The Sky So Big and Black by Barnes John

Author:Barnes, John [Barnes, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781429970679
Google: tpzvKhLxQbsC
Amazon: 0765342227
Goodreads: 493909
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2002-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

15

What a lot is wrapped up in that little word, meme. As a word, it's about 125 years old.

Once upon a time, long ago and very far away, a scientist without much grasp of philosophy set out to cut a figurative Gordian knot. Much as Alexander did when he cut the real one, he got all sorts of applause from people who didn't understand that the whole point was to untie it, and that demonstrating that you could cut a rope did not demonstrate any superiority over the knot-tier, any more than punching a grand master in the nose makes you the better chess-player; ever since then philosophy has been fond of the Gordian knot metaphor, because it covers cases like Sam Johnson kicking that stone so nicely.

So the word meme persisted as an annoying way to label an argument without answering it, every bit as annoying as Freudian terminology, neurotransmitter explanations, sociobiology, and the Briggs-Meyers were in their day. If you don't want to answer someone's argument, or (more likely) you can't, you say that they believe what they believe because they have that belief which is nothing but a belief that they got from somewhere, only you use some synonyms for "belief," and you claim to know what thoughts they didn't voice, and you finish up by making the somewhere a disreputable enough place to discredit the whole thing. As in, you don't agree with me because you are authoritarian, and authoritarianism is nothing but anal-retentiveness, which you got from your mother having paid too much attention to your poop chute. Or as in, authoritarianism is nothing but a dysfunctional drive to mate by force which you got from an inferior set of genes that hasn't worked its way out of the modern population yet. Or in the case at hand, as in, because you've got an authoritiarianism meme which you caught by listening to another authoritarian (more or less the way you'd get a cold if he sneezed on you).

I hear the door close out in the corridor; the last person other than me has gone home. I pull open the drawer, get out the bottle, and wave a salute to the mirror. God, I look like too little real work, too much evil work, too little rest and too much idleness. Naturally my face looks like hell. During her recovery, when Teri got to know me for the second time, she used to suggest that I just have it ironed.

I miss her.

The alternative to all the theories that explain too much—and therefore can never be refuted—is behaviorism, which explains too little. As to why Aunt Edna thinks the bugs under the sink sing to her, behaviorism offers the helpful note that the investigator's notes say that she says that she does.

Every prosecuting attorney, and therefore everyone who works for any prosecuting attorney—such as me— has to be a behaviorist to work well. This is part of why I am such a lousy scientist and content myself with being an artist.

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