Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA10302 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Mar 2000 01:44:23 GMT Message-ID: <20000314014212.61937.qmail@hotmail.com> X-Originating-IP: [212.1.128.62] From: "Diana Stevenson" <dianaxf@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Some questions Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:42:12 PST Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi all - as a newbie may I ask some questions??
Much of what's being said about memes seems to resonate with a postmodern
view of culture - with the exception that memeticists (so far) believe in
objective truths which can be found out through scientific methods.
I'm wondering - if genes and memes neither know nor care about the truth,
but *we* do and we have methods of distinguishing truth from falsehood,
might that not indicate that:
1) we are more than just genes and memes
2) we have superior abilities to genes and memes?
As a great fan of the late Carl Sagan (and particularly "The Demon-Haunted
World: Science as a Candle in the Dark) I wonder what he would have made of
this question. If memes eventually "escape" from us to an independent
existence, the false ones as well as the true, presumably the devil and
demons will be among them. This may be evolution, but it hardly seems like
progress!!
Postmodernists on the other hand see a world in which truth is not found,
but made; systems of belief are tools, as are the transitory "selves" which
come into being to meet particular situations and "choose" from the
cafeteria of cultures. Is this worldview the triumph of the memes? And if
not how do memes sit with postmodernism? Any ideas?
Diana
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