From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Mon 10 Mar 2003 - 05:31:12 GMT
At 11:21 PM 09/03/03 -0500, Scott wrote:
>This would be topical how? I hate being Miss Manners here, believe me I
>do, but if I'm enacting a self-imposed moratium on the Iraq topic for sake
>of the list I'd hope others would follow suit. Otherwise, it's no holds barred.
It certainly could be warped around to memetics or evolutionary psychology
with relatively little effort. Or even to catastrophe theory involving
competing war/no war memes.
It could be seen from the EP angle of Bush seeking status. One way to
improve your status (and humans, even the president, never has enough) is
to display superior judgment. This is especially true if you take an
unpopular line and it works. (Something I did not long ago in another
context.)
It is a high risk business though. Backing a failed meme set results in
near instant disgrace. Even if you are right others are resentful for
showing their judgment was not as good as yours.
The other interesting meme related matter to watch is support for fighting
inside Iraq. The classic example of a meme sea change would be Japan after
the two A bombs were dropped and the Emperor talked on the radio. The
country went almost overnight from fight to the death meme set to memes for
full cooperation with the former enemy.
But I agree Scott, you have to get under the superficials.
Keith Henson
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