Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA12338 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 3 Feb 2002 22:01:12 GMT X-Originating-IP: [137.110.248.206] From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Abstractism Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2002 13:55:30 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <LAW2-F36TljBOh8s4KW0000c77a@hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 03 Feb 2002 21:55:30.0896 (UTC) FILETIME=[7F812D00:01C1ACFD] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>>Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2002 16:19:12 -0800
>From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: Abstractism
>
>The way I understand it, Mr. Rorschach just spilled some ink on a piece
>of
>paper and folder it over with no intention of transmitting a message.
>He
>was creating a convenient equivalent of clouds for his patients. I
>think
>intention has a great deal to do with transmitting messages. Anything
>transmitted without intent is not a message.
>
>Grant<
>
>It may not be a message, but it is information. If you go back to my
>’novice
>at a dinner party’ example from earlier, the other diners are not
>instructing the novice intentionally. The novice is learning by copying,
>while the other guests are behaving (by their own criteria) normally.
>Therefore they are transmitting an unintentional message - "this is the
>behaviour you adopt at dinner parties" and which the novice endevours to
>adopt. Irving Goffman wrote quite a bit about this sort of *subliminal*
>messaging (and many other social psychologists). This is also part of where
>i see the problem of who is doing the choosing - us or the meme.
>
>regards
>
>Steve
>
I also discussed receiving information in that message or the one before and
someone compared it to seeing pictures in the clouds. We receive a great
deal of information from others that is not meant as messages. Everything
about a person provides us with information. Some of it is meant to be a
signal and some is not.Most of it is deduced from the abundant clues
provided by speech patterns, decisions made about clothing, gestures, head
and facial hair, etc., etc. Some of these things are meant as messages and
some are not. But they provide us with information regardless. Information
not meant to be a message can, nevertheless, be a meme. That's because the
information can be transferred merely by its presence.
A person who wears a particular costume indicating status (a business suit
for example) is sending a message. The person from another culture sends
messages with his clothing and speech patterns to other members of his
culture but not to people of another culture. People of the other culture
get information from this data even though it is not necessarily the
information being transmitted. If they use what they learned to change
their own behavior, I think you can call that a meme.
Grant
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