RE: Rumsfeld Says He May Drop New Office of Influence

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 17:08:12 GMT

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From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Rumsfeld Says He May Drop New Office of Influence
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 12:08:12 -0500
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    Grant:
    > To my way of thinking, the rationalization I used to overcome the
    > feeling of
    > resentment was a meme I chose to mitigate my feelings -- a tool I used to
    > change the way I looked at the situation and to keep my feelings from
    > flaring up into a confrontation.
    >
    > Since that time, I have found myself using that technique a lot
    > to keep from
    > letting small issues boil up into confrontational behavior. If I start
    > getting angry about something, I take a step back and mentally ask myself
    > what it is that's making me feel that way. Once I realize how
    > trivial the
    > thing was that aroused my feeling of hostility, the feeling goes
    > away.

    Interesting description. This process and the goal behind it seems similar
    to some aspects of Buddhist practice. I wonder if Buddhists, generally,
    might be more immune to memes than other cultures that lack this kind of
    personal discipline. Hmmmm..... I wonder if we could distinguish general
    cultural traits that makes the individuals in a culture more vulnerable to
    memes, or less so?

    Lawrence

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