Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id AAA23628 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 11 May 2000 00:22:43 +0100 Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 16:18:54 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Central questions of memetics To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3919EE5E.95457BB9@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-PBI-NC404 (Win95; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: ja,en References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB157@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Vincent,
> At a small
> social group level, you've got bond-forming and maintaining, but how many of
> his fans does Michael Jordan know (and vice versa)? And I'm sure we're
> familiar with the concept of widows & orphans in sport, the families of
> fanatical sports followers who definitely suffer as a result, we're talking
> about behaviours which are quite widespread around the world, relating to a
> myriad of different sports, that seemd to defy being satisfactorily
> explained by genetic advantage
Isn't sports fanaticism atavistic? I. e., it is not very fit in a
modern civilized environment, but it probably was in the smaller
social groups in which humans have lived for most of our
existence (and it expressed itself differently too, I expect).
Much the same can be said for the sweet tooth, which is more
fitted for an environment where you pick fruit from trees, rather
than one with donut shops.
And thanks for the joke. ;-)
Best,
Bill
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