Re: The necessity of mental memes

From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@cogeco.ca)
Date: Thu Jan 24 2002 - 09:11:27 GMT

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Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 04:11:27 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca>
Subject: Re: The necessity of mental memes
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    At 09:49 PM 22/01/02 -0900, "PHILIP JONKERS" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net>
      wrote:
    >Keith:
    > >"Replicating ideas" are
    > > always changing in the minds of those they infect, and they can mutate
    > > (sometimes a lot) with every new person they infect. It is hard to predict
    > > exactly what behavior a particular meme will be inducing next week,
    >because
    > > you never know how the meme may interact with other memes, or mutate.
    >
    >The dynamics of memes in brains may be capricious indeed, and I think that's
    >the
    >reason why media which guarantee higher longevity such as written language
    >helped prevent the rate of meme variation to reach counter-productive
    >levels.
    >After all, to make evulution possible memes should retain at least some of
    >their substance over time and upon transmission.

    I have commented on this in the past and speculated that one of several
    reasons the Rajneesh cult failed was due to the lack of a written version
    of the meme.

    Keith Henson

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