From: Steve Wallis (swallis@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Mon 28 Mar 2005 - 13:23:18 GMT
Sounds very chaos/complexity theory-ish.
We might be ruled by giant meme-plexes, but we also
use smaller memes to serve ourselves. We can
deconstruct the meme-plexes into smaller chunks to use
them.
I'd say that both we and memes move in cycles from
stability to chaos and back again. Moving from
stability to complexity might be seen as
brainstorming, while moving from complexity to
stability involves reduction/enfolding of concepts.
Steve
--- Dace <edace@earthlink.net> wrote:
> It occurred to me while reading a tribute to Derrida
> in The Philosopher's
> Magazine (issue 29) that there's a distinct memetic
> component to the concept
> of deconstruction. This is Alan Montefiore on what
> he learned from Derrida:
>
> "First and foremost perhaps-- though I doubt whether
> he would have put it
> this way-- that the meanings of terms... never come
> as it were in hard
> nuggets, but that under pressure they tend always to
> spread out in all
> directions, to 'disseminate,' as he himself might
> indeed have said. Thus
> one is always at risk of finding one's own meanings
> sliding away from
> oneself-- as, indeed, we have been taught from
> another, but not totally
> other, perspective by Freud and his diverse
> followers.
>
> "Second, that within these spreading entanglements,
> if we follow them
> through far and diligently enough, we shall
> (almost?) always find elements
> of mutual contradiction which, when set free to work
> as such, may, like some
> disseminating cancer, threaten the very discourse in
> which they are embedded
> with reduction to a kind of self-destroying
> incoherence."
>
> "And third, that one should not hope or pretend that
> even the very discourse
> within which one may attempt to formulate these
> insights could maintain any
> claim to a securely superior status..."
>
> Seems that the memes we launch from the head come
> back to bite us in the
> ass.
>
> ted
>
>
>
>
===============================================================
> 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
>
>
Steve Wallis, PhD student at Fielding Graduate University (with a focus on human systems and complexity theory).
Check out http://www.easygenius.net for an appreciative way to learn about yourself and others.
===============================================================
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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