Memetic Engineering in the Counterjihad

If it isn't already happening in secret somewhere, it's high time to put together an organized effort to combat the Jihad ideologically: A Manhattan Project of counterjihad memetic engineering. Memetic engineering promises to deliver a platform for 4GW/5GW ideological warfare against the Jihad. Al Qaeda has been operating in the ideological war nearly unopposed, with reflexive assistance from the neocommunists of the transnational progressive NGOs and leftist political parties. What will it take? Memetic engineering must be a process of engineering a system of memes: A systems engineering process for meme systems. That much is obviously true simply from the definitions of the words. Let's look into the words before we get deeper into how this system of engineering would work.

Of the definitions of engineering at dictionary.com the most universal seems to be the one at the American Heritage Dictionary:

en·gi·neer·ing
noun.

1. professional definition
   1. The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems.
   2. The profession of or the work performed by an engineer.
2. Skillful maneuvering or direction: geopolitical engineering; social engineering.

Of the definitions of meme at dictionary.com the best appears to be the one that comes from the Jargon File.

meme

/meem/ n. [coined by analogy with `gene', by Richard Dawkins] An idea considered as a replicator, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do. Used esp. in the phrase `meme complex' denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organized belief system, such as a religion. This lexicon is an (epidemiological) vector of the `hacker subculture' meme complex; each entry might be considered a meme. However, `meme' is often misused to mean `meme complex'. Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has superseded biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.

The phrase "meme complex" is not precise. If we are to consider it from a systems engineering point of view it must be termed a meme system. The meme system is an arranged system of individuals, each with a mind and soul that transcend our ability to understand or reliably predict them, in a networked arrangement of millions of people with billions of interconnections. Now there is one part of the meme system that is not understood, and another that is too complex to map. Traditional engineering calculations will not work. Predicates are unknown. Theorems are unprovable. There is no mathematics of memes, for memes are made of words and not measurable in atomic weights, wavelengths, decay periods, mass, surface area, or moment of inertia. Instead of being able to predict what any particular meme system might do scientifically, from principles and calculations, the actions of meme systems must be determined statistically, with the same methods used by economists. This is the only way to transcend the gap between skillful maneuvering and systems engineering based on empirical principles.

The memetic engineer cannot be attached to the memes (emotionally or for any other reason), only to the process of formulation, test, measurement, to ethical and moral constraints, and to the desired goal. This asceticism is the difficulty of using an empirical approach for memetic engineering, rather than simply using marketing techniques to promote pre-existing memes and meme systems.

Empiricism and Religion Empiricism requires a constant, universal, eternal law of nature to work. Religion can be compatible with empiricism or it can be incompatible. This is the impact of ideology on empiricism and science, and the reason that some civilizations have advanced through science and others have stewed in their own bigotry. The constant and beneficent God of the Jews and Christians established, in the very beginning of Genesis, the laws of the Universe that follow thereafter. From that point, the Universe worked as it should with a few, rare miracles. As history progressed and was recorded in the scriptures, the incidence of miracles declined. After Jesus rose from the dead, the day of the prophets and obvious miracles had passed on. The day of empiricism did not dawn immediately, but dawn it did, only in the Christian lands, and the industrial age began. Traditional Islam, and especially the totalitarian version of Islam of the Wahhabists, Deobandis and Khomeinists, posits a Universe subject moment by moment to the whim of a capricious, divine despot, Allah. This is the Allah who over 20 years repeatedly revised his own word as given to Mohammed, each time making it more severe and oppressive to women and non-Muslims, each time making it more convenient for the despotic warlords of the Arabs to control their subjects. This is the Allah who always reserves the right to overthrow his own laws and start anew. He did it to the Jews and he did it to the Christians. He will not be constrained by any laws or rules, including those He himself created. Every moment the universe is created anew by Allah's will. This Allah is not kind to the concept of empiricism. The concept of empiricism places the laws of nature on the same level as the laws of Allah. This is wicked polytheism to the Muslim way of thinking.

As shown in the sidebar I firmly believe this approach is more likely to be possible for some than for others. The Jihadist enemy using 4GW and 5GW techniques will be restricted to using skillful maneuvering and direction, based on the doctrine developed in the Koran and its own writings concerning Jihad. For empiricism places limits on Allah, which is antithetical to their understanding of their religion. And following the empirical method overthrows established doctrine, which is also antithetical to the Jihadist version of Islam. The Marxist idealogue using 4GW and 5GW techniques cannot perform memetic engineering, for all the memes he uses must be pre-existing Marxist or Leninist ones. No new memes may be developed. Count empiricism out.

The commonly understood meaning of memetic engineering, referenced fully in the Wikipedia article, is contaminated by leftist and Marxist dogma. Do not be fooled by the semioticists and systempunkts. Memetic engineering is just a tool for deconstructing society and bringing about the perfect, communist, atheist or pagan, end of history.

Here is an example, from Wikipedia, of incorrect concepts of memetic engineering.

Memetic Engineering developed from diverse influences, including cutting-edge physics of consciousness and memetics research, chaos theory, semiotics, culture jamming, military information warfare, and the viral texts of iconoclasts William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Genesis P-Orridge. It draws upon Third Culture sciences and conceptual worldviews for Social Engineering, Values Systems Alignment, and Culture Jamming purposes. An important example of macro-historical memetic engineering analysis explaining how domination, patriarchy, war and violence are culturally programmed is Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1988), which outlines her Dominator and Partnership Culture thesis. The savvy memetic engineer is able to isolate, study, and subtly manipulate the underlying values systems, symbolic balance and primal atavisms that unconsciously influence the individual psyche and collective identity.

Until the last sentence, the entire paragraph is filled with Marxist syllogisms and references. And the last sentence paints a portrait of a fantasy wizard of memetics who has mastered all the unknowable variables of meme systems, human nature, and a world of social networks, who uses scientific calculations to design perfectly effective meme systems, thereby producing a tailored, perfected human society. How perfectly Marxist it is. Lenin and Trotsky would agree 100% with the concept of engineering society to triumph in the finale with a socialist utopia. But it is impossible to learn the unknowable and create perfect memes. And the first part of the paragraph is full of Marxist theory masquerading as facts in search of memetic implementation.

In other words, the Marxist approach to memetic engineering presumes the memes will be Marxist memes of class struggle, central planning, atheism, social Darwinism, and fascist alliances of proletariats against the productive bourgeoisie, and that the engineer's job is to develop a method to propagate the memes. The engineer must not be attached to the meme. The Marxist approach violates this rule.

Techniques for the design, propagation, and measurement of memes would include, among others, pragmatic techniques of neurolinguistic programming and basic economic (freakonomic) research. The desirability of memes can be measured objectively by attaching monetary value to them. The way I see it, research will follow from there without much trickery being necessary.

For an example of a self-sustaining but hazardous meme system see the Dangerous Cult Detector. Imagine every one of the categories maxed out and you will have a pretty accurate framework for the totalitarian terror-societies of the recent past, and also for Al Qaeda's ideal Caliphate.

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