Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970721120925.2707406e@pop.ou.edu>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: John Konopak <jkonopak@ou.edu>
Subject: Re: The /doggie/ "meme"
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 13:05:09 -0500
At 10:13 PM 7/18/97 -0000, you wrote:
>considering Bill Benzon's excursus that began:
>
>>Consider a 2-year-old playing with mother and Fido....
that it reminded you
>...of a rather sentimental scene from 'The Miracle Worker,'
wherein
>....Helen makes a connection between the sign
>and the material. With this one epiphany, Helen suddenly enters the
>cultural dimension and communicates with friends and family. A new life
>starts. She has discovered what one might call the notion that 'things'
>can be 'symbolized,' and meaning shared.
You said you were
>...suggesting this 'connection' represents the activation of a meme,
>something biologically inherited by most humans at conception,
akin (analogically/metaphorically) to genetics, and that it were productive
to consider
>...another list of comparisions between genetics and memetics.
This led me to ponder then, if what (we) are doing is not also akin to
mapping the memome, itself a worthy scientific enterprise, but one which
already reveals telltales by means of which might be (an likely already is)
being appropriated to the kinds of purposes and occasion the kinds of
consequences for which scientists eventually strenuously deny
responsibility: e.g., biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons developed
through the worldly and venal appropriations of putatively "altruistic" and
otherwise purportedly "noble" canons of science and developed scientific
understanding to promote. Do we not hereby provide a template for future,
extremely sophisticated practices of "memetic engineering"? In this
discussion have we (1) been blind to the likelihood of such an
appropriation, (2) acknowledged and dismissed it, or (3) actively embraced
the probability of something like memetic engineering?
Or is it already in place, in the discourses of advertizing and
entertainment-driven popular culture, and as such, only something that "goes
without saying." Stuart Ewen, in _All-Consuming Images_, notes that is not
an accident that the first guru, the vertiable "father", of public
relations, Edward Bernays, was Freud's favorite nephew.
John Konopak, EDUC/ILAC, 820 VanVleet Oval, U. of OK. Norman, OK 73019
E-mail: jkonopak@ou.edu; Fax: 4053254061; phone:4053251498
######################################################################
"The little dog laughed to see such sport..."
--People don't describe what they see;
we see what we can describe.--
"You may not be able to change the world, but at least
you can embarrass the guilty." --Jessica Mitford (1917-1996)
"Hodido...pero contento_!--though
the older I get, the better I used to be.
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