Re: Memetic Parasitism

From: Kate Distin (memes@distin.co.uk)
Date: Wed 20 Jul 2005 - 09:10:11 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Memetic Parasitism"

    Scott Chase wrote:
    >
    >
    >>Alan Patrick wrote:
    >>
    >>>On another board we were talking about why Harry
    >>
    >>Potter has raised the
    >>
    >>>ire of religous fundamentalists, whereas Philip
    >>
    >>Pullman's kids series,
    >>
    >>>which is far more anti religion etc, has not. View
    >>
    >>was that perhaps the
    >>
    >>>anti Potter thing is a memetic parasite, the
    >>
    >>Potter mindspace being
    >>
    >>>larger and thus better to colonise. (Of course, as
    >>
    >>Pullman is for older
    >>
    >>>kids it just may be that the moralists find it
    >>
    >>harder to understand.....)
    >>
    >>>Any views on the lifestyles of Memetic
    >>
    >>parasites....for eg are there
    >>
    >>>differences between species, say between fad
    >>
    >>parasites and those leeched
    >>
    >>>to longer term memes?
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>
    [big snip]
    >
    > Fundies despising the Potter seres harkens back to
    > their forebears squashing pagan beliefs like a bug as
    > Christianity spread through Europe. They don't like
    > the competition.
    >

    Although I don't share these Christians' objections to Harry Potter, I'm not sure that this analysis is quite fair. It seems to me that there's a difference between evangelism, as such, and a reflex objection to anything that has a certain word in its title (be that magic, evolution, or whatever).

    I think the difference hinges on the choice that religious (and political, etc.) people make between speaking about what "I" believe and always referring to what "we" believe. The fundamentalists of any religion tend to use "we", in a way that implies the beliefs of that religion come as a job-lot and you have to buy into them all in order to be a member. This then enables powerful religious leaders to issue dictats which all followers must accept. In contrast, when you hear people talking about what "I" believe you can bet that they accept the possibility that they might be wrong; that there is a valid spectrum of opinion all of which can be embraced within that one religion; and that each one of us is responsible for his own decisions about these things.

    This must tie into the suicide bombers' mentality somewhere along the line. If memetics is true then it must be able to account for what's going on there, which is surely memetic to some extent. Any insights, anyone?

    Kate

    =============================================================== 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 archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed 20 Jul 2005 - 09:26:56 GMT