From: Pete McAlpine (pemca@home.msen.com)
Date: Sat Sep 08 2001 - 11:14:55 MDT
Interesting post on Anarchy, the State, & Memes I saw on another
list:
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Max T. O' Connor in his article Deep Anarchy referenced
below tries to make the case that the State does not exist.
His bottom line seems to be:
'"The State" is really nothing more than statist behavior and belief - and
elements of this can be found in almost everyone. I have argued that there
is no boundary which can divide off some behavior as constituting "the
State" from other behavior. This point can be made more forceful by
considering the wide range of statist behavior and thinking found in society
(or "society"!). If it were possible to order these instances along a
spectrum we might arbitrarily draw a line beyond which we would say the
collection of behaviors was "the State." However, apart from the fact that
it would be arbitrary (unlike the division of eagle parts from non-eagle
parts), there is no single dimension to be ordered into a spectrum. People
can be more or less statist at different times and in very different and
incomparable ways.'
Lloyd Again: However, this ignores the theory of memes. Memes
are ideas that spread from one mind to another as a contagion. These
ideas form systems...we could say, a "memetic field". Individuals in
statist memetic field consitute of State to the extent they are in
resonance with the State's memetic field. It is a matter of degee. QED
More from Lloyd: Strange that an extropian would forget the theory
of memes. Memes are to Social Organisms (A State is a special type
of social organism along with ethnic groups, races, religions, etc.) as
Genes are to Biological Organisms.
Report #TL07D: DEEP ANARCHY --
AN ELIMINATIVIST VIEW OF "THE STATE"
by Max T. O'Connor
http://www.extropy.com/~exi/extback.htm
[Editor: This article is reprinted from Extropy #5, Winter/1990. Extropy is
published by The Extropy Institute. Loosely speaking, extropy is the
opposite of entropy. Extropy = A measure of life, intelligence, information,
energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, growth, and increasing
complexity.
Submitted by Lloyd Miller
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