Hello Reader,
Over the weekend I learned about a concept that disturbed me immensely. That concept is "memetic desires." Memetic desires refers to a person's inability to individuate. A memetic desire is when a person takes on the desires of someone else. For example, let's say you have a goal or desire to travel and you tell someone or someone in your sphere of influence catches wind of your desire. all of a sudden that person espouses how they want to travel and go different places, even though they've never demonstrated an interest in the idea prior to you expressing your interest.
Memetic and mimc sound similar for a reason. A memetic desire is literally someone trying to copy or take away your desires. This can be an autonomous process meaning it could happen without the culprit being fully aware of what they are doing. The individuals who engage in memetic desires are not well in their character. They are behaving sub-optimally out of possessiveness, a lack of self-control, egotism, narcissism, and or hatred. None of those characteristics are ones of a well developed person. I stumbled across memetic desires because in my personal life I realized that a certain theme kept coming up recently that was disheartening to me.
I realized that on more than on occasion certain people who were in my life at one point in history have positioned themselves to oppose my desires. Things that i've wanted and or have pursued have been thwarted by individuals in my life. Once I started connecting those dots, my simple question was, why do some people not want me to have anything? Memetic desires stood out as one of the answers. When people in your life are maladaptive they tend to make their problems your problem. Someone who engages in memetic desires will ultimately try to stop you from having your desire(s).
That's their MO. They will undermine your exploits. I remember when I was about to publish my book, all of a sudden here came a family member talking about they are prompting AI to write a book for them and they are in contact with a publisher. Like honestly, eff off. You've had years to put a manuscript together and you're not even into writing. I've bene writing in this context for six years, now all of a sudden you want to write a book too? Okay. But the evil part is you're not even writing it, you're prompting AI. Again get the fuck out of here, you're insulting my intelligence. And that's the whole point of memetic desires, people who engage in that behavior do so because they don't want you to have a goal or desire.
Similarly, and again with regard to my book, I had someone who once they found out I published "Get Your Mind Right" all of a sudden they had a 50K word manuscript that they edited and was ready to be published. They wanted me to elucidate on the full process of how to come up with a title, create a cover, get an ISBN, how to format the manuscript, traditional versus self publishing, what publishing platforms to use, so on and so forth. This person was undermining my book and my exploits. If you've been sitting on a manuscript this whole time why are you just now motived to publish it because you've been exposed to my book? These behaviors are memetic desires, people who behave like this don't have an interest in executing on a desire they have an interest in killing your desires and making you give up on them.
This became a spiritual revelation for me because when I read the Bible it says that one being comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and that's the devil. People who engage in memetic desires are doing the devil's work. And because this can be an autonomous behavior, these people are willing participants. Consciously or unconsciously they want to do evil. It's one thing to express greed, jealousy, and or envy with respect to a certain goal or desire and then go the next step of self reflection and uncover why you're in that place or are feeling those feelings. I even think it's valuable to be exposed to new things for the purpose of uncovering what you want. The differentiating point here is malicious intent. When your actions aren't pure, specifically with respect to memetic desires, you're doing the devil's work.
I could have stayed there, in the despair of this reality, and been disturbed, but God comforted me. Upon realizing that my desires can come under attack I realized that this battle is not mine, nor is it yours either if you can relate to what's being shared here. The etymology of the word desire is "of the father." The father is God. Sire is a celestial male parent figure. Your desires come from God. Furthermore, your desires wouldn't be in you if they weren't meant to be fulfilled through you. When your desires come under attack that is literally one of the highest forms of spiritual warfare because the devil is fighting and opposing God through your life. I've had people try to downplay what I've just outlined here and I submit that spiritual warfare isn't a topic we tend to cover on Life with Ken, but the reality is you have a right to be upset and do what you feel lead to do within reason if you feel as though your desires are under attack.
No, this battle is not yours, but before you can be comforted in that, you need to know if whether you're in a battle in the first place.
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Have a breakthrough week!