11 American Nations

[Steve Smith]

On 1/21/14 5:29 PM, glen wrote:

> On 01/21/2014 11:42 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>> Some constituents of a fascist society can be scattered, but some
>> members, esp. the leaders or those guilty of `war crimes' get hunted
>> down.  Cells form the organisms be compared to, so it is not surprising
>> that they are more easily discarded.
> Good point.  Are there some cells, in the same cancer, that are more (or
> less) metastatic than other cells in that same cancer?  Although it
> seems reasonable that some cells will be more likely to dislodge from
> the tissue and traipse around, it's not clear to me that we've fully
> validated the distinction between metastatic and non-metastatic cancer
> cells.

What was the train-riding hobo phenomenon of the 30's?   Was that
diaspora of unemployed young men a good thing or a bad thing for the
country?
>
> Anyway, if so, then we could credibly map mobile cancer cells to
> leaders, gurus, prophets, virile breeders, etc. within totalitarian
> systems.  But that still doesn't mean that physically breaking up a
> tumor consisting of all non-metastatic cells, and scattering those cells
> across the body would _not_ cause all sorts of new tumors wherever these
> non-metastatic cells landed.  I.e. perhaps the only thing keeping
> non-metastatic cancer cells from being metastatic is their lack of
> mobility, a problem solved by the scattering intervention.
During WWII, the US Gov't (backed by the good citizens) rounded up US
Citizens of Japanese descent and stuffed them in internment (aka
Concentration?!) here in the US.   As far as I know, there were NO
incidents (yes, I know... google and wikipedia and ... are my friend
here) of any sedition or similar from that community, before, during or
after internment.

However... right here in river city (within sight of the Santa Fe River
in fact), we had our own *special* internment camp... where many of the
" leaders" of the Japanese communities that were rounded up were sent to
prevent "organization and dissent".   These were the Buddhist monks...  
the spiritual leaders... and it is likely that if there *were* going to
be a problem with this particular population, leaving their spiritual
leaders *with* them would have been a good idea, rather than removing
the most evident of "self regulatory" mechanisms from the "organs"...
>
> This might be quite distinct from scattering the non-leader members of a
> totalitarian system.  By definition of totalitarianism, I would posit
> that the non-leaders are not really capable of starting their own
> budding totalitarian states.  I'd be more likely to accept an analogy
> between a more organic -ism (e.g. Al-Qaeda) and cancer.  The key
> property is the autonomy, the colony forming ability, of the constituents.
>
As I posited myself in an earlier post... analogy-making and metaphor
are useful for brainstorming, exploration, synthesis of ideas...

Thanks for continuing this exploration.

- Steve

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[Steve Smith]

Glen wrote:

>> It is not only a metaphor. It goes deeper, and it touches the core of
>> our civilization and what it means to be human. Religious groups are
>> adaptive units subject to evolution. They are based on replicating
>> entities shaped by group selection.
> I'm not convinced.  The idea is that the gene-related family or the
> meme-related group is the map to the cell, with accompanying lineages.
> And when that family or group is corrupted in some way, then that seeds
> the tumor.
>
> My main criticism still stands: The intervention for cancer relies on
> killing the broken cells.  You can't just scatter them and have them
> blend into healthy tissue.  But you _can_ scatter the families/groups
> and have them blend into a healthy society.

I agree that there is a difference here... though distributing radical
elements (with enough charisma and motivation) may in fact (trans)plant
crystallization seeds.  On the other hand, I think this requires that
the "solution" they are being distributed into be "near saturation"
already... So distributing angry/hurt/disruptive elements into an
already sick or highly stressed "body" can be asking for trouble.

I *definitely* don't want to pick on the Muslim or Middle Eastern world
right now... it is a ripe field for this kind of speculation, but the
stakes there, for the people there are too high for me to be comfortable
using them to further my idle speculations.   If I wanted to do that, I
would go into journalism or politics!
>
> But even if we dive down deeper into your analogy, there is another
> glaring difference:  In cancer, each cell has its own copy of the DNA.
> Mutations happen at that level.  Granted, there are differences in the
> interpretation of the DNA as well.  But I don't know of evidence that
> cancer is _primarily_ epigenetic.  Am I simply ignorant, here?
Granted, the social analogy is *highly* permeable between individual and
group... though once an ideology is embedded in an individual, she *can*
be very resistant to adopting new or different variants from the larger
environment.
> Because individual cells have their own copy of DNA, they are more
> autonomous than, say, a family/group that uses a holy book like the
> bible or quran.  A great example might be the consideration of the
> various sects.  Both Jehova's Witnesses and Catholics claim to read the
> bible as a holy book.  Same book, seemingly different "group DNA".  So,
> _if_ the analogy maps cells to families/groups, then the holy book is
> definitely _not_ analogous to DNA.  Some other structure is required,
> something intra-group that allows the group to be more autonomous.
The "book"s are a shared genotype, the heirarchy of religion (from grand
poobah or pope down to a local evangelical whackadoodle) are the
"expression" and "regulatory" system.  Watch the movie "Machine Gun
Preacher" for example.
>
> We can go further and nit-pick each mapping.  But I think the most
> important one is the intervention problem mentioned above.  I don't
> think we're going to find a "cure" for totalitarianism that is in any
> way similar to whatever cure we might find for cancer.  At least, so
> far, the abatement methods for cancer don't seem to bear any resemblance
> to the abatement methods for totalitarianism ... unless your proposal is
> that the state of the art treatment for totalitarianism is to kill the
> citizens... which seems a bit extreme.

Back to the meta-discussion.   The value of metaphor in thinking (and
simulation) is not always it's use as a perfect model, but rather the
contrasts it generates for one to consider.   The best use of a metaphor
is to bend, mix, break, blend it in facile ways that help improve
perspective and understanding...   to use a physical metaphor myself for
the understanding of the use of metaphor in critical thinking.

- Steve


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