From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 25 Mar 2003 - 13:35:00 GMT
Related to this thread (from the end of an old article).
Study of ecosystems usually leads to a great deal of appreciation of
the complexity that has been worked into them through evolution. Our
actively evolving memetic ecosystem (culture) has been shaped over many
centuries by the rise and fall of the replicating information patterns
which have come down to us. These memes that make up our culture are
essentially living entities. They struggle against each other for space
in minds and lives, they are continually evolving. New memes arise in
human mental modules, old memes mutate, and many become confined to
books. The ferment is most noticeable on the edge of new scientific
knowledge, pop culture, and the ever shifting of ascendant political
ideas. Western culture is as complicated as a rain forest, and deserves
no less respect, admiration, understanding, and care.
The vast majority of the memes we pass from person to person or
generation to generation are either helpful or at least harmless. It is
hard to see that these elements of our culture have a separate identity
from us. But a few of these replicating information patterns are clearly
dangerous. By being obviously harmful, they are easy to see as a separate
class of evolving, parasitic, lifelike forms. A very dangerous group
leads to behavior such as the People's Temple suicides, or similar cases
that dot our history. The most dangerous class leads to vast killings
like that of the Nazis in WW II, the Communists in post-revolutionary
Russia, and the Kampuchea self-genocide.
The development of memetics provides improved mental tools (models)
for thinking about the influences, be they benign, silly, or fatal, that
replicating information patterns have on all of us. Here is a source of
danger if memetics comes of age and only a few learn to create meme sets
of great influence. Here too is liberation for those who can recognize
and analyze the memes to which they are exposed. If "the meme about
memes" infects enough people, rational social movements might become more
common.
http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/memetics/henson.memes.metamemes.and.politics
Keith Henson
===============================================================
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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