From: Bpmatt1@aol.com
Date: Sat 04 Oct 2003 - 15:05:50 GMT
I find it very interesting to look at ethnic conflicts in terms of memetics. I'm taking a class in Conflict Resolution, which has a heavy focus on Sociology, we were taking a look at John Burtons Human Needs Theory the other day, and it struck me that such a theory could be more accurately explained using memetics. The idea of the most fundemental human needs being a need for Recognition, Security, and Economic Advantage struck me as rather silly, as it begs the question, why are these the basic Human Needs, what forces drive people towards these particular things. If we look at it in terms of memetics, very roughly we can see, security as being an expression of genetic interest (no I'm not exposing sociobiology, I'd be a fool to do that). In my mind security could beneficially be defined as a need to propagate your genes, through your relatives. This need of course is subverted to aid in meme survival within an ethnic group so the situation is slightly more complicated than that ( does this point need
clarification, or do people get me, I'm interested in a dialogue here). Recognition can roughly be seen as an expression of memetic interests, if your ideas are being rejected, or are not being legitimized by the status quo, it is natural that any memeplex, will evolve a strong dislike for that sort of situation, because memeplexs that fail to devolp such a strong reaction to supression will die off next to more agressive, and less passive memeplex's. The idea of economic advantagge could roughly be defined as a combination of memes that coevolved with genetic interests, and genes that suffer from genetic lag. Genes that are nol longer neccessary and perhaps even damaging to our survival, for example the desire to eat sweet foods, or the desire to have what may be protected sex with a variety of women, or men. I'm a poor college student working at a library, and only have a few minutes left, so I've only had time to very roughly and quickly sketch the outline of my ideas, but I'd appreciate any feedback
.
I'm interested to hear what people think of this. It's also important in understanding this my particular view of memetics, in regard to the devolpment of ethnicities. An ethnicity more than any other sort of memeplex, is a living organism with evolved defense mechanisms. If you isolate a group, and limit there meme exchange with other groups a new ethnicity will eventually devolp. If that ethnicity is exposed to a small number of other ideas, it will likely adopt some, and devolp defense mechanisms to prevent assimilation, if it doesn't it will be assimilated by a ethnicity that has. my terminology here is poor, and my rhetoric is weak, but please excuse that and take a look at the ideas I'm trying to put forth here.
Sincerly interested in any sort of response,
Matt
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