Re: Cultural Imperialism as Idea & Meme

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 23 Jun 2003 - 19:23:45 GMT

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    Date sent: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 11:15:02 -0400 Subject: Re: Cultural Imperialism as Idea & Meme From: "Wade T. Smith" <wade.t.smith@verizon.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    >
    > On Monday, June 23, 2003, at 09:16 AM, Richard wrote:
    >
    > > I think you and I are in agreement on this issue. Performances
    > > (behaviors) are the means by which memes (mental information)
    > > replicate.
    >
    > What? I was supposed to let this pass?
    >
    > What is more important, the method or the madness?
    >
    > Performances are the means (memes) by which information is inferred.
    > And performances are alterable by the place they are happening in. Ah,
    > venue. Try to piss against the wind, although that's how I feel most
    > of the time around here....
    >
    Then whyu do vastly differing performances communicate the instructions for the recipient to engage in nearly identical performances, while performances that differ by a single syllable or gesture can provoke widely different performances in the recipients? Because the performances ENCODE memes, and tiny encoding changes can make great semantic differences, while the selfsame semantics may be encoded in multiple ways. It is this inconvenient yet undeniable rock upon which your 'memeisthemotion' pseudomodel crashes, founders and sinks, and you cannot answer or remove it.
    >
    > > I agree with you that the information about the meaning of the
    > > performance is the meme. The information is the replicator.
    >
    > Ah, you're so close. Just a few breaths away from the third level....
    >
    > ;-)
    >
    > - Wade
    >
    >
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