From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Sun 03 Nov 2002 - 17:34:56 GMT
On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 11:08 , Grant Callaghan wrote:
> We can apply the term "meme" to the mental aspect of martini creation,
> "beme" to the behavior of making martinis, and "peme" to the actual
> performance involved in making a single shaken-but-not-stirred martini.
Thanks, Grant. This has always been at the root of my discussions, but,
obviously, never communicated properly.
> There's room in the naming process to hold all three.
If I may, the cultural process _demands_ all three, as, what does a
naming process have to do with it?
The evolution of culture (if culture is not an illusion) demands an
ideation (memory and/or creation) of a behavior, the skill and
insistence to attempt the behavior, and, finally, the performance in an
observed setting of the behavior. An artifact is a special subset of
performance where the observed setting is displaced. Artifacts can lose
this place, or never reach it, and become useless to culture.
The cultural process demands all three. The element that is required to
_move_ cultural evolution onward however, beyond the mentation and
expectations of the performer, and to the replication performance by an
observer, is the performance, and the performance, by due of its own
nature, can introduce mutations unexpected, unforeseen, and unprepared
for by the other two processes, and thus, what the observer _sees_ (and
then remembers and acts upon), does _not_ have to be, in point of actual
fact and in all cases and without equivocation, what was _intended_ by
the performer. (Of course, at high skill levels, in highly controlled
settings, this is not the case. Again, performance demands a _rigorous_
examination of _all_ variables itself.)
Thus, the peme model of cultural evolution asks that the item of
rigorous examination be the performance, and not the intention of the
performer.
A matter of perspective, really, not a matter of 'only'.
- Wade
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