so i’ve been turning over a framework and i want the board to try and break itcore claim: one of the main things cultures do with myths, stories, and even memes is train the capacity to treat invisible shit as real. duty, irreversible consequence, other minds, long-term outcomes, institutional claims, etc. call it the core faculty.memes are the micro version. a good meme compresses an invisible pattern into something that suddenly feels real and shareable. a dead meme is one that lost the ability to bind attention. the same muscle is being used at different scales.when a culture’s major narrative systems stop allowing real endings and keep everything in permanent extractable suspension (soft resets, legacy milking, no permanent death of forms), that faculty gets less exercise and starts to atrophy. effects show up way outside entertainment.for low-information people almost all of society is invisible and second-hand, so the same faculty is required for the social world itself to feel binding.spectrum:low end starts looking a lot like clinical sociopathy (future doesn’t bind, other interiors don’t fully register, only immediate visible consequences feel real)high/unconstrained end produces conspiracy, phobia, delusion, and also suicidal empathy (too much unobserved shit feels mandatory)healthy band is strong enough to bind to real invisible structures but still reality-testablemetaphor and counterfactuals are the main operating system. people who can’t answer basic “how would you feel if…” hypotheticals are showing damage to the same muscle.full healthy cycle is rare in modern industrial myth systems. best fictional model i’ve found is the edge chronicles (quint = buoyant era, twig = necessary cut, rook = rebuild under diminished conditions, nate = later stewardship). most franchises refuse the cut and just keep propping up the rotting form.long post-death copyright + asset-management logic are structural accelerants. they freeze stories as permanent property and reduce the need for living transmission.examples that fit hard: halo (full cycle from bungie core to tv series soft-replacement), star wars post-2015 default behaviour, mcu post-endgame, the way failed specific climate predictions rarely get cleanly retired, etc.exceptions exist (andor is the obvious recent one) but they look like temporary strong stewardship inside a machine that didn’t change its default.go on then. where does this break?
It breaks off in your bussy, queer.
>>25422868nice one. good thread. i feel it.i don't really get your theory of the cycle, of how myths/memes are first functional and then decay and die or shamble on undead. is it something like:(1) compelling fiction created (compelling because corresponding to reality, or because aesthetically charged, or some interrelation of the two, or what?);(2) audience are thereby trained to become invested in (a) the specific concepts dramatised in the fiction, like other minds and duty, and/or (b) abstractions in general, as you suggest with the idea of metaphor and counterfactuals; (3) fiction is now no longer compelling (because no longer realistic? because aesthetically stale? because it doesn't have a satisfying ending?);(4) if the fiction isn't retired, the audience no longer have a compelling stimulus that will reinforce the faculty acquired in step 2, and so the faculty atrophies.is that right? could do with clarification imo.(sidenote: i recommend looking up deleuze and guattari's regimes of signs, if you haven't already and can stomach french guys. their savage and despotic regimes seem to correspond to the low and high ends of your spectrum. the savage regime encodes meaning directly on bodies. e.g. you get ritually scarified when you come of age, you get forcibly mutilated if you transgress a taboo, you ink the symbols of your clan across your face. this comes from nietzsche's idea of the prehistory of morals, all the torture and cruelty required to sear into our animal flesh a sense of conscience and social memory before they were internalised. it's all local and visible and concrete. but with the despotic regime meaning is referred not to visible bodies around you but to the body of the despot hidden far off in his palace, who issues orders 'in the name of the king', binds his subjects by an abstract sense of allegiance, and instills in them a constant paranoia - they never know when a palace messenger might arrive with their death warrant signed and sealed on account of unknowable kafkaesque crimes against the sovereign.)(sidenote 2: also check this out https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic)(sidenote 3: something smelled foul so i ran your post through pangram and got 100% ai generated. learn 2 rite u stupid bitch.)
>>25423088my main reason for using ai is multiple people telling me I ramble into incoherency, but you are right that I need to learn how to properly write, let me do so here, apologies for confusion I may cause1. dependant on the audience to a degree, I would say a mix of matching existing bonds the audience already accept, entertainment value(however a person defines that for themselves will impact it), and agreement or resonance with the orientation it suggests. of course the exact ratios will vary, and honestly the strength of the core faculty itself will shift these ratios, a stronger core faculty will value perceived emotional weight over consistency for example2.I would argue it's both, the specific concepts and the general ability, it's like learning a skill for immediate use and then finding it works for other applications3.I would bring up the lack of those factors in point one is a part of it, but I believe that the fiction no longer offering proper continuity or completion is the most major. if the audience believes a satisfying ending is coming they have the investment to keep using the core faculty, and with a cathartic and instructional ending it can be moved from narrative to lesson4. I think you've got the ideain regards to Deleuze and Guattari I have not looked into them and despite my natural british distain for the French, your explanation makes me think I need to. oh and I'll definitely read the substack too, thank you
>all lowercaseIt defeats itself, if you have to write this drivel, you have time for proper punctuation.
>>25423088Obviously not OP but I think his primary concern is with the trend in modern pop culture to endlessly churn out sequels and, in service of that, leave stories on cliffhangers or with loose threads to be explored in a hypothetical next installment. You could probably deride OP for not engaging with "real" or "significant" literature or whatever, but he makes an interesting point. If these are the main ways the average person imbibes culture and thus cultural values and norms, then a lack of definitive conclusions and claims regarding these values would weaken their establishment. This then inhibits the average person's ability to construct a coherent model of the world and even to reason abstractly. >>25422868I wouldn't say you're wrong, per se, but the degree to which you attribute ideological development to pop culture is probably overstated. People take in more of this fundamental stuff, and at a younger age than they do with most pop culture, from their parents and later their education systems. Children learn duty and consequences from mimicry of their parents and simply through discipline. On scales larger than the individual, I'd say your theory has a stronger basis, mainly regarding how a lack of "real endings" shapes public discourse. I think it's true that pop media is tending to avoid definitive endings for reasons that are economic, political (avoid strongly siding with one group over another), or cultural (moral greyness and "nuance" is regarded as sophisticated). It's plausible that that would make consumers generally more mentally noncommittal and also more reliant on past media which is not allowed to conclude or be replaced, which would lead to a wider stagnation of culture. It's harder to extend that to the proposition that this weakens people's "core faculty" itself and not merely artistic/cultural manifestations of it.
