Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 06:18:28 -0400
From: Paul Marsden <PMarsden@compuserve.com>
Subject: Raping Sweet Little Children : Answer to TP
To: "INTERNET:memetics@mmu.ac.uk" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Message text written by INTERNET:memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Timothy Perper/Martha Cornog Wrote
>The crux is the phrase "good memes." Within memetics, such is defined b=
y
>measuring the memes' success in replicating -- so Joe Camel is a "good"
>meme, so is the Coca-Cola logo, and so are such jewels of human creativi=
ty
>as Mickey Mouse. Judged on that basis, Richard is inviting us to
>contemplate a future *filled* with such memes -- hucksterism run amok.
Yes I agree, and with the dawn of NLP, the future seems quite ghastly. T=
he
banalisation of culture has long been predicted by writers on modernity
(ie Peter Berger The Social Construction of Reality) in what is called th=
e
massification of society
>Some memes, however, seem rather the opposite -- they seem hell-bent on
>destroying as many people as possible. Such memes include those for
modern
>warfare and drug use. Darwinian selection does not explain why they
>spread, since selection *opposes* them. In fact, the memes' best strate=
gy
>for spreading themselves is to promote not killing but *procreation* of
>their carriers. In Richard's sense, the slogan of a *good* meme must be
>"Make Love, Not War."
No! Ok so the meme wants to replicate and you are lucky enough to have t=
he
libido, the gigantic testicles, and the money to go around impregnating
zillions of women and then socialising all the baby Timothys at the Perpe=
r
Ethics Fund Institute, but the meme would probably spread to a far wider
audience if you raped and mutilated an sweet innocent five year old in a
horribly cruel fashion before chopping her up into little pieces and
mailing them to her parents and then admitted it all on international new=
s
(mega ratings) while communicating the meme to be spread.
The point is that there are so many memes around our serial meme detector=
s,
ie consciousness, the software evolved to runs on the parallel architectu=
re
of the brain (hardware, and by the way here is the answer to you question=
on philosopy (of mind) Memetics is Realist Evolutionary Functionalism NOT=
Platonism, or rival Aristotlian philosophy) that memes need to be detecte=
d
to be replicated. Now if yo had to catch the attention of as many
potential hosts as possible how would you do it?
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