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Do you see
what happened here?
On Thursday,
November 14, 2002, lwhitling@lloydwhitling.com wrote:
"I offered a
free copy of my own book, ISBN 0-595-24429-7 THE COMPLETE UNIVERSE OF
MEMES, to our local PBS station with no response. Am I condemned to
obscurity, is this a form of elitism, or are you all just too busy to
respond?"
And PBS
answered:
"With regard
to your book, the Evolution site was completed in late 2001. New entries
are added only periodically, and only if they are vetted by a scientific
review group and are considered to add significantly to the body of
knowledge relating to evolutionary biology. Our researchers track
potential new resources by combing scientific journals, Web sites, and
similar sources. While the producers of this site, WGBH Boston, did not
receive a copy of your book, please be advised that we do not respond to
self-submissions."
The Complete
Universe of Memes
Reality 101
ISBN
0-595-24429-7
ISBN 0-595-21834-2
Learn the secrets of the universe.
Did they pass to me from the mouth of God?—No! The secrets to
understanding human existence abound in our midst as readily available
information that anyone with enough interest, enough dedication, and
enough time can compile. I had the interest and the dedication and, over a
period longer than half a century I had time enough to watch events unfold
before my astonished and delighted eyes. Only during the last twenty years
did science set forth answers to dilemmas my own explorations into this
domain had early on unearthed.
Maybe you have no idea of the amazing, powerful concepts
science has made available to you in recent years. Concepts like
evolution. Evolution is backed by the force of factual truth. Those who
advance it do so because they can prove it. They can build on it. They can
make predictions using it, and watch them prove true. They can find new
uses for it, and apply them with wondrous results. They can develop
amazing medicines because of it, and heal your body. Facts are on their
side. They can show you why they feel excited about their discoveries. All
the other side has is post-proofing, hearsay and generalities, bluster,
and claims of divine provenance they cannot back up with facts, and
accusations of some sort of ‘conspiracy’ at work ‘against’ them that they
also cannot back up with facts, and 'facts' they have contrived. Their
side has produced no task that their version can be put to.
Technology has opened a world of revealing communications
anyone can access. Science follows rules that you and I can learn and,
when we properly apply them, new worlds open up that vested interests have
kept hidden. Technology has wrenched science from the hands of dedicated
scholars and placed it into the common man’s domain. Elitism is
finished!—but only if the common person takes it upon himself to follow
suit and accept this most precious of all gifts. You have been granted the
privilege and ability to read and write, solve common mathematical
problems, and to conduct the business required of your own life. Your
brain can use those tools to ponder the conundrums which seem to face you
every day, and to work out the conflicts of reason inherent to our
haphazard solutions to life’s problems.
Such conflicts work against our very personal interests and
the interests according to which we serve those we claim to love. Some
seeds of this undue conflict are planted in us as youths by vested
interests that see us as being servants to them only, and later grow into
weeds whose roots siphon away the results of our hard work, which we think
to be dedicated to those we love.
Read this book. There are no doctrines in it. Amaze yourself, when you
later discover how closely your independent investigations of its
propositions will resemble the conclusions drawn up by others in their own
places, in their own times.
Science is nothing more than human curiosity determined to
be satisfied, hard at work while guided by a simple set of rules and
principles you can read about in this book. What will happen if you
honestly apply those rules and principles to your own circumstances? What
might you gain?—or lose if you refuse? Your choice is between being a
scientist or a victim.
Infiltration, The Science Meme Conundrum:
The enterprise called ‘science’ has grown into a complex tree of endeavors
whose branches sometimes cannot be recognized as related parts of a whole.
My book was not truly about evolution, and so it did not fit their
curriculum. It is about memes. Memes have no DNA to be sampled so those
who guard the hard-won, precious concepts of science can learn what family
generated any certain idea or expression, so ‘purity of origin’ cannot be
so easily verified as in genetics. Memes can get contaminated, and the
contamination is sometimes impossible to refute. The concept of ‘memes’ as
generated by Dawkins, then furthered by Blackmore, Lynch, Wilbur and all,
seems very similar to a psychiatric term, ‘complex’. Blackmore calls it a
'memeplex' when groups of them work together. The common person's name is
'program'.
To apply that term to the elitist practices generated by
those engaged at protecting the memes of science, one would state they are
furthering an edifice complex, by which it is heavily suggested that you
cannot be a true scientist (that is, a member of the faculty (priesthood)
) who can properly engage in the spreading of the science memes, without
years spent inside their brick, block, and mortar edifices engaged in
studies that result in a diploma. This practice looks suspicious to the
very people to whom they hope to present a convincing image and persuade
with the rightness of scientific theories. Science information becomes an
us/them process, and seldom ever involves "we". New information, ways of
looking at things, and literature about science, must be presented by a
group of his peers to whatever body one would hope to impress. This is one
time when ‘being without peer’ is seen to be a mark against a person.
As one who generates controversial literature as a result
of my own inquiries into science’s edicts, I am apt to complain but, being
too aware of the nature of what they are up against, it would serve my own
best interests, and those who may be like me in future endeavors, to offer
a suggestion or two, the application of which may serve to alleviate undue
restraint imposed as a result of such aversion-inspiring practices. I call
them that because they serve to demote the spread of the very information
scientists should hope to promote. Yes, it is certain one can find
magazines about science, or watch documentaries on educational TV, if one
feels interested. Have you seen the ways those things get written? Have
you, as an ordinary person, tried to approach them with a suggestion or a
comment? Why act in ways that prevent the arousal of that kind of interest
or the furthering of it? Many of the approaches science takes to protect
itself directly offend rather than inspire. That is why the results of
science’s activities can be all around us—We are immersed it!—while
science gets no credit for them. Meanwhile, the very scientists who
complain loudest about science’s lack of presence within the general
populations’ minds, are those who practice the elitism that has evolved as
science’s ‘face to the nations’.
Thousands of books get written every year, of which a large
number purport to have some kind of scientific derivation. My own books,
Reality 101 (ISBN 0-595-21834-2) and The Complete Universe of
Memes (ISBN 0-595-24429-7), must be included. I would suggest that a
promotional arm of science be set up to review and rate such books as get
presented to them, with each work standing on its own merits with no
regard for its author’s ‘qualifications’ and, perhaps, publish a document
(that could eventually grow into a book) sold on a regular schedule to
announce their findings, and stating the methods and criteria used as a
basis for their ratings. This might seem to be an onerous undertaking.
Maybe so: Look at the setup religions support, and the billions of
tax-free dollars spent in an ongoing process for that support, and you’ll
have an idea of how onerous it ought to be. Is good science worth
any less? Can good scientists learn to promote science as a cause worthy
of public patronage?
I should think, if their brains function as capably as they
portray, they ought to try!
Copyright ©2002 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights
reserved. Visit http://lloydwhitling.com for permissions and to find more
free stuff.
 Reality
101 by Lloyd H. Whitling (paperback - September 2002)
"We believe
Reality 101 is one of the best independently published books on
the market." Rec'd 3/4/06 in a letter from Airleaf Publishing and
Bookselling. Buy it, read it, and see for yourself. |
