Free Will and Memes

In the heart of all peoples on Earth is the desire to be free. It rages in us; an imperative that cannot be ignored. This is the most powerful tool of the individual, for it allows him the will to seize his destiny for himself. The foremost objective and desire of the animal is to survive, but man has the rare ability to want to be free. Although Biblical allegories here are obvious, I would say that my more ideal Eve would have immediately killed the sly-talking Snake in the Tree of Knowledge for being an obvious subverter in the Garden of Eden. His need for rhetoric revealed his dishonesty. Eve then would have happily eaten from the tree of knowledge until she could get at the charlatan pretending to be God that wrote the story in the first place.

It is seen frequently in our society today, with most aspects of pop culture being based on some form of 'liberation'. Whether it be the sexual revolution of the 60's, the social justice movement of the turn of the 21^st century, or any number of political movements be they Marxist or Fascist. It is by manipulating the innate human characteristic of wanting to be free that we are unequivocally controlled. For this purpose there are endless distractions – music and film in the form of rebellion, a myriad of ideological positions to set yourself apart from those around you, business opportunities to make you rich. The problem is apparent – man cannot be free if he does not know what he truly values.

 I will sum it up succinctly: freedom is that which Man generally feels comfortable doing while he is completely free of all rhetoric, all ideology and all negative influence. His actions then are based on true necessity. Why should anything that is true need to be fluffed up by any sort of rhetorical infrastructure? Has humanity has not lasted this long without feeling the need to attach ourselves to these ephemeral metaphysical truisms that only seem to divide us? The fact is that humans act in their most natural and peaceful capacities when their minds are not poisoned by what we now know as memes. Revered in ancient times, prophecized and elucidated by Stirner in the 20^th century and propelled to the mainstream by Dawkins in the 21^st, the meme is the ultimate weapon used against the human mind. The automatic transference of useless, toxic and corrupted information via the media has become the paramount problem facing humanity in its lifetime.