From: Van oost Kenneth (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 06 Apr 2003 - 10:13:32 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Taylor" <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk>
> I don't think there's anything to control as such (mentally I mean); I
> think we are all-meme entities, so as I see it there is never anything
> but memes in control. However, there could certainly be pathomemes
> (perhaps very sophisticated, like some of the flashier diseases) from an
> organic-life standpoint, and from a inorganic(meme)-life standpoint. We
> have often mentioned martyrdom here (although this is often peer/family
> related). And as you say introversion is possible where new admissions
> are barred; this too is pathological.
Yes, Paul Ewald argues that " diarrhea might be my way of getting rid of
the organism way of manipulating my body to maxilize its [own] chances
of passage to the nexy victim by, for example, contaminating the water. "
You coud easily argue that diarrhea from its own ' organic- life ' point
of view selects/ directs/ or whatever way vectors for its transmission.
In a way, Ewald argues further, you can say that " infectious agents
should be considered as at least part of the etiology of apparently
noninfectious conditions. "
IIRC, a time ago there was a thread about such matters...Ewald
argues that cancer, heart disease and other chronic ills stem from
infections.
We have a saying that if someone is grousin '/ grumblin ' all the time,
that in the end he will get cancer.
In such ways you make yourself ill by infectin ' yourself with ideas/
suppositions and other matters where as at least apparently there
were no infectious conditions.
And IMO, to avoid such things, although there are still cancers around
where genetics plays its part, our memes must be in ' control '.
Meaning, you can avoid such matters by, at least trying, to retain the
control over what you might think about...trivial matters should be
avoided, if that is possible.
> What is also interesting is perhaps the idea that a 'trivial'
> distracting meme might cause you to crash your car - like unruly back
> seat passengers - effectively we pay a price for our 'open garden'
> policy with memes.
Yes, but I think we're beginning to be aware that no matter what we
do, in the end that it memetically matters. And that the trivial stuff are
just yet other ways by which memes transform, propagate and trans-
mit their initial info/ intention/....and that by avoidin' that such info
results
in the end with a(ny) kind of performance we 're better off anyway.
Kenneth
===============================================================
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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun 06 Apr 2003 - 09:58:30 GMT