sun 18 mar 2007 14:06:20 — raamgracht
evil spirits
this afternoon in oosterpark they're unveiling the memorial to the murdered filmmaker theo van gogh.
friday night pani and i were walking through the little park at rembrandtplein, looking for a place to sit and eat takeout noodles. we passed a bunch of punks who thought they were obliged to be slightly vervelend, but they were okay. one of them yelled out "je lijkt op theo van gogh!" it took me a second to snap it. i turned and said "echt waar? ik?" and he said "yeah, hetzelfde buik". and we all laughed.
meanwhile something i just wrote in channels.nl
george van driem believes that language is its own memetic organism, and it's just using us as a host to reproduce itself. my friend pani ani and i used to talk about this stuff a lot back in 2003, sitting out on the porch at spider time. the idea that memes are functionally creatures. it's difficult to prove or disprove such a thing. an idea like that can only be measured in its usefulness as a lens, ie, does it help us see reality better.
because of the timing (the iraq war was about to begin then), i became a believer in these memetic "organisms". if we look at big psychohistorical movements in society, like the current wave of polarization and pride that's overtaking humanity contrary to its own survival interests (and don't worry, this too will pass), it does seem logical to me that we as a species are being danced like puppets by essentially parasitical ideas. we're infected with looming behaviors that hurt us. and yet we contain the antibodies as well.
that's how i came to believe that "evil spirits" are real, they're just not supernatural. they're behavioral.