From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon 12 May 2003 - 18:47:52 GMT
>From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Subject: Re: Bigfoot as Idea & Meme
>Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 23:51:34 -0400
>
>At 11:28 AM 07/05/03 -0700, you wrote:
>>An article on Bigfoot in the latest issue of Skeptic (Volume 10, No. 1)
>>provides a perfect illustration of the difference between ideas and memes.
>
>I don't believe you make a case here. With rather rare exceptions, ideas
>*are* memes.
>
>>In "Big Foot, Bigger Hoax," Daniel Loxton presents the two faces of
>>Bigfoot.
>>First there's prankster Ray Wallace, who appears to have concocted the
>>whole
>>shaggy human story and kept it going for over forty years. Then there's
>>Bigfoot enthusiast Rene Dahinden, who died two years ago, bitter and
>>broke,
>>never having seen the mysterious creature he spent his life hunting.
>>Wallace himself died last November, after which his son announced, in an
>>interview with the Seattle Times, "Ray L. Wallace was Bigfoot. The
>>reality
>>is, Bigfoot just died." Michael Wallace revealed the original strap-on
>>alderwood feet that enabled his dad to produce fake oversized footprints.
>>
>>As Loxton observes, "while the Wallace family mourns the death of a
>>lovable
>>prankster, reports of Bigfoot's demise have been greatly exaggerated;
>>indeed, Bigfoot is bigger now than he's been in years, precisely because
>>of
>>those reports." Curiously, news of the hoax that started it all has only
>>fired up interest, triggering an increase in the number of "sightings"
>>reported in the Pacific Northwest.
>>
>>For Ray Wallace, Bigfoot was an idea. In the late 1950s tales of "Yeti,"
>>a
>>giant Himalayan humanoid, were circulating all over the world. Wallace's
>>idea was that a similar craze could be generated right here at home by
>>simply faking a few giant footsteps. He carved a pair of feet and walked
>>around on them at a construction site he was managing in northern
>>California. His idea circulated
>>throughout the region as fellow pranksters realized how simple it was to
>>generate "Bigfoot" excitement in their own hometown.
>
>Memes more often than not start as someone having an idea, like a new way
>to make shoes, or in this case "feet."
>
>The question you want to ask is: Did this idea spread out to other people?
>The answer in this case is yes, and that makes it a meme. (I have a long
>history of UFO hoaxs).
>
>>While the idea circulated, so did the meme. The Bigfoot meme propagated
>>so
>>effectively because it exploited the all-too-human desire to believe that
>>our wild ancestor is somehow still alive somewhere, still roaming free,
>>not
>>caged up and domesticated like us. Guilty at the thought that we killed
>>the
>>"wildman" within, we project his image onto the forests and mountains
>>around
>>us. On top of that, Rene Dahinden had another motivation to believe.
>>Since
>>he had staked his reputation on the authenticity of Bigfoot, the meme
>>could
>>maintain itself in his mind by exploiting his pride.
>
>Although *why* a meme spreads is of great interest to me (particularly
>reasons that derive from psychological traits selected for in our long
>history of living as social primates in tribes) a mechanism is not required
>to make a meme. Did the "belief" in Bigfoot spread out to other people?
>If the answer is yes, that is also a meme.
>
>>Ideas are passive. They lack agency. It was human consciousness that
>>created the idea for Bigfoot, and this idea spread from one prankster to
>>another through normal conscious means. But before long the beast was
>>self-propagating among believers, based on its ability to exploit
>>unconscious desires. What is idea for one is meme for another.
>>
>>Memes are ideas that take on their own agency.
>
>Memes (same as ideas) are just information. If that information
>replicates, spreads out to more than the first person who has it, that
>makes it a meme. (All ideas, even those that never spread, are *potential*
>memes.)
>
>Near as I understand it, the entire point to using the word meme is to
>emphasize that information passed from human mind to human mind is subject
>to evolutionary selection.
>
>It is possible you intend to say the same thing. I don't understand your
>use of "agency."
>
>>This is why the Bigfoot myth
>>only gets bigger when it's definitively demonstrated to be a fraud.
>
>To say this, you have to specify a segment of the population. There are
>lot of people who figured Bigfoot was a fraud from the start. Then there
>are people who will believe anything.
>
>>Memes
>>don't depend on our capacity for rational thought.
>
>That is certainly true or religions would not thrive.
>
>>Any publicity, no matter
>>how bad, will help perpetuate them.
>
>Your point is not entirely accurate here. I use the example of phrenology
>to make the point that some widely held silliness does die out.
>
>
Yet isn't phrenology a precursor or at least an antecedent parallel to the
evolutionary psychological belief in a modular mind? Phrenology was at least
correct in as much as different functions are attributable to different
regions of the brain, even if Gall got it wrong with head bumps.
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