Group Fiction

More than one module in pk domains offered Jesus as an example of group fiction. My theory of macroinformation argues that all complex information is data interpreted. Shakespeare, were he among us, would have a priviledged position in interpreting Hamlet, but no matter what he said, I, and you too, could still have our own interpretation. I for one have watched famous authors revise their interpretation of their own play upon hearing my interpretation (Edward Albee with his Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, for example).

But no, the fundamentalists don't want that. They want the world to be black and white, true and false, with authorities right, the truth answerable to them! (That might be grand where the fundamentalists not always so wrong, so retrograde, so stupid, so ignorant ... about EVERYTHING!)Bill Maher, on Christianity:They make it up as they go along!I've already been cheated, defrauded, unpublished, interrupted, misrepresented, bankrupted ... blackballed ... arrested, censored; but I'm still talking: or trying to talk. The ill will of the religious fundamentalists though will pale compared to the ire of secular gullibles when I say that, similarly, our concepts of "freedom" and "democracy" and "education" are also group fictions.

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2009 06 07

Thinking of Horus, of Mithras, of other pre-Christian born-of-a-virgin martyred-then-resurrected god-saviors, it occurs to me, I shouldn't just be talking about group fiction, I should be talking about group plagiarism.

Oh but then we're all kleptocrats: we don't just steal land, steal women, steal gold, steal labor; we steal stories, religions, saviors, gods ... We steal ideas, we steal superstitions. Not even our stupidity is original.