Life on autopilot

"We have the impression that invention, intention, and conscious decision making play a crucial part in crafting our humanity, but perhaps that just isn't so." (Hughes 2011, On the Origin of Tepees, p. 96)

Zowel God als de mens zijn dood

Nietzsche

"God is dood."

"With Darwin's natural selection at the helm, no one needed to consider what Life did next, or what it had done, or even what it was doing. Consideration was not a consideration. The mindless, ceaseless engine of natural selection would take care of the flight plan - such as it was, beacause, according to Darwin, it was making it all up as it went along, and there was no real purpose to the flight anyway, no confirmed destination. Life was flying just because it could fly. And God, the universe's former pilot, was out of a job." (Hughes 2011, On the Origin of Tepees, p. 104)

Foucault

"De mens [het subject] is dood." 

"If hats and barns and every other artifact of humanity can self-design, if everything we hold dear can come about mindlessly, just as species do in nature, then we could be out of a job: cultural Life could evolve quite happily without any conscious participation on our part." (Ibid.) 

Geworpen ontwerp

"We all look at the world through goggles. Many of us are unaware of this fact (and those who are aware are loath to admit it), but we all perceive the world about us through tinted lenses - tinted with the ideas stored in our memories. Only by referring to the millions of ideas we have consciously and unconsciously logged in our brains can we continually make sense of the world we experience. No one has a goggles-free view of the world, because no living brain is ideas-free."

"That said, we do have a choice of goggles. [...] We can take our pick."

(Hughes 2011, On the Origin of Tepees, pp. 3-4)

On the Origin of Tepees

"Like Darwin, I ventured abroad, into the cultural wilderness of America, to search out first-hand evidence that ideas are subject to natural selection. As I crossed the prairies, I classified the changing moustaches of farmers, plotted the evolution of the cowboy hat, dated American barns, and charted a taxonomy of tepees. In doing so, I found the evidence I needed to suggest that ideas do evolve just like the finches and tortoises that Darwin discovered in the Galapagos.

What's more, I found that viewing our world through 'meme goggles' is like suddenly spotting that vase in the optical illusion with the two faces. Your focus shifts from the human beings to the things in between – the countless living ideas that skip through our seven billion brains, each one competing for space in our cerebrums and the chance to procreate through our tongue and wrist movements. The mêlée of a new form of life is revealed. It's quite a view!" (Jonnie Hughes)

Filosofie: hetzelfde anders leren zien. (Cornelis Verhoeven)