RE: Why memeoids?

From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jan 19 2002 - 16:19:26 GMT

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    From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    Subject: RE: Why memeoids?
    Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 11:19:26 -0500
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    >From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
    >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
    >To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    >Subject: RE: Why memeoids?
    >Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 10:21:53 -0500
    >
    >Some thoughts to add to the Turkey pile:
    >
    > > They have a reservoir of discontented Islamic fundamentalists. I
    > > have not
    > > looked at the situation in detail, but I think it is clear that most
    > > Islamic countries have some. The question is what does it take for
    > > memes/groups to become a problem?
    >
    >I don't think that two of the classic reasons given for insurrection are
    >accurate: poverty and over-population. I know that it is almost a given
    >that
    >these are causal, but in the many years I spent travelling and studying, I
    >have not been able to find the correlation. Poor people can be content
    >(especially if they belief that everyone else is in the same boat) and
    >overpopulation has many non-insurrectional escapes. The factors that I have
    >found pront to insurrection are a sense of injustice, whether it has to do
    >with the perception of inequality of income, or corruption or among the
    >elite, or imposition of an alien culture or belief-sytem (often from the
    >capital).
    >
    >SNIP
    >
    > > It would be most interesting to study the indicators in the population
    > > leading up to a coup. As candidates, I would put forth wealth per
    >capita
    > > and maybe more important rate of change of wealth. Other
    > > candidate factors
    > > would be culture being displaced, percentage of later born children,
    > > percentage of young men in bonded (or any) sexual relations. Subject to
    > > real measurement, my expectation is that falling wealth per capita, more
    > > later born children, and high percentage of males without sex partners
    > > would all contribute to instability. Another possible factor
    > > might be the
    > > extent to which wealth is stratified. There may be other factors as
    > > important or even more so.
    > >
    > > Turkey may have escaped some of the factors contributing to
    > > instability by
    > > exporting a substantial fraction of its population of young
    > > people to Germany.
    >
    >Yes, and add to this that when these workers come home, as most do, they
    >carry with them the memes of secular materialism.
    >
    >SNIP
    >
    > > That is certainly true. Turkey has a unique history in that one of its
    > > most forceful leaders, Atatürk, yanked Turkey into the modern age
    >between
    > > about 1925 and 1935. http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/History_of_Turkey
    >
    >Yanked is the operative word here. I spent some time in Turkey a couple of
    >years ago studying Ataturk's legacy in Turkey today. I came away concluding
    >that while he had forcibly imposed Western behaviors on Turkey, that he had
    >done so in such a way that failed to persuade many, especially those in
    >rural areas, and that they harbored both resentment and resistence to it,
    >that even today serves to diminish the impact of many of Ataturk's efforts.
    >The issue is far from solved: massive Ataturk banners (a la Stalin and Mao)
    >hang from some public buildings, and in quiet corners of the mosques and
    >cafes, people speak with bitterness of the cultural high-handedness of the
    >educated elites of Roberts University, now University of the Bosphorus.
    >
    >
    Thanks Lawrence. And those strategic SNIP's have taught me a lot about
    elitism.

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