From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Wed 21 May 2003 - 17:19:36 GMT
> on 5/21/03 9:07 AM, Keith Henson at hkhenson@rogers.com wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> > Memes are in competition for a limited resource, human brains. This
> > is the main factor that makes memetics so interesting since memes
> > can induce behavior that affects how many are carrying them.
> > "Convert or die, infidel!"
>
> This makes no sense. Sooner or later mentalist memetics gets around
> to talking about memes as though they were living beings flitting
> about from mind to mind.
>
> People compete with one another for all sorts of reasons, individually
> and in groups. People say do things like: "Convert or die, infidel!"
> Arguing that what's really going on is that memes are manipulating
> people for their own replicating ends is just silly. It was a bad
> idea when Dawkins advanced it, and it hasn't improved any for all the
> elaboration and repetition it has received by others.
>
There are two sayings here; the religious beleve that they are on God's
side, and the fanatics believe that God is on theirs. Also, that the
fundamentalist is used by his religion, rather than using it.
Can one reasonably argue that, in the absence of the Kali cult, that
people would strangle hundreds of strangers, or that in the absence of
the Aztec beliefs that stone statues would be kept alive by having holes
in their chests continuously stuffed with still-beating hearts extracted
from a steady stream of sacrifices? Or that in the absence of the Bin
Laden brand of Wahhabism that nineteen people would, after years of
planning hijack aircraft and fly them into buildings?
What has happened in the present case is that a memeset of special
virulence has evolved from a more common and less virulent stock.
Lacking a rational basis for its hosts to argue for conversion, it has
mutated so that they resorts to threats of force, which, of course, are no
good unless they are seen to be carried out against the unwilling. It is
Borgian in the extreme.
>
> William L. Benzon
> 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A
> Jersey City, NJ 07302
> 201 217-1010
>
> "You won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little
> sounds."--George Ives
>
> Mind-Culture Coevolution: http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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 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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