Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA14832 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 29 Mar 2001 08:30:19 +0100 From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 21:38:25 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Memetic Paradigms Message-ID: <3AC259D1.30409.499F91@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
The gene paradigm fails because genes do not mutate as
memes do; they are either transmitted, or they aren't, and either
survive as they are, or die with their unsuccessful host as they are.
The viral paradigm fails because, even though they mutate (there
seems to be a different strain of flu every year) viral infections do
not have to compete with many other differing viral types for their
niches; it is as if only one form of life makes it, or doesn't, in its
environing ecosphere. But the idea of an environing memetic
ecosphere is a valid one. A third paradigm has been largely
ignored - the species paradigm. Memes, like species, have to find
niches in a surrounding ecosphere, along with other, different
memes, and both themselves mutate and alter their environment to
secure such niches. They are not isolable atoms, like genes,
because their existence includes their relations; memes
necessarily relate to other memes, and these relations is part and
parcel of what constitutes the significances of the memes. It is as
if memes are interplanetarily traveling species; their mutations
adapting to and changing each cognitive ecology into which they
journey, and coming to dynamically equilibrational terms with the
differing already present species which they find from environment
to environment, or, if they fail to do so, not being able to populate
the new environment.
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