Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA22730 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 7 Jul 2000 11:41:35 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745903@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Cons and Facades/memetic engineering Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 11:39:27 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks for this.
I think you're very right. What's interesting then is whether there is a
particular point in time at which a community recognises these animal
behaviours as inappropriate for that particular kind of community. If you
like, is there a kind of social equivalent of the Adam and Eve story?
This may relate also to debates, for example in Rousseau, about the
so-called 'State of Nature', and when humans went from that state into the
state of social systems. Some views regard man as having been savage and
brutal in the state of nature, and society thus civilised man (Rousseau
didn't share this view if I remember correctly), and that was therefore the
job of society- to control the base instincts of man for the betterment of
all.
Whatever position an author takes on this debate, what is evident is the
notion that something is distinct from what humans were and what humans are,
and how certain aspects of what humans were are suppressed in society (which
is then seen as either a good or bad thing).
Just thinking about it, the notion of taboo is almost a conscious
meme-antidote. If you don't want people to imitate certain behaviours, then
one way to minimize the liklihood of this happening is by restricting the
extent to which people communicate (or represent through art etc.) that
behaviour. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you get the equivalent
I suppose of a memetic bacteriophage, in things like Meagan's Law. Flood
the communication environment with knowledge about who conducts the unwanted
behaviours to the point where they are unable to do it anymore.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Kenneth Van Oost
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2000 8:06 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Cons and Facades/memetic engineering
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 1:27 PM
> Subject: RE: Cons and Facades/memetic engineering
>
>
> > This is a central question I think, because of the notion of intent.
> > There's no doubt that different social systems (political, religious
> etc.)
> > have proscribed behaviours in different ways at different times, and
> have
> > deliberately done so, but the question emerges of where (and why) those
> > proscriptions occured in the first place (and how and why those
> > proscriptions spread).
> >
> > I think it depends on the nature of the behaviour. With sexual
> behaviours
> > it is more than likely, IMHO, that the behaviours predate any efforts to
> > proscribe them. Other kinds of taboos undoubtedly emerged within a
> cultural
> > context. I suppose good recent examples would be cloning, and IVF
> > technology that allows same sex couples to have babies (or will do in
> the
> > near future).
> >
> > Cannibalism strikes me, as I write, to be an interesting example.
> Again,
> > this is presumably a very ancient behaviour, predating civilisation.
> I'm
> no
> > anthropologist, but I believe today it's only practised amongst remote
> > tribes in places like Borneo. Nonetheless it is a human practice, but
> one
> > that is today a major taboo broken only in the most extreme of
> > circumstances, such as by serial killers, or in that case of the
> Argentinian
> > rugby team trapped in the Andes for months after a plane crash a few
> years
> > ago. How did it become a taboo? If it was engineered in some kind of
> way,
> > why? (and more importantly how?).
>
> Vincent, your questions did not left me untouched.
> So, I am trying...
>
> Will people force themselves to view their problems and will they
> recognize
> their problems ?
> René Girard says ' don' t bet on it! If it goes about escaping from the
> truth,
> then all means are inexhaustible.'
>
> That means, I think, that some things in our social/ cultural history were
> not
> taboos, or became taboos, but were things where people couldn 't get a
> grip on.
> If this is the case, 'what I suspected all along) then activities like
> incest/ sodomie/ cannibalism/... are/were genetic " naturalities ".
> In the twilightzone between animal and becoming human things were not so
> clear.
> We have possible inherited a few ' animal behaviourpatterns '.
> Do animals know incest/ sodomie/ cannibalism_I am not sure, but I think
> they do !!
>
> So, the peoples powerlessness against such things was so great that re-
> cognition of the truth didn 't mean that they had not the situation under
> control, but moreover that they give themselves up onto the desintegrating
> effects of that situation and people renounced to any kind of normal life.
>
> The whole community took voluntary part into that fusion. This desperate
> will to deny the obvious set the hunt after the ' scapegoat ' in motion.
> I think to answer the question how a taboo was memetic engineered we
> have to look in here. How things became taboos we have to account for
> the mystification/ for the sacralisation of the vistim_that is_the
> scapegoat-
> principle works always on collective ground_always them/us against us/one.
> The social cohesion is/was broken down, to make it once again stick the
> collective finds a victim, kills it and goes on with their lives in a new,
> then
> higher social order.
>
> To ' forget ' what they have done they make of the act which trigged the
> whole mess in the first place a taboo.
> The reason it seems is most of the time fear for something new, for some-
> thing horrible, but if members of a group were only afraid of eachother
> then the whole structure would collapse easily_the members will kill each-
> other in no time.
>
> Girards synthesis is that what is close at hand is/ becomes forbidden,
> because
> those things are more then others subject to the mimetical rivalry_what
> can
> lead to conflict, violence and murder between family/ group.
> To prevent those things from happening they are surrounded by ' taboos '.
>
> Of course, this is simplified, the issue is more complex then that !
> Vincent, what do you think !?
>
> Regards,
>
> Kenneth
>
> (I am, because we are) working
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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>
===============================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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