Memes and emotions (was "character assassination")

From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 25 2001 - 14:37:28 GMT

  • Next message: Chris Taylor: "Re: Memes and emotions (was "character assassination")" 

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From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Memes and emotions (was "character assassination")
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 09:37:28 -0500
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    For what it's worth, we don't treat emotions as memes, though I can see
    someone arguing that they can manifest themselves publicly as a behavior,
    and therefore might be induce imitation.

    But instead we treat emotions as part of the range or reactions a recipient
    of a meme may have to it, and therefore one of the filters that a meme has
    to get through in the recipient before it will be adopted by the recipient.

    In terms of modelling meme spread, this seems to work well.

    Cheers,

    Lawrence de Bivort
    The Memetics Group

    -----Original Message-----
    From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
    Of Chris Taylor

    (snip)

    Btw someone mentioned emotion a while back; for the record I think that
    we should not try too hard to classify emotions as kinds of memes. Emotions
    are deep
    animal brain stuff - tags for accumulated experiences which will never
    recombine to
    reveal what is generic about the world, or generate 'novelty'. Memes are
    washing
    about in an environment of which emotions are part. They can affect, and are
    affected
    by that environment, but fear, contentment etc are like temperature or soil
    acidity
    (I reckon).

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