From: dgross@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Dave Gross)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.drugs,sci.skeptic
Subject: The Kingdom of Ideas
Keywords: Work in progress
Date: 1 Jan 93 20:56:32 GMT
Reply-To: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Followup-To: alt.folklore.urban
Organization: Mousebat, Follicle, Goosecreature, Ampersand, Spong, Wapcaplet,                 Looseliver, Vendetta & Pang

WORK IN PROGRESS:
"The Kingdom of Ideas"
Copyright (c) 1992 Dave Gross

	If ideas have lives of their own, our knowledge of those lives is
more primative by far than the unscientific theories of biology held by our
most misled and ignorant ancestors.

	It was a long gap, after all, between the discovery of the principles
of reproduction by some prehistoric thinker, and the discovery of the
principles of heredity and evolution in the mid 19th century.  And it was yet
another gap before the physical cogs of heredity -- genes -- were discovered.

	So it should come as little surprise that ideas -- which are, after
all, more flighty, ethereal things than plants and animals -- have remained
unstudied for so long.

	Their natural environment is our minds, and if this makes them
difficult to isolate under a microscope or to shoot with tranquilizer darts,
then they may at least be studied in the wild.

	It is my hope and belief that naturalists of the kingdom of ideas
will discover that scientific laws rule the kingdom -- laws similar to the
ones that with firm yet invisible authority rule the more corporeal lives
we eat for dinner or take on blind dates.

	In this kingdom of living ideas, some analogues to the animal kingdom
present themselves.  Religions are huge and remarkably successful examples of
living ideas.  Christianity, for instance, has several sub-species that we
know of as sects -- each one designed by impersonal forces as much as by
patriarchs and prophets, and each one specialized for its environment (again,
in the mental terrain, weathered by culture) as surely as Darwin's finches
evolved specialized beaks.

	If religions are the elephants and whales of the kingdom of ideas --
language is the DNA.  Language is what allows ideas to reproduce, to
multiply, to mutate, to evolve.

	Mutation, though, is not quite so random and unguided as in biology,
in which we rely on sexual reproduction and cosmic rays to bring new traits
to play on the evolutionary stage.  Using language, humans /direct/ the
evolution of ideas (though not conscious, necessarily, of the separate lives
of their expressions) -- often deliberately mutating them in such a way as to
promote their reproduction.

	Some ideas -- I call them "information viruses" -- take advantage of
our idea-reproducing and -enhancing abilities to spread like wildfire through
the idea kingdom.  You may know these viruses as "folklore" or "urban legends"
or "rumors."  We've all heard many, and we've all helped to spread a few.
Here are some common ones:

	"Have you heard about Richard Gere and the gerbil?"

	"There are spider eggs in Bubble Yum chewing gum."

	"Drug fiends are putting LSD in kids' tattoo transfers."

	I, and maybe half a dozen others around the world have developed the
peculiar obsession of tracking the LSD-tattoo rumor as it has travelled in its
many incarnations from city to city and even from country to country.  This
legend is special because unlike many others it has left a stunning paper
trail.  The mode of reproduction for this virus is the mimeograph or the xerox
machine.

	Because this virus spreads through a conveniently tangible medium,
the rare enthusiasts of this sort of thing have been afforded a great
opportunity to observe mutation, evolution and migration of an idea in its
natural habitat.  From this temporal cross-section of an information virus,
naturalists of the kingdom of ideas can begin to gain insight into the laws
that rule that kingdom.

{Unfinished work in progress -- if you are one of the "rare enthusiasts of
this sort of thing," please send e-mail with your thoughts, insights, and
criticism.  I'd like to expand this essay into the beginning of a science.}
-- 
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    "C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir
           ,                ,         ^
     imagine que la virginite pouvait etre une vertu."  -- Voltaire