From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sun Nov 14 1999 - 11:58:24 MST
From: Menno Rubingh <rubingh@delftnet.nl>
> ...I think it makes a person smarter and more efficient to simply
>excise useless memes and activities like "Cultural Studies" out of his life.
Considering how "journalists" fill up magazines and newspapers with "Cultural
Studies" tripe, your advice seems eminently worthwhile. Who knows, perhaps
someday "Cultural Studies" will morph into something useful, as alchemy became
chemistry, and astrology became astronomy. But I wouldn't count on it. It may
become something like another Marxist world view. We ought to study "Cultural
Studies" to see how much damage it inflicts on otherwise healthy young minds.
>It is highly useful to know WHAT kind of memes to be on
>your guard against.
Yes, that precisely states my intent in posting the Sokal piece. IMO, we need to
guard against memes which carry an agenda of political control and cognitive
coercion, memes founded on reactionary systems of consensus ideology, memes
which derive from a power base locked in ancient connections to privilege and
inherited status, memes which emerge as a consequence of tribal identities as
opposed to empirically ascertained information, in short, memes which oppose
extropy. --J. R.
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