RE: [pf] Risks, imposed or chosen/MEMES

by David A

18 December 2000 13:21 UTC

I don't believe that all growth is good, and I don't believe that all rapid 
growth is better. Nor do I believe that GM should be advanced as fast as 
scientifically or technologically possible. Of course there should be *lots* of 
monitoring, investigation, cross-checking, etc. along the way.

But I am very interested to know if GM, genetic engineering and genetic therapy 
technology has the power to improve health and life, and perhaps drastically so 
(though not in our lifetimes). There are many indications that it might. If so, 
it won't be a straight path upward--there will be mistakes along the way, risks 
that prove harmful, more Jesse Gelsingers. That is the way of progress, and it 
always has been and it always will be. 

Genetics is out of the bottle. It won't be going back in. We have the power to 
drastically alter life, and it's inevitable that at least some of us will try 
to do so--it's too easy and tempting not to. Other generations have had to deal 
with their fears of the new, and this one is ours. It's the time in which we 
live. 

It is time to put away our old gods and become gods ourselves.

David

-----Original Message-----
From:    Clelia Park maacsp@hunterlink.net.au
Sent:    Mon, 18 Dec 2000 14:16:36 +1100
To:      davidnh@visto.com, positive-futures@igc.topica.com, jleeak@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: [pf] Risks, imposed or chosen/MEMES


>From Arnie:

At 12:18 PM 17/12/00 -0800, David A wrote:
>tully wrote:
>>> What foods do you currently eat that you believe are "nature 
>>> created?" Very few, in fact.
>> 
>> Whole food cookery is still possible as we have not yet reduced 
>> all our  foods to chemical pablums.  Any whole fruit, vegetable,  > 
>> grain, meat, etc.  that is not genetically modified is as nature 
>> created it
>
>Actually very few of the vegetables in your typical produce section are 
>as nature created them. Potatoes aren't. Corn doesn't exist naturally 
>(it's been breed over the centuries from teosinte, which is a veritable 
>weed). Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and collards don't exist 
>naturally. Nor brussels sprouts--they were developed in the 19th 
>century.

My concern about GM foods revolves more around the SPEED AT WHICH
MODIFICATIONS are being made.  Are there any exceptions where "nature" has
modified a food product immediately or does she permit time for consumers
of the food to adapt to it, or `test' it', over a long period of time, thus
"learning", perhaps with their autonomic systems, if it is toxic to their
`clan` or `tribe' ?   I know `man' has modified many plants but not to the
extent or at the rate at which they are now doing.  

The "meme" that (rapid) _change_ is absolutely good JUST BECAUSE science
and technology created the change has become strongly imbedded in our
culture!  ... like unleashing the power of the atom ... `The unleashed
power of the atom' ... is causing us to `drift toward unparralled
catastrophy' [paraphrasing from Albert Einstein].  This meme is hardly
imbedded in most of us on this list.  

Other closely related memes are that GROWTH IS GOOD and RAPID GROWTH IS
BETTER.  I strongly reject the idea that it is GOOD to "change" or "create"
something else just because it's possible -- change for change sake.  

The following discusses memes in more detail.

"DISPATCH FROM THE FOREBRAIN OF THE GLOBAL CULTURE JAMMER
Parminder prefers Coke, so much so that if a restaurant only offers Pepsi,
he'll go with water. One day, in a blind taste test, he chooses Pepsi, and
is swept by a feeling of dislocation. Will he switch colas? "Of course
not," Parminder snaps. "I prefer Coke."
Parminder has caught the Coca-Cola meme. Or rather, according to recent
meme theory, Coke's sell-job - from Yankee nostalgia to arctic cool - fits
best with the memes that create Parminder's sense of choice. Got it?
Strip down the word "meme" (coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976, it
rhymes with "dream"), and you find a useful tool for digging at our
culture. Memes are packets of cultural information - technologies, songs,
beliefs, fads, notions of politics or philosophy - that pass through a
population much the same way that genes pass through a species. Strong
memes are the cutting edge of cultural evolution - they change minds, alter
behavior, shift paradigms and transform societies.
In our information age, whoever has the memes has the power.
Right now, corporations have the power. They beam their memes into our
brains at the rate of a few thousand ads, brand logos and marketing thrusts
per day. In a sense, it is a single message: "You must consume." Yet it has
altered everything from the food we eat, to the way we get around town, to
the ways we lust and love.
Corporations also control much of the means of meme propagation: the TV and
radio stations, movie theaters, magazines, newspapers. But counter-memes
are appearing more frequently in the mindscape: spraycan editors "liberate"
fashion billboards; bumper stickers ask, "Is Economic Progress Killing the
Planet?"; poster campaigns urge people worldwide to join "Buy Nothing" and
"TV Turnoff" events. At the Battle in Seattle last November, one big
placard pulled a quadruple meme whammy - it spelled out "WTO" using the
corporate logos of McDonald's, Texaco and CBS.
Every outburst of cognitive dissonance is useful, but to mount a serious
challenge against corporate rule, we jammers must build our own meme
factory. Because we have severely limited budgets, our strategies must be
perfectly crafted to tear gaps in the glitter of the consumer spectacle. We
must zero in on and deploy the macromemes and the metamemes - the core
ideas without which a sustainable future is unthinkable. Here's the current
Adbusters short-list:
· True Cost: The price of every product in the global marketplace must tell
the ecological truth.
· Demarketing: Marketing can be turned against itself. We can unsell the
product.
· Doomsday Economics: Global consumer capitalism is only equipped for
growth. It's a doomsday machine that must be stopped and reprogrammed.
· The Corporate "I": Corporations are legal fictions that we the people
created. They have no inherent rights or freedoms.
· Media Carta: Every human being has the "right to communicate" - to
receive and impart information through any media.

Meme warfare is growing ever more intense. The next revolution will be, as
media guru Marshall McLuhan predicted, "a guerrilla information war." It
will be fought in the streets with signs, slogans, banners and graffiti,
but it will be won in newspapers, on the radio, on TV and in cyberspace. It
will be a dirty, no-holds-barred propaganda war of competing worldviews and
alternative visions of the future.
The corporations have their ad agencies and PR firms, their design hacks
and lawyers, and of course, they have their multi-million-dollar budgets.
But that may not be enough. We have the Internet - the biggest and best
meme medium ever invented. And we have a globally linked network of
artists, designers, hackers and multi-media whiz-kids who are motivated by
something much bigger than pleasing shareholders. We can win this battle -
for ourselves and for the future. Let the meme combat begin!
memefactory@adbusters.org - Kalle Lasn" [ed. of AdBusters Magazine]


Again I'm reminding us of one of the main purposes of this list ( is this
not so?): to help us to simplify our lives.  To me this includes living
much more lightly on the earth -- learning how much is ENOUGH. ... can we
learn to take time to `smell the roses'?

Arnie










>
>>From Alan McHughen's "Pandora's Picnic Basket," p. 70:
>
>"...almost none of the foods we now consume existed when human 
>civilization arose some 40 thousand years ago.... Those of us who demand 
>only natural, unmodified food are necessarily limited to such a 
>selection as wild berries, some fish, perhaps watercress, and whatever 
>wild animals might be trapped and slaughtered...."
>
>> Do you work for the biotech industry?
>
>No.
> 
>>>> But...guess what? Science has turned out to be really really
>>>> wrong on this one.
>>>
>>> It's customary to offer proof and evidence when making bold
>>> assertions,
>>> if you want to be taken seriously. Or is that too much bother?
>> 
>>> Are you denying that there is plenty of evidence that mother's 
>>> milk is superior to baby formula?  
>
>Oops--sorry about that one. I thought Vicki's comment 'science has 
>turned out to be really really wrong on this one' pertained to GMOs, not 
>formula and mother's milk. It's a little confusing in her paragraph.
>
>David