Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA05451 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:18:14 +0100 Message-ID: <001101c10562$b79f7860$8d03bed4@default> From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745F1B@inchna.stir.ac.uk> <3B2F5E10.759C5BF7@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Subject: Re: sexual selection and memes Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 16:56:08 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
This is maybe long over due, but anyway,
Hi Chris,
You wrote,
Memes fundamentally need hosts, but I see no advantage to a meme in
getting anyone *in particular* to reproduce, mostly because the main
mode of transmission of these things is horizontal, not vertical (with
some notable exceptions, for example there is quite a lot of paranoia in
Northern Ireland about Catholics trying to 'outbreed' Protestants).
<< This is not the answer you were expecting, but here I go,
Chris, reading Nietzsche, I came across this and I apllied his thought onto
your disposition,
Could it be possible that memes in their fundamental structure has some-
thing what Nietzsche called ' Geschmack ', a quality akin to ' feeling ',
or akin to ' quality ', ' evolution ' or 'complexity', by which each meme
is pluralistic in its origin and stands in conflict with all others !?
Each meme is than just and complete.
The conflict is no shortcoming, and thus no problem which has to be
solved !
On the contrary, speaking about the conflict would be the problem,
in other words_ line up an explicit, collective, committed set of rules
or norms by which any meme is selected, how, when, why and to whom
to the meme is propagated would mean that the process wherein the
meme exist is reducable to zero.
Namely the pre- supposition that by the very beginning of any meme,
idea or matter all possible consequences and all the presumeble conse-
quences are than already included, collapses.
What in another sense means the following, memes do indeed funda-
mentally needs hosts, but they do propagate in an ' individualistc ' way_
there is no ' collective stream' as such, the ' true centre ' of the
message
is what is important. The point of view of the individual does not provide
any direction to the course of the underlying collective, main process
Each particle of any meme, idea or matter exist in their own niche and is
created in that way. Each particle/ element/ thought of any idea has its
own ' proto- feeling ' which in their turn anyone ' in particular ' repro-
duces..... the advantage of such a process is that the ' main- stream-
idea ' don 't get destroyed along the way_ in the many variants the
" collective " idea is recognized.
Heidegger said once, " [any meme] gives itself the freedom to show
itself as what it is. "
And IMO, that is the way in which we have to look upon memes, each
single whatever meme/ idea or matter is just and complete in its own right.
Like I said before, we all look to much at what should be regarded as
the ' collectiveness ' of any idea, meme or matter, where IMO the indi-
vidualistic nature of things is far more important.
Nature, IMO works on ' individualistic ' grounds, not " collective " ones.
We see/ experience collectiviness where IMO there is none.
" Life " is a collective, but there is only One " life " but many variants.
" The Big Bang " is a collective of processes, but there was only One !!
" Society " is a whole of individuals, but I can live in only One.
Hope this makes sense.
This is perhaps
easier to conceive of with memes actually - if ten people misreport a
saying, I'll bet you could find all the bits of the original there,
because they'll have made different mistakes, so the 'true centre' still
gets transmitted on average.
<< Yes, that is the idea, the main stream gets transmitted_ look for the
' collective underlying process'.
In other words, the collective moves less quickly than all individualistic
ways together, but it stays around a bit longer, where all the individualis-
tic terms eventually will be whiped out/ takin' over by other/ stronger
memes.
But in the meanwhile, the collective stream is hard(er) to kill.
That is of course the question wherever raised, what is the message
which gets transmitted !?
Find the ' collective term' in any message and we will know.
How, that is another question,....
Best regards,
Kenneth
( I am, because we are)
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