Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA17035 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:34:45 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745DC9@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics ( Lon g Draft) Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:31:22 +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
In response to your extended comments, Kenneth,
I saw a TV series a while ago about cannibalism in the animal world. One
example was of a mouse who ate its offspring, after a cat uncovered the
mouse's burrow (is that the right word?).
Anyway, it seems reasonable to suggest that recognition of insurmountable
threats to offsprings' survival may be a root evolutionary cause of suicide
as a capacity of humans (sacrifice and kin selection and all that). As
such, I don't see anything wrong with your suggestion that people regarding
their personal circumstances as insurmountable triggers this kind of
response for both suicide, and infanticide.
The later point about the media as a trigger, or as Robin mentioned, as a
kind of tipping point, I still think is problematic. Not necessarily in the
sense that it's incorrect, but more in the sense- of well what do we do
about it if this is true? Surely, one response would be to ban media
representations of suicides, on the basis that they may trigger suicide
attempts (and much the same has been argued about pornography and sex crime,
of course). Now, personally speaking, as a libertarian I have real problems
with this because it inherently limits freedom of speech, and won't impact
on rates of these kind of behaviours ( in the same way that death penalties
do nothing to crime statistics- well apart from adding state-sanctioned
murder to those lists...).
I still think that it's a highly problematic argument to make in the first
place, since isolating media influence on such extreme behaviours is very
difficult, given that mass audiences are exposed to the same contents, and
yet cases of copycatting are usually very isolated, and the context of that
copying usually includes other very strong causal factors that it may be
more logical to focus on (e.g. for suicide, this might be evidence of
depression). Essentially then, I don't think we're going to get any answers
about causes for social, collective behaviours from looking at media
effects- not in a simplistic contagion framework anyway. that's not to say
memetics isn't a way into this though, because I think it might be, and
that's partly the appeal of it to me.
Vincent
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