold, on
the expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future time."
We wonder what the British Columbia police will do when people start filing
complaints against churches for violating this law.
The reason that such "future science" is objectionable to religion is that it treads
in some of the same territory claimed by religious beliefs. This also makes it quite

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difficult to enact impartial sounding legislation against scary new ideas that does
not also criminalize more popular (but maybe just as scary) ideas. How can
government fairly suggest to any group of people that their ideas, about what
should be done with their bodies after death in order to obtain an afterlife, are
less valid than those of anyone else?

From a legal standpoint, it is hard to distinguish between different beliefs about an afterlife.
Some people believe that when they die they will later rise up from the dead and ascend to
the heavens to sit on a semi-solid cloud where they will play the harp and be at peace for
all eternity. Some may think that when they die they will go to the center of the Earth to
experience eternal torment in liquid fire. If we happen to believe that when we die we will
go to the suburbs of Detroit Michigan, to be suspended in liquid air until we can later rise
from the dead, does that really sound very different?

Can the law actually discriminate against our belief just because it is based more
on science than superstition? Should the government really be allowed to pass
laws making some groups’ burial practices criminal, solely on the basis that the
majority of society holds different beliefs about the possibility of an afterlife?
Of course, whether they "should" or not, they probably will. But if we are lucky,
even better technology will come along before we die, and we will get a shot at
living forever, without ever being put in a vulnerable state of being suspended
and subject to the will of other people while we can not defend ourselves.

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7.2 Nanotechnology
Of course, the big question in cryonics is, "How can we reverse the suspension
process?"
Current suspension technologies are almost certainly holding people out of the
hands of Information Theoretic Death, but this is only because the Information
Theoretic Reaper is a very picky fellow indeed.
Current cryonics patients are not in stasis via some time stopping technology,
they are in molecular stasis because they are being stored in a place where there
is not enough heat for their molecules to move around. At that temperature, no
change of state is occurring, but the process of getting them there did not leave
them undamaged. In the early suspensions, previous to vitrification techniques, a
lot of ice crystals formed and a great deal of tissue fracturing occurred. Although
such damage is of a predictable nature and thus reversible by the standards of
Information Theoretic Death, no technology currently exists that can reverse it.
However, technology that might do the job has at least been envisioned. Not long
after the idea of suspended animation through cryonics, the concept of fantastic
new technologies through miniaturization of machinery started to gain mind-
share. Cryonicists now envision tiny little machines on the molecular scale that
could repair tissue at the cellular level.
These tiny little robots could be built to cure any medical problem, including such
extremes as reviving someone who had been frozen solid. But the applications
for such technology are not just medical. Every field of human endeavor could
probably make use of a technology that operates on a scale too small for human
beings to be aware of, and thus would seem indistinguishable from magic.

7.2.1 From Micro to Nano

In 1959, the famous physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk entitled "There is
Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” in which he discussed the possibility of
information storage and the creation of machines on a scale smaller than had
previously been commonly thought possible. He pointed out that we were a long,
long way from the theoretical limits of miniaturization of technology.
Proof of his ideas about the shrinking
of machines has been demonstrated
by ongoing progress in the field of
computers. This lead to Gordon E.
Moore's 1965 observation that
transistor based technology was
progressing exponentially, with the
number of transistors available for
fixed cost, doubling every two years.
This has become known as Moore's
law, as information technology has
continued to keep an exponential pace
ever since. (See graph.)
Feynman's claim that machines with
actual moving parts could also be continually made smaller and smaller, with the
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theoretical limits being far ahead of us, has also born some fruit. Although the
ideas for such tiny machines have mostly been theoretical speculation, once it is
seen that something worthwhile can be done, it is usually only a matter of time
until it is done. Feynman said:
What would be the utility of such machines? Who knows? Of
course, a small automobile would only be useful for the mites to
drive around in...
Just a few decades later machinery is being created with gears so small that
they are perhaps the right size to be used in such a tiny car for mites. Here are a
couple of pictures zooming in with a microscope on a mite who is inspecting just
such an array of tiny gears:

The mite shown here is too small to be readily visible with the unaided eye. The
magnification of these pictures is in the range of 100 to 500 times. However,
these microscopic machines represent just the start of what is possible in making
use of the plenitude of room that Feynman suggested was available at the
bottom.
Where the gears pictured here are measured in micrometers (thousandths of a
millimeter), such technology could theoretically be reduced to the scale of
nanometers (millionths of a millimeter). It is possible to build machines on such a
scale that the smallest parts, for example, a ball bearing in a tiny engine, might
be composed of just a single molecule of just a few dozen atoms – perhaps even
smaller.
In 2005, a single molecule shaped like a car, was designed and built by a group
at Rice University led by Kevin F. Kelly and James Tour. This mono-molecular
"car" has a chassis, axles, and wheels that actually turn as it moves over a
surface. This is true technology on the scale of nanometers.
The "nano-car" is not only too small for mites to drive, but at a size of under 4
nanometers, even the smallest of viruses couldn't slip behind the wheel and take
this baby for a spin. (That is if it actually had a steering wheel – or an engine. The
prototype was apparently not equipped with all the options one might expect to
find on display in the showroom).
The journey of reducing machines from the scale we are used to, down through
the micro, to the nano has been demonstrated as not just theoretically possible. It
has actually been done. But why should we care? What can we do with such tiny
machines, beyond building cars so small that even mites with advanced circus
clown training can't fit inside?
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 Nano-Car

7.2.2 The Magic of Nanotechnology

In the early 1980s, Eric K. Drexler first coined the term "nanotechnology" to
describe the application of machinery built on the nanometer scale. He also
opened up a world of fantastic possibilities, with his description of these near
magical technologies, in his book "Engines of Creation.”
Such tiny machines can not do much to affect the world at our scale of
observation, unless there are a whole bunch of them working at once. So it would
seem necessary to create vast numbers for any real world application.
Feynman suggested the possibility of building many machines simultaneously
with a multitude of tiny remotely-controlled "hands." Drexler, however, borrowed
John von Neumann's ideas of machines that could recreate themselves. Drexler
imagined tiny factories that could assemble any other nano-machine, and could
even assemble themselves. He called such machines "universal assemblers."
In a world with such nanotechnology, you might build a house simply by piling a
certain amount of raw materials on a lot, and dropping a nanotech house seed
into the pile. When activated, the seed (actually a large number of nanotech
assemblers) would start reproducing itself, as well as making specific
nanomachines designed for moving the necessary materials to where they
needed to be. Towards the end of the task, the general assemblers might start
taking each other apart, so that when the house was finished, no remaining
active nanomachines would remain.
It is even possible to envision a scenario where no raw materials need to be
delivered, and the nanomachines find what they need in the soil and rock of the
Earth below the house as they build it.

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You may think that such a magic process as dropping a seed in the ground and
growing a house might take a long time, after all, it can take a century to grow a
large tree, but in theory this need not be the case. Bacteria can be considered to
be naturally evolved nanomachines, and under the right circumstances, with a
continued supply of food, and nothing to kill them, bacteria can double their
numbers in under a half hour. If a nanotech seed were capable of this kind of
growth rate, it could start out weighing only a few grams, and build a house
weighing a hundred metric tons during the daylight hours of a single day.

7.2.3 New Bodies

The tiny size of nanomachines will allow them to operate at the same scale as
our own cellular machinery. This makes them ideal for medical use. Surgical
precision was once limited by the size of the scalpel and the doctor's hands. Fine
surgery is already being controlled through magnification and tools that translate
the larger motion of a surgeon to a much smaller scalpel. However, doing things
like reconnecting severed nerves would take a single surgeon far too long, where
millions of tiny surgical robots could do it quickly and safely.
Additionally, there is no reason not to integrate nanotechnology into our bodies.
Such devices could wait inside our bodies unnoticed, ready to fight specific
bacteria and viruses that might otherwise outwit our immune systems, or rebuild
broken bones as soon as the happened, even replace damaged tissue
temporarily until the body could catch up. Imagine if after an accident, your
internal array of nano-surgeons could heal your broken bones, and patch your
wounds within minutes. Imagine a world where a gunshot wound closed almost
immediately and was never even close to being life threatening.
If they work better than our cells, why not just replace all of our cells with them?
Why cling to an obsolete evolved organic platform at all? The machines could
replace our cells one at a time so as to preserve our consciousness throughout
the entire process. What would stop us from having new, better, indestructible
bodies?
Depending on how infected you are with the idea-organism we call "Nature,”
thinking about the idea of replacing every cell in your body with tiny machines
that do a better job either sounds perfectly reasonable, or it is really giving you
the heebie-jeebies right now. And if you are hosting religious ideas about a
“soul,” you may also feel strongly that your soul couldn’t live in a nanotech body.
But why not?
A soul is supposed to be a powerful magical otherworldly supernatural
force. If it can live without any body, why not in a different kind of body?
Emotional reactions to ideas come from defensive idea-organisms, not rational
thought.

7.2.4 What Color is Your Goo?

Drexler was also kind enough to invent possible disaster scenarios along with his
ideas about this new technology, rather than wait for the environmentalists to
come up with them on their own. The worse-case scenario is that out of control
assemblers, capable of the kind of growth rates described above, envelop the
entire Earth, turning mankind and all our works, into a gray goo.
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Why a gray goo? No particular reason. Other more colorful scenarios have been
suggested, although they are just as gooey. In the book "How to Mutate and
Take Over the World" by R.U. Sirius and St. Jude, it is a green goo scenario. The
world ends with an industrial accident at a nanotech bakery that turns the entire
world into key lime pie filling.
Of course, every new technology seems to have a story about how it is going to
destroy the world. This may be because we are all a little bit infected with a
Distributed Identity of Nature. The idea of something man-made that so closely
resembles a living organism in the way it can eat and grow is probably the most
frightening thing in the world to an idea-organism with a core meme of “natural is
good and artificial is bad.”
Why should we be afraid of molecular level machines, when, in actuality that is
precisely what our bodies are? We are already nanomachines constructed from
carbon based chemicals. Every living thing on the planet can be viewed as a
complex collection of nanomachines. No molecular machine that evolved
naturally has ever been so effective at multiplying itself that it has managed to
cover the entire Earth, so why should we be concerned that man made molecular
machines could ever accidentally do so?
The fear of the artificial is especially strange when you understand that it is a war
between the genetic and the memetic. The idea that "natural is better than
artificial" is a meme, and memes are artificial. Therefore, fear of the artificial is a
self hating meme.
There is definitely a strange war going on in people's minds between the
memetic and the genetic. The same people that might express distress at the
thought of us integrating advanced technology with our bodies are probably also
squeamish about facing the reality of what our bodies are. Some people don't like
the idea of evolution, because they don't want to think that we are related to
animals, but we are made up of the same stuff that other animals are.

Many of life’s realities seem to "gross people out" – the clothes we wear have sometimes
been treated with urine, our food is grown in dung, tiny little insects too small for us to see
crawl on our bodies all the time eating our dead skin. These truths are unpleasant because
ideological constructs in our mind, concerning how reality "should be" are at odds with how
reality really is. Ironically, many people have very artificial concept of what is natural.

Even the most primitive slime molds are collections of cells – just like we are. Our
cells have just learned a few more tricks, like secreting strong calcium
compounds in long sticks and acting together as different organs, including
muscles to prop those sticks up and walk around on them. Just like every other
animal, the code that creates our entire body is inside each and every one of
these tiny little creatures. What we think of as a body is really just a shape that all
those slimy little creatures, clinging together, happen to enjoy forming.
Those worried about being related to monkeys may dispute the theory of
evolution, but they cannot dispute the fact that our bodies are made up of
the same slimy little creatures as other animals. (snakes, snails, and puppy
dog tails…) But they don't like to think about it, so they just stop thinking.
Inside we are all made up of the same slimy goo.
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7.3 Augmented or Artificial?
Every four years, the nations of the world compete in the Olympic Games. The
quest for each athlete is to be the best, and by doing so, contribute to the pride of
their nation. Interestingly, the rules of the Olympic Games have had to be
modified consistently over the years, in an effort to "keep them pure." That is to
rule out the use of any foreign substances or other technology to enhance
athletic performance.
This amounts to an attempt to ensure that only genetics play a part in who is the
strongest and fastest, which seems very strange, as these games are not being
conducted between racial groups, but between countries. A country is an
ideological construct, not a biological one, and if one country's ideology produces
better performance enhancing technology than another, shouldn't that strength
be represented in these games as well?
Also, consider the Special Olympic Games that are often held for disabled
people. There are regularly held foot races in which the contestants are double
leg amputees. Since the 1980s, the development of prosthetic limbs has
improved rapidly, and now the fastest man, with no legs, is knocking on the door
of records set by two-legged runners. How can you tell a man that has come
back so far, from such adversity, that he will never be allowed to compete with
"whole" human beings, because he has an "unfair advantage" from having lost
his legs?
But if you do allow a legless man to win an Olympic Gold Medal for sprinting,
how long before athletes are having their legs removed on purpose, just to
compete at the same level? On the other hand, why shouldn't they? If artificial
legs are better, why would we not all want them?

7.3.1 Drugs
Our contests of athleticism currently outlaw the use of foreign performance
enhancing substances. However, it is getting harder to decide what substances
are foreign, as people find ways of using naturally occurring chemicals in the
body, in greater doses. If existing hormones, like HGH (Human Growth
Hormone) can be used to augment muscle growth, how does that really differ
from eating a diet that contains all the precursors for the body to make more
HGH?
And what if the body actually produces the drugs, through stimulation of the
glands, or gene therapy to make the glands that produce adrenaline or other
performance enhancing biochemicals more active? How is it different to select for
winners from among those who have natural mutations for more active secretion
of certain natural chemicals, and those who have undergone therapy to cause
those same glands to become more active?
Academic competition is about brain competing against brain, rather than body
competing against body. In the world of science, people work to discoverer new
answers, not just to increase all of our potential knowledge, but to distinguish
themselves personally. A great part of the quest for new knowledge is the
learning of previous knowledge. Having an understanding of the science that has
come before, and the proper library skills to research previously gained

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knowledge, have always been a part of being a great scientist. Should we ban
drugs that help the learning process as being unfair to academic competition, or
should we embrace them as something that can only accelerate the discovery of
new knowledge?

7.3.2 Telephony
The library skills that we mentioned above were once a vital part of research.
Now every mobile telephone has a connection to the Internet, and a search
engine can quickly pull up the knowledge one is looking for on any topic. You
would not expect contestants on jeopardy to be allowed to access the Internet,
but connection to a network of combined human knowledge is becoming a part of
our culture. If you were interviewing someone for a job, you would pick the
candidate that can find answers the fastest, you would not care whether those
answers came out of personal memory, or off the Internet, just that they were the
best answers in the shortest time.
Soon, with the right technologies, the difference between accessing your own
personal memory, and that of remote data stores, will be unnoticeable.

7.3.3 Virtual Reality

They say that the best teacher is experience. Artificial experience, if
indistinguishable from the real thing, should be just as good. With electro-neural
interfaces, it should be possible to experience anything you chose, at anytime.
This will be the best teaching tool ever, but it will also be the best drug ever. In
fact, since it would allow you to feel any way at all, it is not just a drug, it is all
drugs. Certainly there will be people that crawl into their fantasy worlds and never
come out. With the lure of being able to have a perfect life in a perfect fantasy
world, why would you ever want to return to a flawed reality?
There is no doubt that someone somewhere will try to outlaw virtual reality, even
as it becomes the best tool for educating people that was ever invented.

7.3.4 Cybernetics
And with direct machine brain connections, we are back to artificial limbs, with
artificial muscles. Instead of looking like well-designed machines, these limbs will
look like well designed bodies, but able to work hundreds of times harder and
stronger. When a person who chooses to become an armor-plated cyborg can
crush an un-augmented person without even breaking a sweat, everyone will
want to use this technology, or they will become second class citizens with
second class bodies. Any DI that is horrified by this "unnatural" change in
humanity will fight like crazy to have this technology outlawed.

7.3.5 Bush Robots

If you add nanotech to this picture, our natural bodies might disappear
completely. In the book, "Mind Children," Hans Moravac described a future
synthetic creature, called a "bush robot" that had smaller and smaller branches
down to the level of nanometers. The evolved human body has limbs that can
supply powerful lifting force, that branch into hands and fingers for finer control,
but imagine if you had fingers on the ends of your fingers, and more fingers on

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the ends of those, and so on down to the smallest scale. You could manipulate
small objects on any level, with your smallest fingers doing the work of nanotech
assemblers.
Would such a creature be a robot, or could it be something that you could do with
your own body?
The question of whether we might be creating robots with fantastic new
capabilities that will one day rise up and replace us, or whether we are
engineering ourselves to have those same capabilities, is a question of how
much we are willing to embrace augmentation technology.
What is human and what is machine may soon just be a mater of personal
opinion and choice.

7.3.6 Evolving Simulations

Computers can already do many things that, before their creation, could only be
done by the human mind. Some people believe that the barrier to self
awareness, to true personhood, can be crossed just by the process of increasing
the complexity of these thinking machines – when the computers are complex
enough, they might just "wake up" and be people just like we are. Others think
that the creation of true thinking machines will require a greater understanding of
our own brains. But some believe that such knowledge is unobtainable, that it is
simply not possible for any system, including the human brain, to ever fully
understand itself.
One way around the problem of having to actually figure out how a mind works
before you can build one, is to put a brain together the same way that nature did.
If you could set up an experiment where a simulated "creature" could interact
with its environment and reproduce with some random variance. If you tailored
that environment towards rewards for displaying increased intelligence, then you
would theoretically, eventually produce an intelligent creature.
You do not have to know how intelligence works, just be able to know it when
you see it.

7.3.7 Turing Tests

The term "Turing test" refers to the interaction with a system, in order to ascertain
its level of intelligence. The idea comes from Alan Turing, a famous British
mathematician and early computer scientist, who proposed that the only way we
know other people are intelligent is that they convince us that they are by their
words and actions. He suggested that computers might someday be intelligent,
but the only way to know if they were or not, was to communicate with both
computers and people, in such a way that you could not tell which were which
(perhaps through written messages). When you could no longer pick out the
people from the machines, he said, the machines would have to be considered to
be as smart as the people.
Interestingly, you can also use the concept of a Turing test to determine when
people are acting as individuals, and when they are acting on behalf of a
Distributed Identity. The next time you are on the phone with the representative
of a government (or large corporation) trying to get something done, and they are
in a position of having to follow some internal policy, ask yourself, "Does it seem
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like I am communicating with an intelligent being, or could this be a badly
programmed machine?"

7.3.8 Brain Scans

Another way to create artificial intelligence might be simulating a human brain at
the molecular level. If you could take a picture of a brain with a technology like
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) but with much finer resolution than is
currently available, you could then feed that data into a computer, and have it
simulate the processes of the brain on a molecular level. This would create a
functioning artificial brain, without any need to understand how the brain works;
you would just be copying a known working model.
This is, of course, another pathway to avoid Information Theoretic Death. Like
cryonics, where the information stored in the brain is preserved in a frozen brain,
the information required to rebuild a brain is certainly preserved in a brain scan of
enough resolution. Does it make any difference if the original brain is repaired, or
if the brain is just rebuilt atom by atom? Each atom of a given type is the same,
after all – it is the pattern that makes you who you are, not the individual building
blocks. It is even said that over the course of a number of years, you replace
every single atom in your brain with a new one anyway, as biological processes
bring new materials in, and flush old materials out. If so, how can any individual
atoms be more important than others, if they are in the same pattern?
Another interesting kind of immortality might exist through the technology of a
brain scan. If a recording were made of your brain, and it was never turned back
into you, but everyone on the net had access to all your information and
processes, you would live on through all your ideas, but would not really be alive.
Anyone could determine what you would have to say on any subject, even
though you would not be there in any sense to actually say it. Existing as passive
data, rather than as an active simulation, would be somewhat like "living on"
through your works. Greater beings that came after you would have access to
your knowledge and mental processes, much the way you now can read the
written works of authors that died before you were born.

Anders Sandberg, a noted transhumanist, once said that he would rather evolve into a
post human being that had a functioning copy of himself as he thought now, at its core,
rather than just one that had a copy of himself in memory for access as needed. But of
course that is just his perspective now, as a human; as a post human, he might find his
current personality to just be annoying extra baggage.

7.3.9 Duplicates
Some people deny that a copy of your mind could ever actually be "you" in any
real way. One thing they point to is the problem of duplicates. If two copies of you
exist at the same time, they can't both be the real you, can they?
The simple answer to this problem is that, once created, they are certainly
different individuals, but from your point of view now, looking forward, they are
both you.
To understand this, consider that you think of you 10 years from now as still
being you, even though that person may be made up of entirely different atoms.
It is not the material that the future you is made of that matters, it is the fact that
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the pattern of your current consciousness, your memories of now, are preserved
in that future version of yourself.
Looking forward to a time when you are duplicated, there is no way to decide
which you is the "real" you. Both contain your mind and memories. Both are you.
The fact that they consider themselves to be separate people at that point should
be of no concern to your feelings about them now. It is the continuation of
memory from now to then that preserves identity – and it preserves it in both
copies equally.
Interestingly, if making copies of oneself becomes easy, then human beings as a
unit will have become replicators. Those who are actually able to see
themselves, not as individuals, but as part of a larger whole, will do better than
those who cling to individuality. If one duplicate is willing to sacrifice his life for
two copies, this is a good sacrifice. Those that can do this will survive better than
those that can not. Since all copies will be the same, this will not be like the case
of sacrificing yourself for your country – no individual information will be lost.
This will be especially true if duplicates can actually re-synch their memories, or
are in constant telephonic mental communication. A world with such technology
is bound to have larger collective creatures with more than one body. Individual
human minds will then be able to be what collective idea-organisms have always
aspired to – a single person with multiple bodies.

Here's a mind-bending thought: Technology that allowed multiple bodies to act with a
single mind could set the stage for a most ironic showdown. A collective idea-organism
based on the idea of individualism – one mind one body – could find itself at war with
individuals who wanted the freedom to compete on a level previously reserved to
Collectives by having multiple bodies at their disposal.

7.3.10 The Singularity

We might augment our own minds until they become upgradeable hardware that
runs the software of our consciousness. Or we might create machines that have
their own intelligence. Either way, once intelligence is running on upgradeable
hardware, something very interesting can happen; intelligence can start working
on the design of its own hardware.
Let’s say you have transferred your mind to a bush robot. You can think faster
than you did in your human mind, but not as fast as you would like to be able to
think. So you go to work at designing a faster brain. As soon as you finish and
implement that new design, you start again to work on an even faster design –
but this time it takes a lot less time to finish Brain Mark IV because you are
working with your smokingly fast Brain Mark III. And then Brain Mark V could be
developed even faster, and so on.
It turns out that this sort of feedback of ever increasing development speed, that
occurs once a mind is upgradeable, creates an exponential effect that goes to
infinity in a finite period of time. You reach a point, in theory, where you can do
an infinite amount of mental work, in a finite period of time. The time at which this
occurs has become known as "the singularity" in science fiction and technical
cultures. This is the equivalent of Kingdom Come for the believer in artificial
intelligence – the end of the world, although not necessarily in a bad way. It is the
point where artificially intelligent life vanishes into its own navel.
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Why there has to be an end of the world scenario associated with any new
technology, is an interesting question. It probably says more about the way
people think than it does about any real end of the world possibilities. Then
again, we have been listening for radio signals from the stars for quite a while
now, without hearing evidence of another civilization like ours, so we either just
happen to be the first in a large volume of space, intelligence like ours is very
rare, or creatures like us just don't last very long in our current form.

In 1998, Robin Hanson wrote an essay entitled "The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It?"
in which he explores all the improbable events that have to come together to produce
intelligent creatures like us, and contrasts it to the amount of empty space time we have
observed without detecting evidence of creatures like ourselves. Can we calculate the
probabilities concerning whether this filter, that prevents us from seeing many other
intelligent species like us, is in the past or the future? Have we already cleared the big
hurdle that a species such as ours must get past? Will we now go off and easily colonize
the universe or is the biggest challenge still in our future? Are we unknowingly facing
imminent destruction? This essay is online at hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html

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7.4 Life Extension
Myths of the Tree of Life and the Fountain of Youth have existed throughout
human history. Young people do not like getting old, and old people wish they
could recapture their youth. Some say they are happy with their allotted life span,
but there can be no doubt that such legends play to wish fulfillment. Throughout
the centuries, those who have had everything else, have always at the end
wished they could trade it all for just a little more time.

Don't Lie Down

You say you're glad one day you'll die

though not tomorrow or today.
I say that's just a clever lie
you tell yourself so you can play.

For should you ever come to know

that soon might be your time to go.
You will work hard for a new lease
not just lay down to rest in peace.

And though you think it only fair

you leave your place to someone new
how would you feel to learn they knew
a way to stay but would not share?

-- Sean Hastings (May 2002)

7.4.1 Medical Science

The history of medical science has always been one of battling disease and
death. While medical professionals may hesitate to say that the history of their
profession has been a quest for the fountain of youth, or a search for immortality,
that is certainly what it amounts to. The goal of medicine is to cure sickness and
infirmity, and now that medical science has developed cures for most of the
problems caused by external organisms such as parasites, bacteria, and viruses,
it has begun, quite naturally, to examine naturally occurring failings of the human
body.
Hereditary diseases are still considered to be diseases worth fighting. The fact
that such weaknesses are encoded into your genes does not make them any
less painful or urgent than health ailments that come from external causes.
Problems caused by unwanted behaviors of our own bodies, such as multiple
sclerosis, hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis,
muscular dystrophy, lupus, and cancer, despite their genetic nature are all still
thought of as terrible diseases to be battled by modern medicine.
It is only a matter of time before doctors everywhere start to look at the
aging process itself as a hereditary disease that might just be curable.
In fact, age is already considered to be a disease when it happens faster than
normal. Progeria is a hereditary disease that causes much faster than usual
aging in human beings, causing an average lifespan to be approximately 1/6th of

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the normal human lifespan. This is considered to be a horribly tragic disease
when it takes the life of sixteen-year olds who look 90 when they die. But
because it is so normal for ninety-year olds to look 90 when they die, people
don't seem to notice that it is really just as horrible a way to go.
There is no rational reason not to consider aging a hereditary disease. It is just a
disease that we all happen to have. A disease that actually now takes more lives
than any other. More people die from age and age related illnesses now than any
other single cause. Just because we all have it, is no reason not to address the
problem. Logically, the fact that it affects so many people should make the
problem seem more urgent, rather than less. The only reason it does not seem
urgent, is that the problem has existed for so long that it is the expected norm,
and that collective idea-organisms always embrace the norm.
A disease is still a disease, even if everyone has it. If everyone on the planet
suddenly contracted a new ailment that cut their lifespan by half, people wouldn't
just say "Well, everyone has it, so I guess that's ok." They would be very upset. If
cutting all of our normal life spans in half would be a very bad thing, doesn't it
then make sense that the doubling of our normal lifespan would be a very good
thing?
The majority of people don't yet seem to think so. But, some people have the
good sense to see our limited lifespan as a problem worth solving.

7.4.2 SENS and Sensibility

When asked why many people do not see aging as a bad thing, Dr. Aubrey de
Grey sometimes answers that they must all be in some sort of a "trance" or
"hypnotized.”
Dr. de Grey is one of the lead voices in a call for a "war on aging," and the
originator of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence), a plan for
approaching the task of curing aging from an engineering standpoint.
He thinks that it is quite obvious that aging causes a great deal of human misery,
and that anyone of a humanitarian mind would want to stop all that suffering.
How it is that so many people seem to think, that all that pain and misery caused
by aging could ever be a good thing, is quite beyond him.
I have bitten my tongue and given earnest, sympathetic
answers here to the many concerns I encounter when the
prospect of defeating aging is raised – but I don't pretend that it
has been easy to do so. I make no secret, here or elsewhere,
that I have a low opinion of the reasons people give for
defending aging – and an even lower opinion of the fear that
people seem to have of thinking about the topic even faintly
rationally. I think that apologists for aging are in a 'pro-aging
trance' – that they are victims of a mutually-maintained
collective hypnosis on the topic, a flight from normal rationality
that resembles nothing so much as the behavior of participants
in a stage hypnotist show.
-- Aubrey de Grey (www.sens.org/concerns.htm)

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When you think about this strange pro-aging/pro-death sentiment from the
standpoint of evolved memes, the reason for this collective "trance" becomes a
lot clearer. We have previously discussed the idea that collective idea-organisms
of a religious nature specifically make use of our fear of death to propagate
themselves. This makes it quite understandable why such religious ideas will
likely fight any technology that threatens to remove, or even significantly reduce,
human mortality. Secular Collectives have also evolved in an environment where
humans age and die, so even when aging does not play directly into an idea-
organism's replication strategy, it has certainly played a role in the shaping of
every Higher Ideological Power.
For example, almost all Collectives have some sort of top down power structure,
and part of the reason that the less brainwashed members of the lower levels
tolerate orders from the higher is the idea that they might someday fill those
higher positions. Aging leads to retirement or death of people in the higher slots,
and allows advancement even is cases where advancement by merit has been
made impossible. Eliminate aging, and the incentive structure for competent
individuals at the lower levels of such a structure falls apart. This could easily kill
any given Collective.
Consider such constructs as corporate pensions, and national social security.
Increased longevity threatens the basis upon which these systems were founded.
These systems evolved with an understanding that those drawing money, based
on the obligations of the system to them, will someday cease to do so.
The reason why idea-organisms evolve to fear new technology is that new
technology changes the capabilities of individual human beings. Complex idea-
organisms are adapted to certain rules about what people can and can not easily
do. In the specific case of aging, almost all Collectives will have adapted their
systems to a finite human lifespan. Changes to that particular human limitation
might bring about a new situation for which the existing Higher Powers are not
properly adapted. They might not survive such a change.
Furthermore, even on the level of individual thoughts and actions, the intellectual
concept of inevitable future death, cries out to be accepted. Death is something
that our biology both instructs us to avoid at all costs, yet puts us in a position of
making it inevitable. As a creature intellectually capable of seeing the end, but (at
least in the past) not capable of avoiding it, you either have to find a way of
rationalizing it or you will go crazy. Crazy is nonproductive and therefore non
adaptive, so evolution soon makes sure that we find some way to not think about
the problem.
We would not be surprised if some sort of biological mechanism exists that
causes any ongoing fear, with no immediate escape, to eventually fade into
acceptance. This would solve the mind body conflict that an understanding of
aging and death creates.
In fact, the steps of coming to terms with death have been well documented by
many psychologists. When people find they are dying of an illness, they go
through 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
Please note the similarities with five stages that people go through in the course
of their lives, concerning their personal relationship to their own mortality:
• Adolescence – Denial. Kids seem to believe they are immortal.

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 • Young Adulthood – Anger. Angry young men (and women) compete to
find happiness, meaning, and prosperity in a life they realize is finite.
• Middle Age – Bargaining. Mature people develop life goals. They want
to get certain things done before they die – make sure their kids are
taken care of financially, accomplish things of lasting importance, etc.
• Late Middle Age – Depression. Mid-life crisis. People transitioning into
old age often become depressed and question the direction of their lives.
• Old Age – Acceptance. Retirement-aged people often return to
previously forgotten religious beliefs to allow them to accept death.

The disease of aging takes decades, rather than months, to kill. So this process
also spans decades, but the reaction to death by aging is really no different than
the reaction to being struck down at any age by terminal cancer.
It would be interesting to do a psychological study on people who have come to
an acceptance of a terminal diagnosis, to see if they are as resistant to the idea
of a new possible cure as some people are resistant to the idea that aging might
be cured in their lifetimes. (Psychologists seem to like tricking healthy people in
the name of science; maybe they would be ok with lying to dying people too…)
The reason we are programmed this way is that when you really can't do
anything about a problem, it’s better to not think about it than to let it cause you
ongoing distress. It is more productive to ignore the unsolvable problem than to
waste effort on something that is, in fact, unsolvable. However, the fact that at
the gut level people still badly want a solution makes this dilemma a great hook
for idea-organisms to infect people.
Recently medical technology has gotten a lot better and we understand the aging
process in ways that we did not just a few decades ago. Perhaps we have
reached a point where there is a more sensible approach to the problem of
aging, than to just ignore it. Maybe we can finally do something about it.
There are certainly more people around now that believe that aging might be a
curable disease. People who were young enough to have seen the possibilities
of new medical technology before succumbing to the acceptance process
outlined above - people who never really picked up any collective Ideas, because
of their tendency to analyze ideas for their useful content.
We spoke earlier about how such people may not have
good social skills, lacking the ability to blend into groups
so well, but they also make all the greatest scientific
leaps because their minds are free from the Collective.
Consider this picture of Dr. Aubrey de Grey:
Dr. de Grey was born in 1963, so he is young enough to
be of a generation that would not be surprised by any
new scientific miracle. His improbably long beard, and
highly questionable fashion sense (at least based on the
one picture we have of him) indicate that he is not
swayed by collective ideas. He is not afraid to say "aging
is a disease – let's cure it!" even though this is not yet a
popular position to take among his scientific colleagues.
So some other scientists might think he is a little crazy,

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and he may even look the part, but his approach to the fight against aging is
really quite sensible.

7.4.3 The SENS Approach

The idea behind the SENS approach is to consider the task of combating aging
as if it were an engineering project, rather than an exercise in pure scientific
inquiry. The reasoning behind this approach is that medical practices are a
technology, an application of science, rather than a science itself, and technology
can often run ahead of science in its usefulness.
For example, the Wright Brothers didn't have to understand the physics of a wing
(something that is still argued about to this day), or the mathematics of thrust and
lift, in order to build a working airplane. They just had to find the combination of
things that worked to achieve their goal. Throughout history, a lot of medical
technology has been developed this way. For example: Willow bark was known
to provide pain relief, long before the mechanism by which acetylsalicylic acid
affects the human nervous system's pain signals was fully understood.
Dr. de Grey is not just suggesting trying random drugs to see if any of them
reverse aging. He is using the mental tools of an engineer to approach the
problem; identifying the best place to act on the problem, breaking the overall
problem down into discreet parts, and exploring reasonable pathways for
research into the proper technology for solving each part of the overall problem
individually. This has led him to a qualitatively different way of approaching the
science of aging inhibition than any used by other medical research
professionals.

7.4.3.1 Different From Old Approaches

The medical field of aging research was previously divided into two disciplines,
Gerontology and Geriatrics. Gerontology is a study of the causes of aging, while
Geriatrics is the study of the diseases that arises from aging. The focus of each
field confines their thinking on the problem to separate, non-overlapping, areas of
aging research.
Dr. de Grey's insight, in his initial survey of the best place to work on the overall
problem of aging, was to realize that given two non-overlapping fields of research
there must exist a middle ground not covered by either.
Reasoning as an engineer, Dr. de Grey thought out the problem this way:
1. Metabolic functions cause damage.
2. The damage builds up.
3. This build up causes pathology (disease).

So Gerontology is the science working on the problem posed in #1 above, trying

to prevent the highly complex workings of the metabolism from causing damage
to the body. And Geriatrics is working on the problem posed in sentence #3,
trying to prevent this damage from causing disease. But no scientific effort had
yet been made to look at aging as an engineering problem by trying to repair the
existing damage – to reverse the effects mentioned in sentence #2.
He diagrams the fight against aging this way:

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It turns out that acting to reverse the damage caused by aging may be easier
than the other two approaches.
Gerontology is difficult because the metabolism is very complex. While it is a very
worthy field of study, the results of gerontological science in combating aging are
likely to be slow in coming and hard to implement, as they would require changes
to existing metabolic processes. Also, because many different metabolic issues
may contribute to the accumulation of metabolic damage, it is difficult to isolate
any one place to start.
Geriatrics is just as difficult because there are so many different pathologies that
can arise from metabolic damage. Curing them all may be ultimately impossible.
It too is a very worthy field, in that it works to alleviate the suffering of people
already advanced in the disease of aging, but it can never hope to halt aging,
only to combat specific symptoms.
However, the Engineering approach is one of doing repair work on a system to
keep it functional – reversing damage, rather than trying to prevent it completely
or waiting to tackle the many problems that it can lead to. Dr. de Grey writes:
The engineering (SENS) strategy is not to interfere with
metabolism per se, but to repair or obviate the accumulating
damage and thereby indefinitely postpone the age at which it
reaches pathogenic levels. This is practical because it avoids
both of the problems with the other approaches: it sidesteps
our ignorance of metabolism (because it does not attempt to
interfere with metabolic processes and their production of side-
effects) but also it pre-empts the chaos of pathology
(because it repairs the precursors of pathology, rather than
addressing the pathology head-on).
It turns out that where the causes of metabolic damage are not fully known or not
well understood, and the diseases that such damage can cause are incredibly
numerous, the actual types of metabolic damage that build up over time, are both
finite and fairly well understood.

7.4.3.2 Seven Deadly Sins

In creating the SENS plan, Dr. de Grey sought to quantify all the possible types
of metabolic damage that could lead to age related disease. He found that there
were only seven categories of metabolic damage:
• Cell loss, atrophy (Cells not being replaced as they die)
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 • Mutations of cell DNA (Cancer and other mutated cells)
• Mutations of mitochondria (a separate part of the cell with its own DNA)
• Unwanted Cells (fat, bad cartilage, bad immune system cells, etc)
• Extracellular protein damage (hardening of arteries, and the like)
• Extracellular junk (plaques and other build up of bad materials)
• Intracellular junk (cells that divide slowly can fill with junk and fail)

All known geriatric disease is a product of one or more of these types of

metabolic damage. These seven types of damage make up the total known
causes of aging and no additional factors for age related diseases have been
discovered in the past 25 years of geriatric research, indicating that this is quite
probably the whole list.
Dr. de Grey believes that good theoretical techniques exist for repairing or
neutralizing the effects of each of these types of damage. With the right research
initiatives, real world therapies for dealing with each of these causes of metabolic
damage might be implemented in fairly short order. Given funding for research in
the areas he describes, we can have a cure for aging within decades. Not just in
some future world of science fiction, but soon enough for the majority of the
people currently alive to see the first real treatments for the effects of aging.
The biggest problem right now seems to be the aversion that people generally
feel, when asked to think about this issue. This causes people to either dismiss
the idea without thought, or even to actively oppose it. This makes funding for
such research scarce. To combat this problem, Dr. de Grey came up with the
idea of a prize for the keepers of the longest living mouse on the planet.

7.4.3.3 The Methuselah Mouse

The Methuselah foundation began raising donations in 2003 for the Methuselah
Mouse Prize, a way to bring attention and funding to SENS research. There are
two categories, one for the longest living mouse by any method and one for the
longest living mouse with treatments started at middle age. The later prize is
intended to encourage research in the direction of a SENS type engineering
solution to the longevity problem.
There are several reasons for such a prize: Firstly, prizes such as this have been
known to attract funding to research greatly in excess of the amount of the prize.
This is because the prestige and publicity of winning such a prize is greater than
a scientific breakthrough for which no prize is being given. Perhaps more
importantly, however, the ongoing nature of this prize will, by publicizing an older
and older mouse every year, continuously draw attention to longevity research
and infect people with the idea that it might be possible to achieve the same sort
of life extension effects in human beings.
Because a mouse is both a normally short lived creature and a cute fuzzy
mammal that people seem to be able to identify with, when mice receiving SENS
treatments can be shown to living many times the lifespan of mice without
treatments, people will not be able to help themselves from making comparisons
to human beings. They will think about how long they might live once such
treatments were available to people.
While clinical trials with longer lived animals would take a much longer time to
show results, the effects of successful treatments on mice will be obvious quickly
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and visible to the public immediately, bringing in further funding for such
research. Hopefully, when people start to see evidence that it could really work,
this will not only increase funding but will also help dispel some of the thoughts
that it might not be a good thing to do, since such thoughts may well just be
defensive reactions to something unpleasant that people think of as inevitable.
As of the time of writing this (December 2006), the oldest mouse to date, with a
single type of gene therapy, lived to be about 66% longer than the average
laboratory mouse of the same type. This is slightly longer than results that have
been achieved previously with calorie restriction.
To read more on the topic, visit www.mprize.org

7.4.4 The CRON Diet

Calorie restriction is an idea championed by the late Dr. Roy Walford, as a lead
researcher of Gerontology at the UCLA School of Medicine. CRON is an
acronym for Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. It is a diet based on
Walford's findings that almost every type of animal on the planet has a low
calorie persistence mode built into their genes.
When times are good, and food is readily available, animals live in a normal
mode of reproduction and exhibit a normal life span. However, when less food is
available for a significant amount of time, most animals experience a shift in
metabolism. The animal’s reproductive systems are inhibited and their
metabolisms run at a somewhat slower speed, allowing the animal to live longer.
In the case of some types of animals that have evolved in environments that
regularly experience such periods of famine, this can be a much longer life span.
Walford showed that this effect translates to mammals and quite probably to
human beings. He claimed that the right low calorie diet, specifically designed to
still provide the correct essential nutrients, could cause a human being to
experience a degree of lengthening of their natural life span.
His research predicts that a man, who might otherwise naturally live to be 80 with
no other intervention, could start a program of 25% calorie restriction with optimal
nutrition, and expect a 10% increase in lifespan to age 88.
Compared to the fantastic technologies we have been talking about – some of
which might lead to immortality – this may seem somewhat mundane. However,
those technologies don't exist yet, and this one does. Extending your lifespan
through clean living and eating right is a very important thing to do, for one very
important reason.

7.4.5 Every Year Counts More than the Last

At the current moment in history, the capabilities of the human race seem to be
expanding at an exponential rate. Maybe they have actually been doing so since
the invention of language, but the way an exponential curve grows, it can seem
to be rising slowly for a long time before it really starts to take off. There is every
indication that we are now living in that period of time where it really starts to take
off. Technology is advancing faster than ever before.
Even if the capabilities of the human race were remaining fairly constant, there
would be some small chance every year of a scientific breakthrough that could
stop you from moving ever closer to the grave.
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So let’s say you are 40, and with your current life style you will live approximately
another 40 years to die around the age 80. If you live 8 years longer through
proper eating, then you would increase your odds of never having to die of old
age by 20%, with 8 more years in which an “immortality drug” could be invented.
However, if the capabilities of the human race are rising exponentially, the
chance of such a discovery might be increasing by some factor ever year. (This
seems pretty likely to be the case.) Let’s suppose that the chance of someone
discovering the "Fountain of Youth" is only going up by small fraction, say 10%
every year. If that is true, by living the extra 8 years, you do not just increase your
chance of surviving by 20%, but by over 200%.
Additionally, consider the idea that the results of longevity research are likely to
be available in incremental jumps of technology. An admittedly overly simplistic
way to look at this might be as follows:
Suppose that every 10 years SENS researchers come up with a new treatment
that is capable of reducing your age better than the last treatment. Now imagine
that the first treatment can only take 1 year off your age and each new treatment
is 1 year better than the previous technology. So if you start at age 40, in ten
years when the first treatment is invented, you can have your biological age
reduced to 49, ten years later you will be biologically 57 while chronologically you
are 60, and so on.
The progression goes as follows, with the first number being your actual
chronological age in years, and the second number (in parenthesis) being your
biological age helped by SENS treatments. 40(40), 50(49), 60(57), 70(64),
80(70), 90(75), 100(79), 110(82)!

Oops! We decided that you were only going to live to be biologically about 80, so
you dropped dead between chronological age 100 and 110, but you did live 20-
30 years longer than you would have without new medical technology. Where a
natural lifespan, unassisted by medical technology, would have been a straight
line on the graph above, your SENS assisted lifespan curves away from the
"Death Line." Unfortunately, in this case, it does not curve fast enough to escape
the "inevitable."

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However, if you had just managed to live a little bit healthier life style, perhaps by
using Walford's calorie restriction techniques, you could have pushed that "Death
Line" up a few years. If you pushed it far enough, the new medical technology
might have gotten to the point where you actually started to age backwards!
Such a life span progression might look like this:

We can't say definitely that calorie restriction will mean the difference between
dying at 110 years old despite all the best new medical technology available, or
celebrating your 300th birthday in the body of a 19 year old. However, you can
see how the few more years of life that a healthy life style could give you, might
really make a big difference in your lifespan as new medical technologies are
developed.
Because medical technology is improving, we are now living in a time where a
healthy lifestyle has a bigger payoff than ever before in history. Where healthy
living may once have meant the difference between dying at age 50 or age 60,
today it might be the difference between dying at 60 or 120. Or maybe even the
difference between dying and not ever dying!
Your chance at immortality all depends on how fast scientific progress is
allowed to happen, and how long you can stay healthy enough to see the
fruits of new research.
Think about it. How does giving up your biggest vice, be it smoking, unprotected
sex with strangers, or French Fries, weigh in against the chance for immortality?
(Mmmmmmmmm French Fries... maybe we'll just have to take a chance on that
cryonics thing working...)

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7.5 Where is My Flying Car?
In this book we have been predicting some pretty remarkable near future
technology. It is not uncommon, when you are predicting future technological
miracles, to have someone ask the question "So then where is my flying car?"
This is because flying cars were one of the items predicted frequently by futurists
in the 1950s and 1960s.
The path of technological progress is uncertain, and rarely correctly predicted.
Predictions of specific technologies to come are rarely correct. But dismissals of
technology as being impossible (or many lifetimes away) are likewise rarely
correct.
In 1903, the New York Times ran an article about the prospect of heavier than air
flying machines that predicted it would be over 1000 years before such a thing
was possible. On the exact same day that this prediction appeared in print,
Orville Wright was noting in his journal that the Wright brothers had just begun
the assembly of such an aircraft.
Clearly the Wright brothers were visionaries who defied the popular opinion, and
would not let anyone tell them what was impossible. However, just a few years
later, Orville Wright is quoted as saying "No such flying machine will ever fly from
New York to Paris." This shows that, when it comes to technological progress,
even the previous visionaries are often wrong about just how far and fast things
will go.
Even those who shatter the previously believed barriers of science tend to
erect new barriers in their own minds for someone else to come along and
break later – and usually not very much later.
So, do we know for sure that immortality is right around the corner?
No, we do not.
But we do know that those who would claim that it is an impossibility, or that it will
only be developed in the far far future, don't know what they are talking about
either. There is good evidence that it can be done – therefore it most probably
will be done. And probably quite a bit faster than most people would think
possible.
How soon will it happen? Well, that may just be a factor of how soon we let it
happen – whether we let collective idea-organisms get in the way, or we fight
them for what we want.
So, where then is your flying car?
Let's take a look:
The most recent flying car project is the Moller Skycar in the United States. Here
are the specifications listed for the Moller Skycar design:
• Passengers: 4
• Maximum speed: 380 MPH
• Cruise speed: 290 MPH
• Range: 900 Miles
• Size: Large automobile

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 • Best mileage: 25 MPG
• Useful payload: 900 lbs
• Can hover with one engine failed
• Can use automotive gasoline

The prototype Skycar was built, tested, and did indeed fly as of 2003; however, it
was only ever tested while tethered to a crane for legal reasons. The reason for it
not being allowed free flight is that the FAA has not approved it as a flying
vehicle. Originally that was supposed to happen in 2005 – but instead, the SEC
filed charges against Moller in 2005 for fraud in seeking investment for such a
preposterous thing as a flying car.
Even though Moller could demonstrate that his prototype did indeed fly, he was
still forced to settle, pay a fine, and also stop seeking investment until such time
as the FAA approved the manufacture of flying cars. This is something they are
unlikely to ever do.
Even if they did approve such a vehicle, they would, without a doubt, still require
operators of such a vehicle to go through full pilot training. In fact, there have
been several previous "flying cars" (cheap personal sized flying vehicles) but
none have ever sold well because only licensed pilots have ever been allowed to
fly them. And flying licenses are much harder to get than driving licenses.
The nature of government is to insist on the normal and prohibit the unusual.
Until flying cars are normal and popular, they will be strongly regulated or
forbidden. Until they stop being regulated or forbidden, they will not become
normal and popular. This is the “Catch 22” by which governments regularly
suppress new ideas and technologies.
So you see – the government is really the only thing preventing the flying car
from taking off.
Flying cars are also particularly troublesome technology to certain idea-
organisms that have a large influence on government. We have talked previously
about how Geography is the Distributed Identity that currently most influences
the government and how this causes the government to strongly secure borders
and control travel. If the average citizen had a vehicle that could travel almost
400 miles per hour, controlling travel would be much harder. This means that
personal flying cars are not likely to get any bureaucrat's stamp of approval.
(Just think of all the scary things people could do with all that individual freedom
of movement! Eeeeek!)
With the current political climate in the United States, including the current
bogeymen of terrorism and global warming, it is more likely that the government
will be outlawing regular cars than it is that they will be approving flying ones.
We now have an answer to the classic question, "Where is my flying car?"
It remains tethered firmly to the ground, pending government approval.
Will we let the collective idea-organisms do the same thing to our chances of
becoming immortal? We hope not, but we are not overly optimistic.
For us to have a real shot at immortality, more people will have to wake up to the
fact that slowing down the future may very well be the equivalent of killing

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everyone that is alive today. If they don't, it will happen without anyone ever
noticing. Technological progress will be slowed by the collective idea-organisms.
People will continue to die when they would normally be expected to die. It won’t
be considered a terrible loss of human life – just the “normal” and “natural”
course of events.
People don't miss what they never knew they could have.
Or even if they do miss the unrealized potential of the future a little bit (as seems
to be the case with the flying car) they eventually just assume they were wrong to
ever think it was possible.

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 8
Final Thoughts
We have covered a lot of territory in this book – perhaps too much for a single
volume. But the scope of collective idea-organisms is wide indeed,
encompassing all of human life. So it seemed appropriate to follow these ideas
everywhere they went.
In this last chapter, we want to relate a few final messages that you can take
away from this book – messages that may help you live a longer, healthier, more
empowered life, while helping those around you to do the same (or maybe they
will just make you laugh... that is always good too.)

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8.1 The Last Generation
If you believe that any of the technologies we have talked about are possible
(and there certainly are some good reasons to think so), then it would seem that
we can look forward to a very interesting future. It may be that we are destined to
be a race of immortal beings with powers that we would previously have
described as godlike, or maybe we will just create the machine creatures that will
replace us, or even something in between as our technology becomes more and
more a part of us. Alternatively, we may still be heading for some sort of end of
the world scenario, in which we, and all of our works, will come to some
cataclysmic end.
Every technology we have talked about holds immense promise for bringing us
all a much better life, however, every technology also seems to have some end
of the world scenario associated with it. This could be because any power can be
used for good or ill, or it could just be the way we tend to think.
There have been many ‘end of the world’ scenarios before, and we have
survived them all without even breathing very hard. Here is just a small sampling:
• A couple thousand years ago, there were people predicting that all
civilization was doomed by the military practice of the time of salting the
Earth of a defeated nation, so that no crops could be grown there again.
The theory was that eventually all farm lands would be salted, through
ongoing warfare, and then everyone would starve.
• The year 1000 AD brought the first millennium crisis, with people
believing that Christ was sure to return and Armageddon would follow.
• In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted overpopulation and mass starvation
was just a decade away, and it has continued to be thought to be "just a
decade away" by many others, ever since.
• In the 1970's with global temperatures having fallen steadily for 40
years, some concerned environmental scientists predicted the start of a
new ice age, and told people that global cooling (yes cooling), caused by
our modern industrial practices, was going to freeze us all – unless we
shut down all the factories.
• In the 1980's we were going to be annihilated at any moment by a
nuclear war between super powers, perhaps started by computer error
or a computer hacker.
• There was another millennium scare in 2000, and this time, there was
the millennium bug with computer date stamps not registering properly
past Y2K – it was certain to threaten modern civilization with a massive
global computer shutdown.

However we have not survived the entire list of imagined world ending disasters
– not by a long shot. Just for fun, here are a few additional possible scenarios:
(This is the short list. Many more available at www.exitmundi.nl):
• cosmic ray burst
• super volcanism
• drastic climate change
• another big bang
• deadly new mutant animal species
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 • super virus or bacteria
• black hole

Now here is an interesting thing about all the scenarios we just listed: they could
all be natural occurring phenomena. At any time, we could all be killed by a
completely natural disaster according to the plot line of any of these scenarios.
However, most people do not seem worried about the world suddenly coming to
an end through natural forces.
Now take a look at the list again, but this time put the words "New technology
causes..." in front of each of them. Do the scenarios now seem more likely? To a
lot of people, the prospect that science could cause some of these things seems
far more likely, and/or worrisome, than the idea that they might occur without a
human cause.
Now take a look at the list again, but this time, put the words "New technology
saves us from...” in front of each. Does that make you feel better? Most people
don't seem to think about the fact that we create science to shelter us, and to
serve our needs, and that this should make a scenario where science saves us,
more likely than one in where science accidentally destroys us.
The point we are trying to make is that there is no particular logical reason to
believe that such a disaster will occur soon, let alone that we will somehow cause
it with our science. However, the idea that this might be the case seems to be in
a lot of people's heads. Most people seem to believe that the idea of science
causing such a disaster is more likely than it occurring naturally. The only
explanation we can find for this bias is that certain idea-organisms have reasons
to want us to resist technological change.
These idea-organisms will continue to promote disaster scenarios to slow our
technological progress. More such scenarios are always in the works. Some
people point to prophecies that foretell our immediate doom, saying that the
Mayan calendar predicts a "new cycle" in 2012 and that our technology will
destroy us then. Some predict that the "real" millennium computer bug will
happen in 2038 when the UNIX date time format runs out of space. Global
warming has us burned, flooded, or frozen (pick the one that scares you most)
sometime in your lifetime. And there is the nanotech earth eating goo scenario.
This all seems very scary doesn't it? But you can probably always find a
prophecy to say whatever you are scared of, if you just look hard enough. For
example:
If you believe in prophecy and are afraid of
nanotechnology, have you ever considered this
registered trademark of The Sherwin-Williams
Company? Perhaps they should never be
allowed to use nanotechnology in their paint
factories...
If we were to allow this to happen, after being so
clearly warned by this obviously prophetic logo,
wouldn't our faces be red?
(We know, the joke isn't as funny in black and
white, but color printing costs being what they are, what are you gonna do?)
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It is always more interesting to say that the world is about to end than it is to say
that the world will continue on and be just fine. It will always grab more attention.
It will always produce more newspaper headlines and teasers spots for later
news programs. ("There are three common household products that are probably
in your home right now, and could suddenly cause the end of the world! Tune in
at 11 O'clock to find out what they are.") Such fears are exactly the kind of thing
that Collective Identities use to gain control. The message they send is that you
will be safer if control of such dangerous matters is left to some Higher Power.
But why should we believe that the Collective can protect us from ourselves? We
know that a free market works to give us the things we want, and that the
Collective almost always does a worse job. When it comes to deciding what
technologies will be pursued, the free market has a record of producing things
that benefit individuals, while large collective entities, in competition with each
other, have given us things like atomic weapons and genetically engineered
diseases. There is no reason to believe that central control will not do more harm
than good.
It may be true that as individuals get more powerful, a single very upset person
might one day have the power to destroy everyone and everything. However, a
Collective is more likely to create the technology that would make that possible,
and keeping someone from using it, once it is created, will be a real trick. Also
consider that the only people who ever seem to be willing to commit such acts of
murder/suicide are those infected with the urgent cause of some Collective
Identity.
If we allow collective Higher Powers to decide what technology is developed and
what is suppressed, it is more likely to create harmful dangerous technology, and
suppress good uses for advanced technology, such as giving us all longer
healthier lives. This could actually make the difference between you living to see
some incredible future world, or dying of old age just decades before things really
get interesting.
If we can control the future in any way, reducing collectivism's drag on scientific
progress is probably our best bet. As a person living in the early part of the 21st
Century, you may well be part of a truly unique generation of human beings on
the planet Earth. But which unique generation are you a part of?
You might be part of the last generation that has to die, or the first
generation of immortals.
Whether you let the development of new technology be influenced by individual
hopes and dreams, or controlled by some collective mindset, could well make the
difference of whether or not you get to witness the future of mankind.
We can't tell you if the future will be hell on Earth, or heaven, or something more
mundane in between. All we can say is that we think it would be a real bummer
for you to die of old age just before it becomes clear what is actually going to
become of humanity. And it would be especially annoying if the only reason you
were not saved was because some group of people, hosting idea-organisms
based on writings that are thousands of years old, denied your right to life by
slowing the progress of medical technology.
Do your best to stick around. You don't want to miss the punch line, do you?

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8.2 Rethinking Atheism and Anarchy
Atheism and Anarchy are not really ideologies, in that they are not complex
ideological organisms. Each of these words represents opposition to a particular
type of complex collective idea-organism. They both claim that the Idea-organism
they are fighting is not necessary in order for people to lead good lives. There
should be one word for both of them, but there is not, mostly because Church
and State are not generally recognized as being the same sort of "multi-celled"
ideological organism we have described in this book.
Atheism is the idea that a collective religious construct is not necessary.
Anarchy is the idea that a collective political construct is not necessary.
"Individualist" is perhaps the closest word we have to describing the autonomous
human, standing apart from any collective mindset. A strong sense of
individualism leads us to conclude that no Higher Power has any right to control
our minds.
Because both atheism and anarchy stand opposed to a number of large, popular,
complex ideas there is a tendency to try to cast these (much simpler) ideas into
the same mold; to make them into larger ideological constructs than they are,
and to attach other ideas to them; In short, to turn them from simple ideas into
complex idea-organisms.
Because of this, those who believe in the ideas of atheism and/or anarchy are
often actually convinced to end up doing strangely contradictory things – like
having strong faith in their Atheism – or forming Anarchist groups to fight the
powers that be.
The typical atheist or anarchist seems to only see half of the concept involved in
denying Higher Powers. The funny thing is that they each see different halves of
the big picture. This is actually kind of useful, because all they need to do is
borrow from each other to get the whole picture.

8.2.1 Atheist
Richard Dawkins is a famous, modern, self-proclaimed atheist. He is also the
person who came up with the concept of memetics, but this does not seem to
have saved him from going down a typical atheist path. He sees the pain and
suffering that hosting religious ideologies has caused in the world, and it angers
and saddens him. He sees the "myth" of God as the root cause of this suffering,
and decides to fight it. This is a brave choice to make. However, he allows the
ideological construct of God to define his fight against it, and misses any real
opportunity to reduce the bad effects that the idea of God causes in the world.
Here's how:
Like most all Atheists, Dawkins obsesses over the issue of whether or not God
exists. He applies his logic to the issue, and comes up with every reason you can
imagine why you should not believe in any sort of Supreme Being who created
the universe. He tells people that a belief that gives them great comfort is false.
This, of course, causes these people mental pain, and makes them close their
minds to Dawkins' arguments. The more widely he manages to spread his
message, the more he sets himself up as a visible opponent to faith, and this

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increased opposition to faith may actually help to strengthen the hold of religion
on people's minds. In the end, he may actually cause greater pain and suffering
than if he had stood mute.
Since God, if he exists, does so outside our physical world, the question of
existence will always be debatable. You can make your points about evolution all
day, and all you are doing is winning an argument about where God has
intervened in the world, not the argument of whether God actually exists or not.
However, there is another class of argument, one that the average Anarchist
embraces but the average Atheist seems to ignore – possibly because it is really
a theological argument. That argument avoids the issue of God's existence and
instead argues the idea that man need not worship anyone or anything. It runs
something like this:
Why should it be automatic that, just because a higher being
created the universe, that you should worship him? OK, so you
are told that GOD is bigger, more powerful, and more
knowledgeable. But there are people right here on Earth that
are bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than you. You don't
automatically worship them. You don't consider yourself to be
obligated to do their bidding, and to serve their interests. Why
should a god or GOD be any different?
Why would anyone ever assume that GOD would want you to
do everything he said? It’s all supposed to be about free will
right? GOD would want you to use that brain he put in your
head. He would want you to make your own mistakes and learn
from them. Maybe when you do bad things, it really does make
the baby Jesus cry. But he is probably crying more about the
people who always do what they are told without question. It is
this blind obedience without thought that causes most of the
horrible shit that happens in the world.
If GOD exists, he doesn't want you to worship him. He is
confident enough in his omnipotence not to need that kind of
ego boost. He is certainly going to be pissed off if you don’t
think for yourself and choose to have someone else tell you
what to do. He gave you that brain and he wants you to use it!
And if you are one of those people that have a need to tell other
people what they can and cannot do, stop it! Don’t try to prevent
other people from exercising the Free Will GOD gave them, he
would want them to come to the right decisions because they
figure it out for themselves, not because you prevented them
from doing the things that you think are wrong. Find a better
place to get your self-esteem from than controlling others.
Now it seems odd to say that this is an Atheist argument, since it starts by saying
"OK, let’s suppose there is a GOD" and this is a statement that the 'faithful'
Atheist can not easily allow himself to make. However, no being, no matter how
powerful, is really a god unless people worship him. If they do not then he is just
another sentient creature who is bigger, tougher, smarter or whatever. Atheism
means not having gods, it does not mean believing that there is no creature in (or
outside of) the universe that is more powerful than any or all human beings.
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If you have faith in yourself, in your right to choose your own actions, and
make your own mistakes, then you can allow for the possibility of a more
powerful being, maybe even a creator of the universe, and still be an
atheist.
So we would suggest that atheists everywhere stop trying to prove there is no
supreme being, and start asking people to look at the consequences of handing
their choices over to other people's versions of what that supreme being wants
us to do. Ask people to question why a supreme being would ever want them to
do anything to increase his, her, or its glory. Any ideas that say that a supreme
being needs a human to do anything for it are the product of either unscrupulous
individuals taking advantage of faith, or an ideological organism with its own
agenda.

8.2.2 Anarchist
Timothy McVeigh was a recent, infamous, self-proclaimed Anarchist. As you
probably know, he was involved in the bombing of a United States Federal
building in Oklahoma City, on April 19th, 1995, and was ultimately executed for
his crimes on June 11th, 2001.
If someone tries to tell you why McVeigh did this, you may find yourself arguing
that he was a monster or a madman, and being unable to even accept the
possibility that there were "reasons" for what he did. However, the ideas in your
head that prevent you from opening your mind to McVeigh's reasons... are the
same types of ideas that made it possible for him to do something so monstrous.
McVeigh had his reasons. He saw the pain and suffering in the world caused by
clashes between central authority and people with different ideas about how to
live their lives. Specifically, he was aware of the events of August 1992 at Ruby
Ridge where a family was killed by US Marshals and FBI agents on their own
property. He also had in mind the events of April 19th, 1993, in Waco Texas,
where, after a 51 day siege, 76 people were killed by ATF agents burning their
homes.
These events bothered him greatly. He saw The State as the source of the death
of innocent people, and he decided to fight it. This was a brave choice to make.
However, he allowed the ideological construct of The State to define his fight
against it, and missed any real opportunity to reduce the bad effects that the idea
of The State causes in the world. Instead he brought more death to innocent
individuals – these deaths by his own hand.
Like most all Anarchists, McVeigh was obsessed with the idea of Freedom. He
believed that The State should not be able to control his actions through the
threat of violence. He may well have tried talking about this over the years, telling
people that the beliefs that make them feel safe are false, and that the State
offers no safety, only control.
But most people will not understand such a message, or are frightened by it. In
the end he decided to retaliate against state violence, perhaps hoping that his
retaliation might mitigate violence by The State in the future. Of course, his own
violent actions only served to increase people’s sense of danger, and strengthen
their feeling of need for The State's protection.

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McVeigh’s own concept of The State allowed him to see other people as evil
parts of an evil State, rather than fellow individuals, just because they worked in
a government building. He probably did not even understand that other people
would see his actions in terms of the individual deaths he caused and not as an
act of revenge against The State for the killings at Ruby Ridge and at Waco.
Violent actions will never weaken a Collective that exists, for a large part, to give
people a sense of safety. Rather, such actions will strengthen that ideological
organism.
There is, however, another way to go about things, if one wants to expand
personal liberty. It is a method that atheists are very familiar with, even if it is
unknown to anarchists. Rather than fighting with violence, or even trying to make
people feel that they don't need the protection The State offers, instead we can
challenge the actual existence of The State icon. The argument for this runs
something like this:
What is the Nation State? Is it a set of lines drawn on a map?
Why should we feel loyalty to some cartographer's scribbling?
We are all individual people, responsible for our own actions.
Those that believe that acting on behalf of a piece of Geography
automatically makes their actions correct are simply delusional.
No one should have greater rights than anyone else, and no
one claiming to represent a piece of Geography should ever
even be taken seriously.
This is not to say that people shouldn't make rules about how
they interact. However, if these rules are to be enforced with
violence, they should always reflect the actual feeling that, on
average, individual members of the group would be motivated to
use violence to enforce the given rule. In addition, anyone
enforcing behavior on behalf of others should be able to point to
specific victims of the prohibited action, who would themselves
have been willing to use violence if they were so equipped.
The injured party should never be a mythical entity like The
State or Society. Nothing should be declared a crime unless it is
done so to defend real victims against what they could
reasonably define as harm worthy of using violence to prevent.
Also, the size of "the group" for whom laws are made, should
always be as small as possible to keep things individual and
personal, in contrast to having a hierarchy of laws that are
enforced downward from the level of a mythical Nation State.
It may seem odd to say that this is an anarchistic argument, as we have just
allowed justification for a system of laws. However, the claim can be made that
we are all just individuals living in anarchy right now, that some people choose
freely to believe in The State, and these believers fear that violation of The
State's rules – by anyone – puts them in danger.
If people believe that your actions are a threat to them, then they are simply
acting in self defense when they try to stop you. If there is a set of rules that they
believe should be enforced, and these rules are very important to their own
happiness, then how can any good anarchist suggest that they should not be
allowed to act accordingly?
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However, the authority for enforcement of such rules does not arise from the land
we stand on, or from a symbol like a flag, or from some mythic concept of
national identity. It arises from the values of specific individual human beings. If
everyone fully appreciated that fact, it would be all that any real anarchist could
ever ask for.
When you start believing in the authority of a geographic jurisdiction, and lend
credence to "the law of the land,” you elevate these things to the status of Higher
Powers. Once this happens, laws that individuals would never otherwise choose
to have enforced with violence are imposed upon everyone. The myth of the
Higher Power makes people think that this is all OK – or at least to accept it all
without thinking about it very much.
It is possible to allow people to choose their own laws in small groups. It is
possible to dismiss the idea that anyone can ever be acting on behalf of The
State or any other icon. It is possible for rules to be enforced only on the behalf of
specific individuals. There is no need to believe in The State.
Provided you recognize that everyone has the right to believe in a different
system of rules, and realize that no system of rules stems from any higher
authority than individual thought, you can go ahead and believe that some
limited system of rules is a good thing, and still be an anarchist.
We would suggest that Anarchists everywhere stop fighting The State with
bombs and guns, or even with words about how terrible The State is, and come
to understand that The State that they oppose is just a fictional construct.
Instead, try to teach people that it is evil to believe in the existence of The State –
that patriotic loyalty to a flag, a set of lines on a map, or to anyone claiming to be
a voice for such imaginary symbols, is the root of most of the violence in the
world.

8.2.3 Individualist
We would also suggest that all atheists be anarchists and that all anarchists be
atheists and that everyone should be both. But be both in a non-combative way
that stresses Individual free will over collective thinking. That is, everyone should
be an individualist and also respect everyone else's individualism.
Feel free to believe in a supreme being, and to respect the sets of rules that
other people expect you to live by in their company. Just don't believe in Higher
Powers. An actual existing supreme being need not be conceptually superior to
you, and a human being claiming to represent some icon is definitely not.
Feel free to impose rules of conduct on others, and allow them to impose rules
on you; just don't lend greater authority to a set of rules when it comes from
someone claiming to represent a larger group of people. The only people who
count, in determining what is and is not acceptable behavior, are those who are
actually currently being affected by the behavior in question.
And everyone else should mind their own damn business.

8.2.4 Heroes and Villains

For the record, we have a great deal of respect for the work of Richard Dawkins,
and a great deal of contempt for the actions of Timothy McVeigh. However, you
will notice reading above that we criticize Dawkins, and cast nobility on McVeigh.
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Being able to do this is what being a free thinker is all about. If you are not able
to see the occasional truth among the lies of the people you hate, and the trace
of evil mixed in with the good of those you love, then you are not thinking past
the labels and icons.
Only when you allow yourself to both pity the weakness of your heroes and
admire the strength of your villains, will you be seeing the world clearly in terms
of individual ideas, rather than through the fog of illogic that is the life's breath of
collective idea-organisms.
You don't know anything aright until you have favorably considered its
opposite.

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8.3 Spreading the Word
Let’s say you really liked the ideas in this book, and wanted to spread them, but it
occurred to you that some of the ideas might be dangerous, and you didn't want
anyone to get hurt. We faced this same problem ourselves in the writing of this
book. We had to ask ourselves the following questions:
How do you help potentially good but scary ideas along into the world, in such a
way that they do the most good, and cause the least harm?
How do you pass along interesting information without it turning into Gospel and
Dogma?
How do you make sure that people really understand ideas, rather than having
faith in them?
If our ideas are correct, this all boils down to the following question:
How do you make sure that these ideas won't become the core of some new
Collective Identity that starts feeding on individuals for its own survival and
growth at the expense of their own?

8.3.1 Avoiding Collectivism

To answer this, we reviewed our thoughts on the ways in which simple memes
become dangerous collective idea-organisms, to see if there were ways in which
we might avoid that trap. As we have related elsewhere in this book, we believe
that Collectives are born from three basic errors of logic:
A. Taking a set of ideas as being an inseparable whole.
B. Lending greater credence to ideas based on their source.
C. Putting forward an untouchable icon as the source of a set of ideas.

Thinking about how these points related to our book, and what we could do to
address each of them, here is what we came up with:
1. In order to address the issue of ideas acting together, we decide to make
it very clear that the ideas in this book are to be considered entirely
separable. To this end we must be willing to change the text of this book
as errors are inevitably discovered. If you disagree with any part of this
book, and can articulate your reasons, please tell us why you think we
are wrong. If we agree with your analysis, we will change the book. If we
disagree, but feel your argument has enough merit to be addressed, we
will include a discussion of the issue. You can direct such response to
www.godwantsyoudead.com/feedback.html
2. In order to address the issue of source, we attempted to stress that
nothing makes our ideas any better than your own ideas or anyone
else's, beyond the content of the ideas themselves. We are just regular
guys. (I mean, sure, we both happen to be smart, athletic, good looking,
and incredibly well endowed, but we're still just regular guys...) We are
not going to try to impress you with our credentials, noble ancestry,
previous good deeds, IQ scores, or anything else – these ideas will
stand on their own merits or not at all.

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 3. In order to address the issue of an icon, we had to give up one of our
original ideas. One of our first thoughts in writing this book was to not
use our real names. It occurred to us that someone who did not like our
ideas might decide to take it out on us personally – whether that meant
yelling obscenities at us on the street, or actually physically attacking us.
So we had decided to use a fake name for the author of the book. His
name was going to be "Lester Faith" or "LES" to his friends, as a play on
the words "less faith.” And "LES" was also going to stand for Life
Extension Science, because the possibility of immortality through
science is one of the specific themes of the book.

It was all really very clever…

Then it occurred to us that making up a fake but cool sounding name was playing
right into criteria C above. While "LES Faith" couldn't be beaten on the street for
his writings, this is also a big part of the reason that he might actually turn out to
be a very dangerous fellow. He could become an icon, whereas a couple of
regular guys probably could not. So we decided that the right thing to do was to
brave the inherent dangers of using our real names.
So, if you do not like our ideas, and are interested in actively attacking them, we
would ask that you do us a few good turns in consideration of the steps we took
to introduce these ideas with an eye to being careful not to create a collective
idea-organism to compete with the one you are hosting.

8.3.2 All We Ask

i. In consideration for us admitting that every portion of our thesis must
stand on its own, please do not try to attack an idea that you do not like
(but can not directly refute) by pointing out some entirely different
mistake that we have made. It is all too common for people who don't
like one thing that someone said to try to dismiss it by attacking some
other thing they said. They then make the claim that, since the source of
the ideas is not infallible; all the ideas are somehow suspect. Hopefully
you will not stoop to that level. If you don't like a specific idea, attack that
idea on its own merits, not some other stupid thing we said.
ii. In consideration for us not trying to claim that we are smarter than
anyone else, please don't try to attack us based on who we are. Try not
to make the argument that you are somehow better suited to judge the
truth than we are. Stick to the merits or flaws of the ideas, and your
arguments will be stronger than if you claim to know better because you
have an advanced degree or lofty position in some organization. Show
us your evidence, not your credentials.
iii. In consideration for us using our own names, and thus opening
ourselves up to personal attacks, we ask you one last favor. If somehow,
by our writing this book, you feel we have caused you some sort of
injury, and that we need to be punished, we only ask that you first make
very sure that we really deserve that punishment.

To this end, we ask (and we think not unfairly) that you have actually read this
book from cover to cover. You should be sure that we really deserve your wrath.
If you have not carefully read each word, and clearly understood all of our

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arguments, you can not be sure that we are wrong. (Also, you might have missed
the bit where we admit that it was all just a big joke, not to be taken at all
seriously.)
If after you have carefully read every word we have written, you still think we
deserve to be punished, and decide that you need to yell insults at us on the
street, or march back and forth in front of our houses carrying picket signs. Well...
we are big believers in free speech. What can we say – yell and march as much
as you need to make you feel better. However, if our words have hurt your
feelings so much that you feel the need to hurt us back in a physical way, we
would suggest that you carefully reconsider this extreme action, and think about
an alternative.
Perhaps it is actually the printed words themselves that are at fault, and not us.
Maybe what you really need to do, to get back at those words and to make
yourself feel better, is go out and buy a very large number of copies of this book
and burn them. Try it – it might just do the trick. (Repeat as often as necessary to
make you feel better.)
If after trying that, you still really feel the need to throw one or both of us a
beating, please consider jumping to the end of the book and looking at that whole
list of people we have credited as helping us or being our influences. Maybe we
were serious when we said we couldn't have done it without them. If that's true,
this book might really be more their fault than ours. Seriously, now that we think
about it, they are all totally to blame for this book! Go get them!

8.3.3 Things to Do for Fun

If on the other hand, you really like our ideas and want to spread them to other
people, please also consider the possible downside of this. Be sure to take
similar steps to the ones we did. If you want to get together to talk about these
ideas, make sure that you don't form a group with leaders. Everyone should be
an equal. Don't even let anyone be the "first among equals,” or "more equal than
others" to quote George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
Whatever you do, for God's sake, don't give your group a cool name!
Keep in mind that we do not condone the formation of even a non-group with
non-leaders trying to promote the ideas in this book. We think it is a really bad
idea. I mean, what kind of things would such a non-group do anyway?
Actually, we have thought of a few things that an atheist anarchist individualist
non-group might decide to do for fun, and to advance the non-cause. We have
recorded them here for information purposes only. If you think of any other such
ideas that we might have missed, send them to us, and we will include them on
this list without using your name, to protect the guilty.
Here is our current list of bad ideas, ranging from borderline acceptable to the
very bad indeed, and from not even mildly amusing to the very funny. If these
ideas all seem somehow negative, or controversial, this is only because that is
what gets attention, and therefore, that is what spreads the word. (If we thought
that a puppy petting event would be likely to help, we would have included it here
too.)
In no particular order:

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 • Join the Libertarian party and/or the Free State Project.
• Raise funds to have the bodies of executed criminals cryo-preserved.
• Deface churches and governmental offices, signs, websites, etc..., with
info-hazard symbols like the one on the back cover of this book. You can
get Info-hazard stickers at www.godwantsyoudead.com/shop.html
• Start a political movement to privatize police protection in your local
jurisdiction – allow multiple private justice services with overlapping
jurisdictions to act based on contracts with Individuals.
• Take a page from the abortion wars, and set up an operation rescue
style organization for cryonics. This would involve stealing bodies (or just
the heads) from undertakers before they can be embalmed, cremated,
or buried, and having them cryonically suspended. If cryonics works, you
will be saving lives. You can also show up at pro-life vs. pro-choice
shouting matches as the "anti-death" faction, declaring that corpses are
important and should be saved, not fetuses.
• Spread the rumor that some other country (whichever country your
government is currently trying to play up as a competing economic or
military power is probably a good one to mention) is very close to curing
aging. Say that you heard that soon people of that nationality will be
living forever, but they are not going to let us have the technology.
• Have copies of this book delivered to school libraries or, labeled as
social studies text books, sent to private religious schools and public
school districts that decide to teach Intelligent Design Theory. Or leave
the book on the shelf at Wal-Mart or any bookstore refusing to stock it.
• Wrap copies of this book up as "Suspicious Packages" and leave them
in public places. Remember that the more flashing lights a package has,
and the more beeping noises it makes, the more "suspicious" it is.
• Assault famous people by throwing copies of this book at them –
especially while the cameras are rolling. Actors and singers are fine
choices. Politicians and religious figures are more appropriate but they
are usually harder targets. The more famous a person you hit with a
copy of this book, the more people will want to read it. We seriously
doubt that anyone will be clever enough to score a "bull’s-eye" on a
head of state – or pontiff of a religion – not that you should consider this
a challenge, but we would be very impressed... oh, and any famous talk
show host who has chosen not to include our book on her well-known
book list would also make an especially good target.
• If you happen to be a famous person, avoid having copies of this book
thrown at you by always carrying one with you, prominently displayed for
cameras. This can also be useful when you are caught naked or in some
other compromising situation by the paparazzi – this book is the perfect
size to cover your face with at such embarrassing moments.
• Or, you and all your friends could all just shave your heads and stand
around on street corners, and outside airports, passing out pamphlets
and flowers, and asking for donations. To find out how to send us all
your money go to www.godwantsyoudead.com/donations.html

But seriously – do have fun, but think carefully before doing anything to upset the
brainwashed too much... They just might kill you for it!

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8.4 The Hero/Coward Choice
You do not face these ideas head-on because you are afraid of
them – you are afraid that you might have to agree with them.
And then you would have to face the choice either to be a hero
or to be a coward.
-- A Lodging of Wayfaring Men

If you have actually made it through this whole book, then you have been
exposed to a lot of very powerful ideas. Some of them may seem right to you.
Others may seem wrong. Or, perhaps, you disagree on the surface because an
idea makes you uncomfortable, but somewhere underneath you fear that the
idea may be right?
Never forget that shame and intimidation are your enemies. You have a
functional mind, and you are to use it. We have done our best to make our
arguments understandable. It is up to you to consider them for yourself. You
have to decide. Yes? No? Hold for further review?
We won't even tell you that all of the ideas we have are necessarily right. We
have almost certainly made some mistakes of fact or logic. We are just human
beings, doing the best we can to figure things out, and then pass what we came
up with on to other human beings. As human beings, we are prone to being right
only just a little bit more than being wrong. The last thing we would ever do is tell
you that our ideas are infallible or that you must believe in them because they
come from some power higher than you. We will simply offer up what we think is
correct for your consideration.
Do not take our word for anything. Do not take anyone’s word for anything. If you
do not rely upon your own mind for judging the rightness of our ideas, then you
have not understood them at all.
Don't ask your minister.
Don't ask your relatives.
Don't ask anyone.
Ask yourself.
But there's a problem with this, isn't there? If you make your own decisions, you
alone are responsible for them!
We are not going to help you here. Choose. Either you have the guts to use your
own mind, or you don't. Pick one or the other.
If you want someone else to make your decisions for you, then you are a coward.
If you will rely on your own mind ONLY, you're a hero.
This is your chance to put a solid foundation under your feet. And understand –
the foundation is not our book; the foundation is the choice to rely solely upon
your own judgment. If you decide that everything we have said is wrong, but still
decide to make all your own decisions, using your own mind, hereafter – you are
a hero in every way that matters.

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How you feel about our ideas is not important. How you feel about yourself and
your own ability to think things through using your own mind is the most
important thing in the world…
Do you want to improve? Then here it is! Do it! Take that step!
We told you that we weren't going to make it easy for you. We presented you
with some big ideas. We think they are right. But you alone must choose for
yourself.
This is how great men are formed. This is how great minds are set in motion. Do
you wish to be that kind of person? It's all in the choice to stand alone – to make
up your own mind and to hold it inviolate.
Right now is when you get to make that most important decision.
Right now is when you get to make the Hero/Coward Choice.
Choose for yourself!
Choose now!
Choose!

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 Credits
Contributors
A lot of thought and work has been done by a lot of individuals to see this book in
print. Here are some of the people who made this book possible. We couldn't
have done it without them.

Words, Ideas, and Editing

These people all contributed ideas, did proofreading, or helped out in some other
notable way during the thinking, writing, or editing processes.
• Scott Banister- found a spelling mistake (on the cover) not sure if he opened the book
• Vincent Cate
• Coop – the angry drunken red-neck
• Katherine Tombeau Cost
• Sarah Curry
• Jim Davidson
• Aubrey de Grey
• Mathew DiBernardo
• Luke Farrugia
• S. Morgan Friedman – whose vision of this book was better than we could manage
• Patri Friedman
• Janet Hastings – tore her son’s first book into three pieces (returning them corrected)
• Jo Hastings
• Leonard “Buzz” Hastings
• S. Alexander Jacobson – would have done more but could not make email work
• Aaron R. Johnson
• Charles King
• Allison C.S. Lewis
• John Kipling Lewis – John is also one of our artists (see below)
• Nicole Macieik
• Alexander J. Marsh
• Deirdre McDaniel
• Sameer Parekh
• Kate Ragsdale – Kate is also one of our artists (see below)
• Stanley Rosenkampff – because he asked for this credit and is big and scary.
• Joseph M. Saul
• Sandy Sandfort
• Alexis Stahl
• Matt Siegel – deserves special thanks for providing the most feedback
• Michael J.J. Tiffany – deserves special thanks for finding an artist for us.
• Anja Williams
• George “Loki” Williams

We are almost certainly forgetting someone and are truly sorry about it.

Artists
• Sean Hastings – www.SeanHastings.com
• John Kipling Lewis – www.QuitYourJobDay.com
• Joanne Mason
• Pinguino – www.PenguinPalace.com
• Kate Ragsdale
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Pictures
The task of adding pictures to the book was almost entirely Sean's. He started
with notes and sketches he had from his original 1996 start on the book, and in
late 2006 he started to do his own final drawings. He found artists to handle the
stuff he was not capable of drawing himself, but most all of the image ideas were
his.
So if the art sometimes seems a little silly for the seriousness of the topics being
discussed – that is Sean's fault and not Paul's – although we both certainly felt
that the book should have some level of comic relief. Given the degree of
emotional attachment some people can have with many of these topics, we think
that while discussing them it is important to break the mood now and again with a
little bit of laughter.
This is a list of the images that appear in the book by section, along with the
people who helped create them, and any pertinent copyright information:
Front Cover
Image: God With Gun – Original Art: Michael Angelo, 1512 – predates copyright – Concept:
Sean Hastings, 1996 – Image altered by Joanne Mason, 1998 – All rights purchased from
Joanne Mason by Sean Hastings – John Lewis came up with the idea for a vertical layout of the
cover.
1. Evolution of Higher Powers
Image: Cosmic Hand – Concept: Sean Hastings, 2006 – Art: Kate Ragsdale, 2007 – Caption:
Sean Hastings, 2007 – All rights purchased from Kate Ragsdale by Sean Hastings.
1.1 Biological Evolution
Image: Saber Tooth Rabbit – Concept: Sean Hastings, 2006 – Art and Caption: Kate Ragsdale,
2007 – All rights purchased from Kate Ragsdale by Sean Hastings.
1.2 Ideological Evolution
Image: Dawkins Fish – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2007
Image: Jesus Fish Family Tree – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2007
Image: Collective Stick Man – Concept, Art, and Caption: Sean Hastings, 2006
1.3 Identities and icons
Image: Identity Echoes – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Distributed Identity Cloud – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Fame Identity After Death – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Collective Identity – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
1.4 The Higher Powers
Image: Icon Lineup – Concept, Art, and Caption: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Racial Yin Yang – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Relationship as Distributed Identity – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean
Hastings, 2006
Image: Head Full of icons – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Two faced Preacher – Concept and Caption: Sean Hastings, 2006 – Art: Pinguino
(www.PenguinPalace.com), 2007 – All rights purchased from Pinguino by Sean Hastings.

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2.1 Down from the Trees
Image: Stone Hand-axes – Art: Cropped from illustration in "Victoria County History of Kent" Vol
1, p 312, published London, 1912 – Copyright expired, 1968
Image: Cave Painting – Art: Unknown artist, circa 15,000 B.C. – predates copyright
2.4 Democracy and Empire
Image: What Kind of Jew are You? – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings 2006
2.9 The Long Arm
Image: Lady Justice Busted – Concept: Sean Hastings 2006 – Art: Pinguino
(www.PenguinPalace.com), 2007 – Caption: Sean Hastings, 2007 – All rights purchase from
Pinguino by Sean Hastings.
3. Your Money or Your Life
Image: Uncle Sam With Gun – Original Art: Montgomery Flagg, 1915 – Original copyright
expired, 1971 – Concept and Caption: Sean Hastings, 2006 – Image altered by John Lewis
(www.QuitYourJobDay.com), 2007. All rights purchased from John Lewis by Sean Hastings.
3.1 Killing The Goose
Image: Strong Central Authority – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings 2006
Image: Weak Central Authority – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings 2006
Image: No Central Authority – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings 2006
4.1 Biology and Ideology
Image: Times Square – Photo: Sean Hastings, 2007 – Models: Nicole Macieik and Barney the
Dog – Image used with the permission of Nicole Macieik (Barney the Dog, however, refused
permission, and is threatening to sue.)
Image: Oil Refinery – Photo: John Mullen, 2006 – used with the permission of John Mullen
Image: United States Lights – Data: Marc Imhoff of NASA GSFC and Christopher Elvidge of
NOAA NGDC, 2000 – Image: Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC, 2000 –
Copyright: NASA, 2000 - VisibleEarth.nasa.gov – Image is used in book free of licensing fees
according to NASA requirements that they be provided credit as the owners of the imagery.
4.3 The Question of identity
Image: Pirate Ninja Self Image – Concept: Sean Hastings, 2006 – Art: Pinguino
(www.PenguinPalace.com), 2007 – Caption: Sean Hastings – All rights purchased from Pinguino
by Sean Hastings.
Image: Homunculus Driving – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
4.4 Your Ideal Self
Image: Faith in Two Axes – Concept and Art: Anonymous, 2006 – image used in book with
permission of anonymous creator
4.6 Bits and Pieces
Image: Couple Identity – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
5. The Art of Thought
Image: Santa on Cross – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art and Caption: Sean Hastings,
2006
5.1 Free Your Mind
Image: Fanatic Head – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Group Head – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006
Image: Idea Head – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 2006

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5.4 Fallacies
Image: Pro-Sperm Protesters – Concept: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Art, and Caption: Sean
Hastings, 2006
6.1 Which Party Should I Vote For?
Image: Elephant and Donkey – Concept, Art, and Caption: Sean Hastings, 2006
6.3 Engineering Freedom
Image: Roman Coin – Photo: Richard Beale, 2007 – Image used in book with the permission of
Richard Beale
6.4 Rolling Back
Image: Free State Project Logo – Copyright: Free State Project, 2004 – Image used in book
with the permission of the Free State Project
6.5 New Frontiers
Image: Seastead Blueprint – Concept and Art: Andrew House, 2003 – Image used in book with
permission of Andrew House
7.1 Suspended Animation
Image: Cryonics Storage Tank – Photo: Sean Hastings, 2002
7.3 Nano Technology
Image: Moore's Law Graph – Created by Wikipedia user: Wgsimon. – Modified by Sean
Hastings – Image is used in this book with no specific permission, but with the understanding
that it has been released into the public domain.
Image: Mite on Nano Gears – Image is used in this book with no specific permission, but with
the understanding that it may be used in exchange for including this statement: "Courtesy of
Sandia National Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.gov"
Image: Nano Car – Image is used in this book with no specific permission, but with the
understanding that it has been released as part of a press kit by Rice University and may be
used as part of a description of research work done at Rice, if credited as follows: "Image
courtesy of Rice University Office of Media Relations and Information. Credit: Y. Shirai/Rice
University"
7.5 Life Extension
Image: Aubrey de Grey – Photo: Kevin Perrot, 2004 – Image is used in this book with the
permission of Dr. Aubrey de Grey and the Methuselah Foundation.
8.1 The Last Generation
Image: Sherwin Williams logo – Image used without permission – Not sure exactly what our
legal position is on this, but it was a funny joke that just would not have worked without actually
showing the logo. This would seem to qualify as "Fair Use" if any such concept is still recognized
in the continuously growing realm of copyright legislation.
Back Cover
Image: Infohazard Symbol – Concept and Art: Sean Hastings, 1996 – Caption: Sean Hastings,
2006

348
Reading List
This is a list of some of the books that the authors note as influencing their
thinking in the creation of this book, and recommend for your further reading.
• The Bible (Any literal translation.)
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (five-book trilogy.)
• The Origins Of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
• The Psychology of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Brandon
• The Transparent Society, David Brin
• The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Etienne de la Boetie
• How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World, Harry Browne
• The Richest Man In Babylon, George Clason
• The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
• The Sovereign Individual, James Davidson, Lord William Rees-Mogg
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• Engines of Creation, Eric Drexler
• The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant
• Principles For A Free Society, Richard Epstein
• Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!, Feynman, Leighton, Hutchings
• The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman
• Free to Choose, Milton & Rose Friedman
• Civilization And Its Enemies, Lee Harris
• The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich A. Hayek
• A Child of The Century, Ben Hecht
• Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
• Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
• War Before Civilization, Lawrence Keeley
• Freedom and the Law, Bruno Leoni
• The Reawakening, Primo Levi
• Whatever Happened To Justice?, Richard Maybury
• Human Action, Ludwig Von Mises
• The Evolution of Civilization, Carol Quigley
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, Ed Regis
• A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, Paul Rosenberg
• The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
• Envy, Helmut Schoeck
• How to Start Your Own Country, Erwin Strauss
• The Market For Liberty, Morris and Linda Tannehill
• The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler

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This and other great titles
are available at:

www.veraverba.com

350