From: Ray Recchia (rrecchia@frontiernet.net)
Date: Tue 09 Sep 2003 - 00:16:48 GMT
Hi Brent,
Give an example of a memetic stronghold and describe why a meme would
survive within it when it became lost to a larger group. Are you calling a
priesthood a stronghold or a written document a stronghold? All written
documents can have the quality of preserving a meme long after any people
hold it. Why would a priesthood not be subject to the same forces that
cause the meme to disappear among a larger population?
Raymond O. Recchia
At 04:59 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Brent wrote:
>A while back I was taking an undergraduate anthropology course on the
>emergence of civilization, or more accurately, the emergence of complex
>societies. For my term paper I decided to try to approach the emergence and
>development of complex societies from a memetic perspective. It is of course
>a huge, and exteremely general topic, so my paper just touched on some basic
>applications of memetic theory without going into any real detail or depth.
>But still, the application of memetics to the topic seemed to fit so well,
>and I was hoping this list would be a good place to develop the idea
>further, or even better, learn about other, more rigourous, applications of
>mememtics to this same topic.
>
>With the increase in population density, due to the agrarian revolution, the
>horizontal transmission of information became increasingly possible,
>resulting in a much greater potential set of hosts for any given meme. And
>with that, it became a possibilty (maybe an inevitability), for "meme
>strongholds" to emerge. A meme stronghold, as I think of it, is a group of
>people that materially benefits from a meme or memeplex, and therefore acts
>as a buffer against such basic and inevitable things as drought and famine.
>It is easy to imagine that, before extensive horizontal transimission, and
>before the development of meme strongholds, natural disaster could easily
>wipe out memes completely, since the meme-hosts themselves would be wiped
>out. The development of a "meme stronghold" class would have allowed for the
>evolution of a whole new group of memes and memeplexes that perpetuate
>themselves through two main mechanisms: 1. protecting their stronghold
>against material hardship and memetic competition and 2. encouraging
>horizontal transmission, particlarly from the stronghold outwards.
>
>Almost all of the developments that are considered features of complex
>societies, such as increased population density, writing systems, monumental
>architecture, the development of full time "priest" classes, etc., are all
>clear tools for increasing horizontal transimission (within a generation
>from person to person) of ideas as opposed to vertical transmission (from
>parent to offspring) of ideas.
>
>It is also interesting that this development of meme strongholds and the
>increase in horizontal transmission could result in memes that were more
>destructive to their hosts than would have been possible before. Without a
>meme stronghold, a meme that causes harm to the host is at risk of dying
>with the host, or simply being rejected in favour of memes that are more
>personally beneficial. But with a meme stronghold, all that is important to
>the meme is that the stronghold itself survives to spread memes again
>another day. Those outside of the stronghold could live very difficult
>lives, could be sacrificed in warfare to protect or strengthen the
>meme-stronghold, etc., because their survival is only neccessary in support
>of the stronghold.
>
>Well, that is a semi-random smattering of some if the ideas that came out of
>my simplistic application of memetics to a very large topic. I am really
>curious about what others think about the idea of meme-strongholds as
>catalyst for, if not the main fuel for, the development of civilization and
>the incredible increase in the means for horizontal transmission in the last
>few millenia. What meme could be more self-perpetuating than one that
>encourages communication or increases the means for communication? Was
>memetic evolution the main motiviator of the development of civilization?
>
>Brent
>
>
>===============================================================
>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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