Nobody debated the reality of gods to whom they sacrificed first born male children.

Nothing much changed in life, the seasons followed the path predicted by the priests who performed the calculations, the rituals and sacrifices, as decreed by authorities or demanded by gods.

The collective social environment, daily life, interacted causally with metaphysical reality,

Sumer lived by the code of Hammurabi, citizens paid taxes, made bloody sacrifices and prospered between calamities if fortunate enough to possess “me”.

A me is a competence conferred by a god. The me are social capacities, instruction sets, programs foundational to civilization.

A me is the knowledge necessary to construct a musical instrument and the ability to play it. A me might also be a means of Holy purification, skill in Metalworking or Scribeship. Over a hundred me are mentioned in later Sumerian mythology, though only 60 remain to us today; they are listed here.

Aggregated me form a culture genome, each individual me a cultural competency necessary to the survival of the civilization. The me have a peculiar form of delivery: a Nam Shub; a verbal or written incantation, the Nam Shub of Enki, a Sumerian god, is “both a story of linguistic disintegration and the cause of that disintegration.”

“Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion,

There was no hyena, there was no lion,

There was no wild dog, no wolf,

There was no fear, no terror,

Man had no rival.

In those days, the land Shubur-Hamazi,

Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the me of princeship,

Uri, the land having all that is appropriate,

The land Martu, resting in security,

The whole universe, the people well cared for,

To Enlil in one tongue gave speech.

Then the lord defiant, the prince defiant, the king defiant,

Enki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy,

The lord of wisdom, who scans the land,

The leader of the gods,

The lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom,

Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it,

Into the speech of man that had been one. “

A Nam Shub is a text which specific properties is self-reflexive, it’s about itself, and which can’t merely be read or listened to, it must also be obeyed, as is the song the Sirens sung:

Sweet coupled airs we sing.

No lonely seafarer

Holds clear of entering

Our green mirror.

(Homer, The Odyssey, Book 12, 173-176)

The me share similarities with the antigens in our immune system which warn of and describe enemy viruses, ordering the construction of antibody weapons to destroy them.

STRESS AND SOCIAL CONTROL

IO uses demographic targeting, with a mathematical model of decision making called Reflexive Control Theory which combined with the access afforded by insecure anonymous networks is able to exploit known human cognitive biases and to manipulate groups or individuals to dramatic effect, delivering curated information feeds to individuals or groups to promote ever greater fear uncertainty and doubt, aka FUD, and increasing levels of attendant stress.

Precise demographic targeting combined with reflexive control theory and adversary is able to manipulate group or individual information environment so people will voluntarily take actions including self- destructive action to individual and collective detriment.

Conditioned Reflexes and Psychiatry was published in Britain in 1941. Pavlov’s early work, for which had won the Nobel prize in 1903, had focused on digestion but for the last thirty years of his life Pavlov studied “higher nervous system function.” Specifically, the effects of stress on the brain.

Pavlov’s findings showed changes in brain function caused by extreme or abnormal stress activate a protective mechanism he called “transmarginal inhibition.” Pavlov identified three distinct, progressive phases of transmarginal inhibition:

1) The equivalent phase, in which powerful stimuli and weak stimuli produce the same response.

Example: Normal human beings, suffering from intense fatigue, frequently report little difference in their response to trivial or important life experiences. The breaking of a coffee cup or the death of a parent will produce similar reactions.

2) The paradoxical phase. In this condition a large stimulus produces little or no response, while a tiny stimulus produces a strong response.

Example: A affected group or individual might ignore a major catastrophe and respond vigorously to a trivial incident.

3) The ultra paradoxical phase. Here, positive conditioned responses switch to negative ones and negative ones become positive.

Example: A conversion experience dramatically changes individual orientation from skeptical or opposed to enthusiastic advocacy for an ideology previously forcefully rejected.

Summary: Prolonged stresses imposed on individuals or networked populations produce phased, cumulative defensive response in the brain resulting in behavioral changes. Individuals move through progressive phases, they become increasingly vulnerable to mass manipulation, social control systems, induced collective hysteria, and individuals or groups may enthusiastically embrace radical, formerly despised ideology.

COGNITIVE EXPLOITS

Contagious psychogenic illness or induced psychic epidemics

We humans imitate social behaviors and much imitated behavior is not learned but adopted unconsciously.

Social imitation is morally agnostic, imitated behavior can be a harmless mannerism or dangerous, irrational, genocidal or self-destructive worldview. Contagious self-replicating psychogenic illness can be trivially induced by common IW tactics.

Latahism is usually described as a Malaysian "culture bound" phenomena. Some social scientist believe imitative behaviors in latahs are related to the "startle response" as seen in Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Lawrence Osborne wrote… “The startle reflex is a universal one. When we are jolted by surprise, we tend to scream, shout obscenities or make involuntary gestures. And some of us are a lot jumpier than others. But with latahs, as sufferers are known, these reactions become prolonged to an extreme degree. In Malay village life, people who are susceptible to such exaggerated reactions are deliberately provoked further – through furtive pokes in the ribs or tin pots thrown behind their backs – to induce a frenzied startle-trance. Over time, latahs become so sensitive that trances can be triggered by a falling coconut. [Source: Lawrence Osborne, New York Times magazine, May 6, 2001)

While in the induced trance state, latah are extremely receptive to and obedient to suggestion. They will carry out complex tasks if so instructed. What is interesting is that the behaviors are

Stress induced:

“Across the river from the town center lies the sprawling suburb of Petra Jaya…In this neighborhood, a pair of old ladies have become known in the markets of Kuching for their latah antics. One of them is Serai, a frail 75-year-old. .. Thirty-five years ago, Serai explains, she was invited to join a wood chopping team of women in the forests outside Kuching… the other women constantly TEASED AND TORMENTED their inexperienced companion. "They poked and poked me," she recalls a little mournfully, "and I became latah."

“How can latah consistently strike two people at the exact same moment? It seems that Serai and Amin must have some control, even if they are unable to acknowledge it, over their affliction. And if they can remember what happens to them while in a trance state, then is it really latah? Is Michael Kenny right – that latah is more of a ritual than an illness?

Loud noises trigger the phenomena in a way similar to "shock induction," a mass hypnosis technique that exploits the extreme susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion in the immediate wake of a collectively traumatic event such as 9/11.

Syndromes very like latah, Geertz reported, exist in many other cultures. In rural parts of the Philippines, for instance, a nearly identical condition known as mali-mali is widespread. In Siberia, there is a hyperstartle complex known as myriachit, while in Thailand it is known as baah-ji and in Japan, imu. In the 1930's, scholars made a curious film about hyperstartling among the Ainu, an ethnic minority in northern Japan. The faded reels show Ainu women being startled, waving their arms like windmills and running around in a frenzy. A form of latah has even been recorded in medical literature, rather improbably, as with "the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine." Are these hyperstartle complexes different forms of latah, Geertz asked, or were they all unique syndromes? "

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It is trivial to exploit our human propensity for imitation, as in latah-phenomena, and use it to create unconscious self-replicating social behaviors in a culture for purposes of marketing or for social control. Such phenomena, ripe for exploitation would be ignored by legions of clinical and academic ‘brain science’ researchers, by advertising agencies and by those individuals who dominate the rest by controlling the future of human scientific, social and economic development.

“Indeed, the power of culture to propagate mental illness has become a subject of increasing fascination in the West. In recent years, scholars have seen mysterious maladies proliferate in a way that echoes the spread of latah. Multiple-personality disorder, for example, flourished among white, middle-class American women in the 1980's. And more recently, American and European psychologists have begun tracking apotemnophilia – a new, disturbing condition in which sufferers desire to amputate one of their own limbs. The Internet, medical anthropologists say, is helping spread the condition globally."

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It is trivial to exploit our human propensity for imitation, as in latah-phenomena, and use it to create unconscious self-replicating social behaviors in a culture for purposes of marketing or for social control. Such phenomena, ripe for exploitation would be ignored by legions of clinical and academic ‘brain science’ researchers, by advertising agencies and by those individuals who dominate the rest by controlling the future of human scientific, social and economic development.

“Indeed, the power of culture to propagate mental illness has become a subject of increasing fascination in the West. In recent years, scholars have seen mysterious maladies proliferate in a way that echoes the spread of latah. Multiple-personality disorder, for example, flourished among white, middle-class American women in the 1980's. And more recently, American and European psychologists have begun tracking apotemnophilia – a new, disturbing condition in which sufferers desire to amputate one of their own limbs. The Internet, medical anthropologists say, is helping spread the condition globally."

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