From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 22 Nov 2002 - 18:37:18 GMT
> >
> >
> >Snip....................Joe:
> > >> ...the US has to be blamed for EVERYthing. I don't think you
> > >> have
> >carefully
> > >> considered the memetic nature of the threat to postmodern
> > >> civilization by a violently cannibalistic medieval memeset.>
> > >>Snip.............
> >
> >Maybe that is what we have got Joe, a 'postmodern civilisation';
> >everyone defines their own; everyone doubts the Grand-narratives.
> >But, at the same time, everyone is civilised too. To think that this
> >blissful state of affairs could be jeopardised by 'a violently
> >cannibalistic medieval memeset', it's tragic. Now is that a medieval
> >memeset that violently devours other medieval memesets, or just other
> >memesets in general? And Joe, have you considered the effect, on
> >existing civilisations, of allowing a new violently cannibalistic
> >memeset to have political and economic dictatorship of the planet?
> >Jeremy
> >
>
> All memesets are canibalistic in the sense that the culture we pick up
> and use drives out old memes which go unused. If we don't use a meme,
> we lose it. There are limits, based on time and space, that restrict
> the number of memes we can use from day to day. The way we spend our
> time also determines which memes get used and which don't. We tend to
> think more about what we spend our time doing than things we don't.
> So I'm not using the term canibalistic in the sense that one meme
> consumes another but in the sense that the memes we use cause the
> memes we don't use to die of neglect.
>
The problem is that memesets that restrict freedom seem to lose out, in
the long run, to memesets that meximize it. Thus, the memesets that
restrict freedom have to do something else to counter their lesser
fitness in this regard. Since they are controlling memesets, they simply
exert that control in the direction of demanding conquest, and attempt to
impose in the arena of violent coercion what they cannot sell in the free
marketplace of ideas.
>
> Grant
>
>
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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