Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA11942 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 10 Nov 2001 14:07:00 GMT From: <mcvjones@netscape.net> Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 08:57:45 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Re: Wade's last week's phrase of the day... Message-ID: <3180E460.06CD5A01.00A07139@netscape.net> X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Philip Jonkers <P.A.E.Jonkers@phys.rug.nl> wrote:
>>"We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?"
>
>>- Edward Young, poet (1683-1765)
>
>Yes funny isn't it? I think the reason why we imitate eachother to death
>has to do with us being an extremely social species. By constantly imitating
>eachother in a group, in behavior as well as thought, conformity and unity is
>established. These two elements are essential to maintain group coherence.
>In old times, overt rebels and other `free-thinkers' were considered a threat to
>the welfare of the group and were either expelled from the group or made into
>leaders if they could muster sufficient authority and reject reigning
>leadership.
>Philip.
>
>ps. I posted this one earlier, but it seemed to got stuck somewhere in the
>electronic twilight zone during last week's comatose period of the mailing-list.
But what really drives our conformity behavior, why so often when we recognise in ourselves irrational conformity behavior, we can't then change it?
I think (and no more) that our conformity behavior is 'hard-wired' in during the early stages. There would be little evolutionary advantage in forgetting survival skills and taking time out to relearn them . So those that learnt the quickest, remembered them the best and passed them on efficiently would have the advantage.
So is our conformity behavior hard-wired in like out phoneme retention? Here are two studies on the effect of various religions on creativity and academic ability:
Darnell, Alfred and Darren E. Sherkat. 1997. "The Impact of Fundamentalism on Educational Attainment." American Sociological Review. 62:306-315.
Datta, Lois Ellin. 1967. "Family Religious Background and Early Scientific Creativity." American Sociological Review vol. 32, pp. 626-635.
Put another way, these studies investigate how the degree of environmental openness/closure in the early stages, effects future creativity and academic ability ie our ability to change ie to learn.
Could list members please forward papers that investigate the degree of early stage openness/closure and future ability.
Many thanks
Mark
>
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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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