MEMBERSHIP IS KILLING US

Fake Blood, 

Real Louisiana Swamp Magick,

& the Perils of Tribalism 

>> The sexy rural town of Bon Temps in HBO's True Blood soap opera is from Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries.  Scientists in Japan create a synthetic blood which satisfies the physical hunger of the Vampires.  Relieved, they come out of the closet to join the human population.  A hot dark situation.  

Vampires are potent social symbols.  They represent drug use (addictive blood), gay rights(alternative sexuality), harsh racism (humans vs. mere humanoids) and they also carry us away into the elusive mysteries of deep biology -- longevity, healing, amplified senses, psychic powers and obscure evolutionary possibilities.  Thus the undead blood-drinkers elicit and illicitly vast web of subliminal responses.  It makes for engaging television -- but what about the moral message of the show?

Moral message: membership status is toxic. 

Vampires don't need to kill humans but they keep doing it compulsively -- in obedience to their Old Laws which treat humans like cattle.  The nation-like behaviour of the Vampires is constantly generating sadistic torment and brutal predation.  Humans are no better.  These good rural folk use their sense of historical nationalism to justify oppression, exclusion, torture and murder of vampires... and whomever associates with them.  Membership > horror.

Obviously we need to participate deeply with each other.  The old "us"-feeling should never be neglected.  The point, rather, is that an authentic sense of intersubjective cultural membership is quite distinct from anything like tribal or national membership.  Inbreeding exclusively with close family-members produces genetic weakness -- not purity & conservation of strengths. Religious and ethnic nationalism spill constantly over into genocides.  Tribal hillbillies in every nation are a threat to the peace and security of the entire human civilization.  

And backwards-thinking businesses always want you to REGISTER, JOIN UP, BECOME A MEMBER before they will actually allow you to participate in their piddly little website.  

Why do corporations, religions, and educational institutions have such psychosis about "getting and increasing membership?"  Is a clever result of their sublime pragmatism or are they just running old, retarded, minimally-adequate social instincts that were learned under the millennia of Agricultural Imperialism?

Look, we know that smarter group decisions are produced by the greatest formal variety of participants who can demonstrate a low but necessary skill set -- but we don't let coherent, ethical, informed Kenyans vote in the Canadian federal election.  Why not?  Instead of selecting voters based on demonstrated participatory-capacity, we use historical registery of members (i.e. names of people certified to live directly relative to the beuracratic adminstration of th e north half of North America, excluding Alaska).  It is no surprise then that Canada -- like every other nation -- often gets very dumb results out of its social democracy-machine.  

• Like Kierkegaard, we must critique any Christendom that consists merely in those people who mark the box beside "Christian" on the official polling questionaire.
  

We humans have been using written symbols for a very long time and it may have helped us to go a little crazy.  We over-value "on paper" proofs.  We ignore the obvious foolishness of doctors whose ability is based on a small, framed piece of paper.  It seems to us that we have no better system for validation!  So we hire inadequate employees because we check their history of being registered as certified as a member of given community of practictioners... rather than actual capacity tests.  

What would better validation tests look like?  We need to figure this out.  One intriguing example is the cyber-guardian for website access -- typing an obscured set of numbers & letters to prove you are human rather than machine.  Although this difference may be quickly eroding, it is certainly an example of a real-time skill upon which participation-access is based... rather than rotely asking to see a symbol which marks you as a member of the historically valid group.  

Now maybe they'll stop asking us to JOIN UP!

Blood-suckers.