Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id LAA17778 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 14 Sep 2000 11:30:54 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745A10@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: solipsistic view on memetics Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 11:28:33 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks Douglas for your comments.
>Well, no it wasn't intended to suggest that, only that what might
in some
>theoretical consensus be classified as 'intellectual' is a little
tip of an ice
>berg founded on really embedded (and very emotion-based) cultural
>assumptions.
Yes, I see what you mean now. However that theories emerge within specific
cultural contexts doesn't invalidate claims to the rational, it merely
problematises them.
> (Waiting for the Freud of the collective mind to appear).
I guess you don't regard Jung's collective unconscious as part of this idea?
>Am trying not to have too much personal baggage, or at least to be
able >to
>identify it and consider the ways in which its invisible hand
creates
>conclusions about ideas or situations that do not require
conclusions. >This is
>an interesting thought process, -'assuming someone is implying' but
I >don't know
>what to say about it.
I hope this didn't come across as personal baggage. what I meant was that
the use of quotation marks is sometimes a deliberate dig or sarcasm; a quick
equivalent of saying something like "so called intellectual". I gather this
is not how you were using it.
>There is not much conceptual difference between the Hindu caste
>system and
>Western social hierarchies or even other non-Hindi hierarchies in
India,
>Bangladesh or Pakistan.
To some extent I'd agree, but (a) what is the basis of these systems? and
(b) to what extent do such systems persist in different regions? (some have
said, and I see the point, that the homeless have become the untouchables of
western societies).
In my field, there is a similar debate going on around issues of press
freedom. In Asia, some authoritarian regimes are using the idea of 'asian
values' to resist efforts from native journalists to achieve more press
freedom, saying that asian societies don't work based on personal freedoms,
although this argument is increasingly being broken down in many countries.
>This could equally be applied to commodity mysticism (a la Guy
>Debord), a kind
>of 'cargo cult' well on the way to becoming the universal religion.
One could indeed say there is mysticism in every field of human endeavour,
but that doesn't make it valid. After all, to take this back to the
original piece that started this thread, at its extreme, the consequences of
mysticism are a solipsistic stance.
Vincent
> ===============================================================
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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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