[FRIAM] What should we do?

[Steven A Smith]

Cancer is an interesting metaphor here, and I find it somewhat apt.

I am not a big fan of allopathic medicine in the first place, so would 
prefer to look to naturopathic remedies that involve a combination of 
symptom relief, lifestyle change, stress reduction and general systemic 
support.   The specific threat of "cancer" aside, these are all things 
one would wish on even a healthy person, no?

I sometimes feel that the bulk of our modern maladies (technological 
such as resource depletion, pollution and systemic disturbances, or 
sociological such as fascism, totalitarianism, xenophobia, misogyny) are 
nothing more than the consequence of our last ham-fisted technological 
or sociological *fix* of a previous malady... a domino of pain and 
suffering so far removed from cause to effect that we don't bother to 
recognize the patterns and interrupt them.

Extremism does seem to be implicated in our social problems, but it is 
not clear to me that closing churches or mosques will solve the problem, 
it seems almost as if this is like crushing a tumor and not expecting 
the result to be metastasis and systemic spread.  Don't our invasions in 
the middle east seem a bit like that?  What has been decried as 
"surgical" (really) has been more like blunt-force trauma.

We may have just replaced a semi-competent, but under-equipped surgeon 
with an untrained but eager butcher with inappropriate tools (i.e. his 
forming cabinet).   Bernie would perhaps have been the naturapath I was 
wishing for?   And HIllary?  Highly skilled and well equipped but maybe 
not as interested in the patient's well being as one would hope.


On 1/5/17 11:55 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Interesting. Unfortunately the cancer of fascism (Trumpism?) has 
> already broke out in the US now, the only way to stop the cancer of 
> Nazism in Nazi Germany was to destroy the whole country by "surgery" 
> and bombardment. Good luck.
>
> Chemotherapy means killing the fast replicating cells, this would 
> perhaps roughly correspond to closing mosques of extremists und 
> churches of aggressive sects (since they are the stem cells of 
> cultural cancer). Or to prohibit all organizations like alt-right 
> which grow extremely fast.
>
> -Jochen
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> Date: 1/5/17 20:18 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What should we do?
>
> *“*The early stages of this make me think of cancers.  The reason they 
> are so difficult to deal with is that, for the most part, the cell 
> populations are not completely disintegrated and non-functional.  Most 
> of their systems still function very robustly, which seems to be the 
> cause of different cancers' seemingly producing quite robust 
> phenotypes, even after the putative triggering problem has been 
> knocked out.  Those systems have just been re-directed by control 
> signals of the wrong kind.”
>
> I know you hate abuse of metaphors, but you started it!
>
> Cytotoxic compounds:   Remove tax deductions for dependents?  How does 
> that happen with a conservative government?
>
> Surgery or Radiation:   Litigation (ACLU, EFF, SPLC, etc.).   Other 
> things but keeping in mind Gandhi’s leadership.
>
> Immunotherapy:  Taking back state legislatures.   Fire people up at 
> the local level.
>
> Gene therapy:  Education, propaganda.
>
> Hormone therapy:  Take away the money and red meat.   Work behind the 
> scenes.  Get people at risk out of harm’s way.  Refocus on work and 
> investments decoupled from government.
>
> Small-molecule drugs and monoclonal antibodies:   Tease apart the 
> constituencies and identify risks from some of them, e.g. tag the 
> alt-right as Nazis and dangerous.   Divide and conquer.
>
> Controlling signaling / stopping transport:  Stopping fake news
>
>
>
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