From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed 30 Mar 2005 - 21:07:52 GMT
Steve,
> 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.
Ah, but by then the smaller chunks have turned against us. Memes follow
their own need to reproduce in a potentially hostile environment, not our
need to bring order and coherence to our worldviews.
> 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.
Whether it's concepts or species, punctuated equilibrium seems to be a
principle of life.
ted
- --- 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
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