From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 16 Mar 2003 - 02:52:17 GMT
Scott Chase said:
"This points out the limitations in the pathogenic analogy for memetics.
Your blatant comparison of ideas to a diase organism fails to account for
responsibility as it connects to human behavior. We have little control over
what pathogens we might uknowingly pick up and spread. We do have some
control over how we relate to ideas and thus hae some level of responbility
for consequences of implementation of our ideas. If you went too far in the
direction you're aiming at, we'd have to drop the idea of responsibility
altogether. In that case lawyers and prison guards would be suddenly
unemployed.
"I don't think being infected by a bad idea would be a good defense to use
in a court of law."
I think you misunderstand my point, which is that bad people can use good
memes for bad purposes. The person who invents of passes on the good memes
is NOT responsible for what the people who pick it up do with it, any more
than the man who uses a hammer to crack another man's head cannot blame the
man who invented the hammer for what he did. Trying to accept responsiblity
for what everyone does with the memes we invent or pass on to other members
of society is an impossible task. Look at what people have done with
religious memes. The memes were meant to bring harmony between people and
time after time were used as an excuse to go to war with people. That is
NOT the fault of the meme nor the man who created the meme.
Not long after the Europeans came to the Americas, two things they brought
with them changed the lives of the people who lived here forever. One was
the use of steel for knives, pots, pans and guns and the other was to
introduce the horse to the North American continent. The native population
quickly became dependent on both and used both for the purpose of killing
each other and the Europeans who brought the new tools to their part of the
world. Others, of course, used them for making their lives better. But the
tools brought by the Europeans changed the culture of the native Americans
completely and forever. As Captain Kirk might have put it, the Europeans
violated the prime directive. Well, if people of one culture mingle with
people of another culture, some of the culture of each will rub off on the
other. That's what memes do.
Grant
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