Sticking together
Memetic
entanglement is a very interesting thing. There exist complexes of
ideas that are logically virtually unrelated but if you know what some
person thinks about some of these ideas, you can with very high
probability predict his opinion on the other ideas within that complex.
Some memes just seem to go hand in hand very naturally. For a trivial
example, consider feminism and opposition of nuclear power.
I was reminded of this when I found a Finnish poster "No attack on Iraq" dating from the beginning of the War on Iraq. So I decided to translate this poster for the amusement of my American readers. Translations of the names of the Finnish leftist organizations are mine, since right now I am too lazy to look up if they have official English-language names. Too bad that I couldn't see what this collective organization looks like, but its members probably aren't that different from the people depicted in Zombietime photo archive.
I was reminded of this when I found a Finnish poster "No attack on Iraq" dating from the beginning of the War on Iraq. So I decided to translate this poster for the amusement of my American readers. Translations of the names of the Finnish leftist organizations are mine, since right now I am too lazy to look up if they have official English-language names. Too bad that I couldn't see what this collective organization looks like, but its members probably aren't that different from the people depicted in Zombietime photo archive.
No attack on Iraq. Includes: Arab Nations Friendship League, Anti-Military Committee, Attac, Women in Developing Countries Co-operation, Greenpeace, Red Youth Circle of Helsinki, Sadankomitea, Independent Left of Helsinki University, The Finnish Section of The International Federation of Iraq Refugees, Iraqi Women Association of Finland, The Finnish Section of Iran and Iraq Communist Party, Weeping Women, Association for Organization of Iraq Communist Workers, Educators for Peace, The Social Work Committee of the Church, Communist Youth League, Communists, Loviisa Peace Forum, Doctors for Social Responsibility, Women For Peace, Women Against Nuclear Power, Women's International Peace and Freedom League, Artists For Peace, Social Responsibility of Psychologists, Peace For Kurds Forum, For Peace and Socialism - Communist Worker's Party, Peace Pipe, Food Not Bombs Helsinki, Communist Party of Finland, Social Democratic Women, Social Democratic Youth, Socialist League, Finland's Democratic Lawyers, The Christian Peace Movement of Finland, Peace Movement of Finland - United Nations, Peace Defenders of Finland, Swedish Friends of Freedom, Technology to Serve Life, Leftist Youth, Green Youth And Students, Women In Black.
I wonder how you could possibly parody these people. Note also that there is at least one organization of the Lutheran Church of Finland within the mix. This is not at all that surprising.
If there are things that seems to exist together with high probability, there must be some hidden variable which explains this.
The question is what is this variable? Maybe it is some ability like "disinterest of objective reality". Raw intelligence is also strong candidate.
Posted by Peter | 11:55 PM
Peter,
Yesterday I happened to reread a column by John Derbyshire from October 3rd, 2000 (http://www.olimu.com/
WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/
MarchingMorons.htm) which is relevant to this. The core paragraph is:
"Where, then, do you find political good sense, either of the right or the left? My own experience has been that you find it all over. Less of it in some groups, notably in both tails of the bell curve: seriously stupid people are stupid about politics, too; so are seriously smart people. (So that it might actually make more sense to restrict the franchise to the 50 per cent of the population with I.Q. between 90 and 110). More of it, I think, in people who work close to reality — the reality, I mean, that the world gives you nothing worth having unless paid in the currency of sweat, struggle, persistence, boredom, frequent failure and occasional disaster. More of it in people with commonplace tastes. As Robert Conquest asked rhetorically: Tsar Nicholas I went to the opera, while Disraeli went to the races. Whose politics were the more civilized? More of it in Anglo-Saxon countries: how many of us, living in foreign parts, have tried without success to keep at bay the feeling that our host nation’s politics is infantile? Beyond these rather rough generalities, I doubt that political good sense correlates with anything."
Posted by frej wasastjerna | 3:51 AM