From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 08 Sep 2003 - 21:54:51 GMT
From: "Brent Scofield"
<brent@atomicphotography.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: I find it sad yet hilarious...
Date sent: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 14:32:57 -0700
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
> I joined this mailing list about a week ago, hoping to first listen in
> on and then eventually join in discussions surrounding the concept of
> memes and the development on memetics. My problem with your posts is
> not the politics of them, but the vague and undeveloped ways in which
> you relate your interpretation of current issues to memetics. You do
> use words like "memebot" and "memeplex" in some of your posts, and
> while I think new vocabulary is super-fun, I also think you should at
> very least spend some time with each of your posts relating what makes
> it relevant to this mailing list. The concept that ideas spread is not
> new to memetics, and if people post every article which contains in it
> something about the spread of a particular idea or the development of
> an idea, or the definition of an idea, etc., then this list will be
> innundated with links to articles and peices of articles.
>
Actually, those words, and the concepts that they describe,
have been used on this list for years. A memebot is someone who acts
robotically, in thrall to a meme or memeplex (which is a collection of
interrelated and mutually supporting memes, like its synonym
'memeset').
>
> As an example, in your response below you mention something about "how
> the US planned to incubate the democracy meme". Is meme-incubation
> something you just made up, or is it a developed concept in memetics?
> If you just made it up, how about elaborating about how
> meme-incubation could work, how it could fit into an evolutionary
> model for ideas. You can, of course, use your own examples, and if
> other people find you concept useful they might even find example that
> come from a different political perspective, or from a non-political
> perspective, and we might ignore each others politics for a while and
> talk about memetics. That would be great.
>
The incubation of memes has been long practiced by
advertizing agencies; take a product that is unknown in a population
(many times because it has just been created and needs a nich to
inhabit), and make it not only known, but considered favorably. Here, of
course, the quality of the particular product (which has been around for
quite some time now) being profferred (participatory democracy,
constitutionally guaranteed human rights, freedom of religion, choice,
thought and action, self-determination) is a definite plus. But it still has
to compete against the "Submission to God and His Messenger(s)"
meme hook and the memetic filters which adhere to the messages that
these individuals proffer "Listen to the Infidels and lose your Immortal
Soul and your Mortal Life" (apostasy is a capital crime in Islam). For
this memeset, proselytization may issue FROM them to infidels, but
never flow from the infidels TO them - a religio/ideological one-way
street.
I do find it interesting to see the "Hate Bush" Ummah rear up on
their hind legs and wage their slanderous and emotional jihad in the
name of 'Peace', which seems, for them, to mean a Stalinist silencing of
all discussion, debate and dissent (just as in Islamofascism 'Peace' will
result when the infidel dar-el-Harb is irretrievably destroyed and Dar-el-
Islam encompasses the globe). It is indeed an object lesson that being
aware of memetics does not necessarily insulate one from virulent and
continuing memetic infestation, if one simply possesses that awareness
as a knowledge datum rather than as an evaluative principle, and
refuses to challenge the preconceptions with which such memetic
phages infect one.
>
> Brent
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On
> Behalf Of joedees@bellsouth.net Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 1:28
> PM To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: I find it sad yet hilarious...
>
>
> ...that the "Hate Bush" prejudicial memebots on this list do not
> address the points I make (I suspect because they can't), but rather
> engage in gratuitous and personal ad hominem attacks against me. The
> entire exchange started when I posted the text of a US president's
> speech on terrorism; is that sort of thing forbidden by memetic
> filters or list rules?
> As to my last two forwards, one had to do with how the US
> planned to incubate the democracy meme into Iraqi culture, and how
> that meme seemed to already be spreading to other places in the Muslim
> world.
> Those who would rather cover their eyes rather than have their
> biases and delusions confronted by facts and logic are, of course,
> free to filter my posts; then their cybernetic filters would match
> their memetic ones.
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
===============================================================
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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