Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA18084 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 28 Nov 2001 13:41:40 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3102A6D155@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Field of Memes Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 13:37:09 -0000 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
The tribal ego declined in Athens?
Tell that to the Spartans (and to Athenian women, and to the metics, and to
the slaves).
Current events in Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and elsewhere suggest that
tribalism is very much still rampant.
Tribalism, is also a form of territorialism, is evident in many other
species, and arguably can be related to the concept of kin selection.
Memetics, to me, is about the artefacts that we produce that other organisms
on Earth do not, that allow us to have greater cultural capital than any
other organism. (Hence we can know something of ancient Athens despite it
being long dead).
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Dace
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 3:31 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Field of Memes
>
> Scott,
>
> > As Ernst Mayr says of the meme:
> >
> > (bq) "It seems to me that this word is nothing but an unnecessary
> synonym
> > of the term "concept"." (eq)
>
> A meme is a concept with its own motive power, an idea on wheels. In the
> context of mental self-existence, every idea is capable of taking on a
> life
> of its own. With the onset of human consciousness, life is remade into a
> kind of mental body-- a soul, so to speak. In the course of their
> interaction, these mental selves generate secondary mental creatures, all
> of
> them autonomous, all of them devoted to their own replication. The
> original
> child of consciousness is the tribe. Early humans identified not with
> themselves as individuals but with their group. The ego began
> collectively,
> and its collective influence remains powerful, as we saw in the
> tribalistic
> reaction of America to the terror struck against it. Language also began
> collectively, emerging not from one mind or another but from their
> intercourse. The departure from Africa set off gradual fragmentation into
> distinct languages, each one a child of the mother tongue, each with its
> own
> will to endure. The tribal ego began its decline three thousand years,
> most
> conspicuously in ancient Athens. Egos, languages, and all the
> institutions
> of human culture consist of self-perpetuating corpuscles of thought.
> Culture is nothing more than the field in which memes are the particles.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> 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
>
===============================================================
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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