Subject: Re: A Drosophila for cultural evolution
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 97 00:05:38 -0400
From: Wade "T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
To: memetics <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>I think it an excellent area for memetic study. I've been saying that
>memes and scatalogical object were probably intertwined. Toilet training
>as currently practiced certainly seems to involve something of memetics,
>regardless of what definition one uses.
Thanx. Yes, it is this multifaceted containment that sparked me.
>Of course, we are confronted with the usual question...where is the meme?
> Is it the dung? the diaper? the words one's parents use to convey a need
>for bodily control? the memory of toilet training? the brain pattern
>controlling relevant bodily functions? the instinct to acquire control
>of the bowels?
>
>Mark
Well, how about using this to arrive at the meme? (Or the definition
thereof.) Reducing it to its essence, as it were. I think there is some
promise there. I don't think there has ever been a human culture without
some form of toilet training, at least not in ethnographic time. And I am
not aware of any non-human form of it, with the possible exception of the
toilet-trained cat.... But mimicry is always a red herring.
But- yours was the only response, so I guess either the others are afraid
to get their hands dirty, or it just ain't the raging brainstorm I
thought it was....
*****************
Wade T. Smith
morbius@channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
morbius@cyberwarped.com |
******* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ *******
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