From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Tue 25 Mar 2003 - 14:40:45 GMT
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 08:42 AM, Kenneth wrote:
> So, what we perceive as ' cultural evolution ' is due to changes not
> only of the cultural environment within but also due to our own per-
> ception of things !?
Yes, and our perception, and the things we perceive, are changing all
the time. And, each performance, be it walking, or strolling, or
sauntering down the street, is each and every time different, and yet,
an ambulation, just as a spider web is each and every time different,
and yet, each and every time, a web.
The activity of the brain is not one, by necessity or even by
understandable theories, filled with memes and/or memeories, but
needfully cognitively absent of such additions to its _usual and
normal_ cognitive functioning- all culture needs to continue is a time
and a place and participants. We, as homo sapiens, are the participants
that fit into to the construct that evolution has formed for us to
behave within, and culture is the result of social behaviors being
performed by self-conscious and creative individuals in a communal
matrix.
There is no need for the addition of memesinthemind. Memories and the
normal patterns and development and activity of the human brain are
enough, are all that is required, and are all that evolution has
managed to make. (I know, I know- memeinthemind theorists are making
the incredible claim that memes are part of normal cognitive
functioning, and yet, they fail to make any inroads to the path of
proving this. But they persist, claiming that the human mind must have
these things swimming around, whereas I say, poppycock- the processes
of cognition are totally capable of the activities called 'memetic' in
choices and ideas and mental patterns and so forth.)
Let the cognitive scientists figure out the methods and actions of the
brain. Let the philosophers figure out the meanings, if they can, of
human activities. Let the biologists figure out how these all happened.
But memetics should be the patterning of the motions of culture, and
the units of culture are the performances maintaining and creating
culture. Artifacts, and copied activities, are the maintenance agents.
Creative acts, sparked from the cornerstones of art and society and
communal education and personal observation, are the mutating forces,
but _can only be effective_ in performance. And we are talking about
effective things here, since we're talking about the mechanisms of
evolutionary processes. No culture sits within a single mind and no
culture spreads within.
And no meme needs to sit there, either.
- Wade
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