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Topic: correct me if i'm wrong... (Read 1387 times) |
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Matt Arnold
Magister
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The Electric Monk
     
  
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Re:correct me if i'm wrong...
« Reply #1 on: 2004-05-25 15:36:49 » |
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Ruben,
You've made an important comment. There are several answers.
The first answer is that in our judgement, it's rational to practice these three virtues and avoid these three sins. A dogmatic stance, on the other hand, would not necessarily care about this.
Secondly, we allow people to question and discuss them. That includes Virians who are already living this way and want to continue to do so, and it includes non-Virians who don't like the list. We've changed and revised the list over the years to improve it, which is not allowed to happen with dogma.
Third, traditional religions expect all people at all times to obey their rules and condemn those who don't do so. The Virian virtues and senseless sins simply define whether you are a Virian or not. I think it's OK not to be a Virian; it's nobody's loss but theirs if they don't want to be. Yes, I know that most Virians (including me) would not admire any person who breaks them, with no regard whether that person breaking them is a Virian or not. However, the people in the world don't have to do anything Virus says and most of us wouldn't force them.
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He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
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David Lucifer
Archon
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Enlighten me.
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Re:correct me if i'm wrong...
« Reply #3 on: 2004-05-29 12:56:27 » |
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I think Matt's answer is excellent. I would only add that the sins and virtues are part of the current Virian doctrine, which we define as articulated shared beliefs. I would say that dogma is what you get when you hold doctrine beyond questioning, and that is something that we explicitly avoid here at the CoV.
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Matt Arnold
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Posts: 92
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Rate Matt Arnold
The Electric Monk
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Re:correct me if i'm wrong...
« Reply #5 on: 2004-06-01 17:10:00 » |
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David Lucifer's definition of the word "doctrine" is good. This is another important distinction. Here is how I like to phrase it. In the traditional religions, the congregation follows the church's doctrinal statement. In Virus, the church's doctrinal statement follows the congregation.
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He believed in a door. The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
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deadletter-j
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How many Engstrom's does it take?
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Re:correct me if i'm wrong...
« Reply #6 on: 2005-01-26 22:46:37 » |
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I think this gets to an interesting point about identity/meme-sharing.
Where exactly do we put the line between 'us' (Virians) and those who are 'not us' when, at the same time, we see that all of this is one system together?
Consider this - I love this metaphor -
some genomes are swimming around, synthesized out of amino acids. One of them develops a sensitivity to the presence of certain other genomes. It starts changing its behavior as a result. The other genomes begin noticing the first genome by the first genome's actions upon them. This sensitizes them to the stimuli.
Bam! The whole system just went up in complexity.
A herd of sheep has one sheep that can see color a little better than the rest. It notices food where the color is a little richer, and eats there. The actions of that genome, enacted upon the entire flock, begin to shape the flock's behavior about eating. After awhile, even insensitive sheep understand, by group movements, that some forms of grass are better to eat. Now the entire herd creature has gone
Bam! one level more complex.
In our case - that is to say, everyone on the planet who is having similar conversations about consciousness, understanding, learning, listening, action, etc - we are meta. One level removed in complexity. Meta goes both ways. Our actions remove us from the populace. Our removal acts upon the populace. Our conversation returns information about the world back to the populace and
Bam! The whole system gets one level more complex.
The Church of the Virus has articulated several key word memes that either enhance information cascade (Virtues) or damp down information cascade (Sins). Since we are here because we have noticed a pattern in information flow, we choose to use a positively coded word meme to define one (Virtues) and a negatively encoded word meme to define the other (Sins).
I think that, at root, we know that there are two sides of every system.
The question is, what is the antinode to the Church of the Virus? Is there a conscious articulation of Apathy? Is there a Church of Not Caring?
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Hijacking everything ever knew about anything.
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Logged
Finally, a religion for the irreligious. 
