Inceptions

There is something dangerously seductive about the idea of being able to deliberately plant an idea, cut down to its simplest form, so that it can take hold in the human psyche and self propagate like a virus. Whilst bravely putting to one side the whole of the advertising and marketing industries, I have recently been prompted to ponder the genesis and success of some quite influential ideas:

• There is but one God.
• Love thy neighbour as thyself.
• Christ died for our sins.
• From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs;
• God is dead.
• Survival of the fittest.
• Anatomy is destiny.
• E = mc2.
• Let freedom ring.
• Every man has his price.
• The answer is blowin' in the wind.
• You've nothing to lose except your chains.
• You are only limited by your imagination.
• Freedom is a myth.
• Language determines how you think.
• It's time.
• The selfish gene.
• The greenhouse effect.
• The tipping point.
• Reality is a dream.

But what if an idea is bad? Do we have choices about the ideas we propagate? Are we responsible for the ideas we foster? Or is it all just a Darwinian contest and to the victor goes the spoils? Can there be a meta-context, a higher perspective, from which it is legitimate to form a judgment on the merits of an idea, independently of its mere success in propagating itself?

Needless to say I saw Christopher Nolan's movie Inception for the first time yesterday. It was the inception for these musings, as it no doubt has been and will be for countless millions of other meanderings. It provides an opportunity to again posit the threalmic heuristic of this website, as one possible pathway to resolving such imponderables:

Truth beats Justice;
Justice beats Freedom;
Freedom beats Truth.

But Inception has now potentially given birth to another "scissors, paper, rock"  heuristic trilogy:

Dreams conquer Reality;
Reality conquers Desire;
Desire conquers Dreams;

Nah. It doesn't seem to work quite as well as our existing threalmic trilogy, but there is still pleasure in experimenting with such ideas, even with this newly perceived risk of inadvertent bad idea inception.

Inception is a cinematic masterpiece; a surpassingly well executed rendition of a seductively illusive idea.

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5 Threalmic jelly starbursts.