From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Mon 23 Dec 2002 - 17:35:45 GMT
Also in their analyses or in their critics about genetics and genomics, the
humanscientists visualize a different kind of man.
At times he is portrayed as the abstract autonomic individual who's privacy
and freedom of choise can 't be restricted.
And at the same time man is afraid to be the one who has to do the choo-
sin' of how his offspring will look like.
And than is man something interweaved with scientific and other kinds of
technologic practices.
And than man is the kind of being who is formed just by conscient reflec-
tin' upon science, knowledge and technology.
The diversity of ways by which we see ourselves is there not for nothing.
Humans are bound to their time and place. While thus time and place
change, so changes the picture of how we see ourselves.
So, in the time of memetics would it be appropriate to think that something
like menomics could find its place !?
In that case, memomics would stand for the mixure of people, institutes,
companies, firms, thoughts, insights, technologies, bypasses who
would bring out those ways of thinking, those processes and structures
of how humans socially interact, now and in the future.
We know already that NOT one single meme counts for one specific beha-
vioral trait or habit; not for one thought. We know that a model wherein
complex interrelated memes and genes interact is needed.
We all know that already psychologists, social-, biological- and marketing
engineers are using memetical biased concepts or to help people or to sell
us more products, or to force to determine the answer on an obviously ques-
tion.
Like in genomics, where genes are taking out and get patented, in menomics
the biotechnological sector would provide employers, insurancecompanies,
familymembers, scientists or the pharmaceutical industry with ( clinical)
knowledge/ gain of how man thinks/ behaves/ (re)acts in certain social si-
tuations and interactions.
Family would have finally the proove that granddad can' t think straight any-
more; employers would have additional reasons to refuse people or to
sack or to hold them on. We would know how/ why some choreography
fails to bring out the best in the dancer; we would know how we can break
things down with language; we wouldn 't ask ourselves the question why the
lousy worker was progressively set on the sideway. We would have in excess
man 's dreams and pervers fantasy.
Although, without a doubt, menomics would mean a treasure for the commu-
nity, because we would be tempted to help those who are suffering from any
kind of social stress. The search for the psychological presentation of man
has to begin with something like menomics.
The question is however how to avoid the traps of idealisation, of ideology,
and more of those similar ( cultural) detours.
As a rule, memes and -plexes devote themselves to find ways to propagate;
through thousands more books, threats and tactics they know which way
we must turn. At this cost however, menomics would just lead to those
things we write/ read/ take and make which memes and memeplexes need
to advance. Menomics would cast out little or nothing new if the very essen-
ce of the notion is just another suspicious aspect of some obscure evolu-
tionary mechanism.
===============================================================
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