Message-Id: <199706120330.XAA11771@brickbat9.mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 23:33:43 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: RE: What does the replicating?
Richard Brodie says:
>
>Sure, the DEFINITION of "good meme" (technically "fit meme") is
>replicative success. But you can then hypothesize and test empirically
>what characteristics such fit memes would have. This is a fecund and
>exciting area for memetic research! I threw out a few candidates in my
>book VIRUS OF THE MIND as broad categories of fit memes: (1) memes that
>push evolutionary buttons and thus attract attention (danger, food, sex,
>celebrity); (2) memes that promote self-replication by their very nature
>(tradition, evangelism); (3) memes that resist attack (faith,
>skepticism); (4) memes that utilize neocortical functions (making sense,
>familiarity).
>
Possibly "yes" on 1 & 4, but 2 & 3 seem very weak; I suspect that, at the
core, they are just variants on the notions that nothing success like
success or nothing fails like failure.
Independently of that I don't know what a tradition "meme" would be. OTOH
there is the word and concept of tradition, which would stand muster as a
meme, but there are also all the various cultural practices to which the
word refers. I suspect that many of those practices can get along perfectly
well without the practitioners even having the explicit concept of
tradition. That is, one can act in a traditional way, without knowing the
word. So the word-meme tradition isn't necessarily what it is that governs
traditional behavior. Now, is the thing actually governing traditional
behavior also a meme, or is there a meme (ore meme-plex or memosome or
complex meme or whathaveyou) for each tradional behavior or, why not be
generous, and have both?
William L. Benzon 201.217.1010
708 Jersey Ave. Apt. 2A bbenzon@mindspring.com
Jersey City, NJ 07302 USA http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
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