Re: virus:Re: Buddhism and memetics
Tony Hindle (t.hindle@joney.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 19 Mar 1997 02:33:07 +0000
In message <Pine.SUN.3.95.970316225915.9221A-
100000@garcia.efn.org>, Eva-Lise Carlstrom <eva-lise@efn.org>
writes
>On Sat, 15 Mar 1997, Tony Hindle wrote:
>> In message <Pine.SUN.3.95.970315020429.17116A-
>> 100000@garcia.efn.org>, Eva-Lise Carlstrom <eva-lise@efn.org>
>> writes
>> >
>> >When you're holding a knife on someone and expecting him to cringe in
>> >terror, and he relaxes instead, it's pretty scary. I expect. If I
>> >attacked someone and he relaxed, I'd think I was in big trouble.
>> If you thought you were in big trouble and you had the
>> knife pointing at the cause of this big trouble, might it not
>> increase the chance of you using the knife, thus getting in the
>> first blow?
>Not necessarily.
[snip]
>I'm not, now, particularly convinced of the veracity of either of those
>aikido stories, just that they're possible, and evocative of some variety
>of truth about the world and human nature, in other words, good stories.
I agree. Its a shame though because if I had become
convinced of the effectiveness of this "stay cool" response I would
certainly have used it as a substitute to my default "defecate and
cry for mummy" response.
> I'm noticing more and more
>modern folklore since I started thinking and reading about it more. The
>Urban Legends theme party went well, by the way; I learned some new ones.
Have you heard of the phenomena of "ostention" (sorry
probably spelt wrong, only ever heard it spoken, no reference to
earlier threads intended). This is where an urban legend turns to a
fact after someone has heard it and decides to fullfill it. I
certainly believe it occurs. Consider the urban legend below (I'll
include it in full in case it's a new one but I'm sure you have
heard it before.)
A couple return from visiting to discover they have been
burgled. Place is a mess but a few things have been left, including
a camera that was in the middle of a film. They reported burgalry
etc. and over next couple of months they finished film and sent it
away for developement. Pictures came back including two unexpected
ones. Pictures of bums with the toothbrushes they had stil been
using shoved up the arseholes.
I can imagine that some mischievous burglars upon hearing
this tale would carry out this act for fun if they found a cheap
camera with a film half used in the house.
Motto is throw away your toothbrushes if you ever get
burgled.
What we should really be frightened of is ostention with
respect to the end of the world is nigh prophecies from the ever-
increasing number of religious cults.
BTW Eva did you read my posting on repressed memories?
what do you think?
Tony Hindle.
the end of the world is nigh, only 6000million years to go...
....but for you sir, about 45.