From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Fri 01 Nov 2002 - 21:21:55 GMT
On Friday, November 1, 2002, at 10:25 , Van oost Kenneth wrote:
> it is just by your own innerworld, behaviors will and can
> be made.
Yes, _cultural_ behaviors are instigated by the self. (Is it fair to say
_all_ cultural behaviors are instigated by the self?) But, don't fail to
remind yourself and others that all behaviors are not cultural behaviors
(only bemes are), and many behaviors are caused by the stimulus/response
operations of the body (which contains, in all instances of my use of
the word, the brain), and these S/R operations are partners themselves
in any activity of the body. It ain't just the memory and other thought
processes (or meme-ory) internally that is prompting and motivating the
performance. The fact that any cultural behavior is also a constant
tacking with the winds of the mind is something that needs to be
accounted for in any calculus of culture.
> Whatever the cause of your behavioral response, internal or exter-
> nal, emotions/feelings and expressional ways are part of the quotation.
> (read Damasio on that one)_
Not only read him, I went to see him speak once. Lovely man.
The other element of the equation is the environment the beme is
performed within, which, itself, controls to some degree the actual beme
performed, in a constant interaction of movement, sensation, and
alteration of the behavior. In some ways, it can be said the beme is a
stream of products of the body in performance within the flux of a
limitlessly changing but tightly parametric environment.
After all, one of the infinite reasons tree1 is not tree2 is because
they aren't growing out of the same seed in the same plot of ground.
Why aren't there more twin studies in memetics? This is the only
available opportunity for ethical research. (As Joe recently forwarded,
there has been highly unethical research, although the models were
horridly flawed. And the unfortunate accidents of wild children have
startlingly shown that language is losable if it is never developed.)
Is the memeinthemind a seed, somehow sprouting countless times? An egg,
with limitless offspring? Again, the unsanity of the memeinthemind model
makes me itch.
- Wade
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