Re: The necessity of mental memes

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@cogeco.ca)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 02:46:21 GMT

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Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 21:46:21 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca>
Subject: Re: The necessity of mental memes
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    At 05:30 PM 21/01/02 -0800, "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com>
      wrote:

    > > "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com> memetics@mmu.ac.uk Re: The
    > necessity of mental memesDate: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 16:37:40 -0500

    snip

    > >"Contagion" may be apt for uses in certain cases though not a term to focus
    > >upon to the exclusion of other possibilities. I'm an agnostic on memes so
    > >I'm open to other terms and other views.
    > >
    > >There's a plethora of terms (erroneous or not) out there which refer to
    > >stuff influencing human individual and social behavior. It might be neat to
    > >construct a taxonomy of these terms, though I'm only aware of a limited
    > >number such as meme, mind virus, contagion, culturgen, engram, mnemon,
    > neme,
    > >complex, idee' fixe, collective representation, archetype and so on.
    > >
    >The objection is reasonable, for many memes are symbiont rather than
    >virulent, kinda like mental mitochondria.

    While the pathological memes are very often used as examples to make it
    clear that memes "have a live of their own" I have in my articles always
    tried to stress this point. The vast majority of memes are helpful or at
    least not harmful.

    Keith Henson

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