Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19990410150615.00c1922c@popmail.mcs.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1999 15:06:15 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net>
Subject: Re: Zen
In-Reply-To: <370DDF3E.1FE4AAAE@rug.ac.be>
At 01:06 PM 4/9/99 +0200, Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be wrote:
>To me the importance of Zen - and of meditation techniques in general - is
that
>it can free us - temporarily - of our ongoing train of thoughts. In that
way it
>is a useful solution to get rid of the emotional burdeon which our thinking
>puts on us:
>http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/nature.htm
Mario,
Seldom does such an old and widespread personal philosophy derive all of
its memetic selection advantage solely from its emotional benefits to
adherents. Zen may have other memetic selection advantages, such as those
that would arise in selection for refutation resistance. Consider an
ancient environment in which several competing religions or philosophies
were being debated. Adherents of one would challenge a competing belief
system by showing that it leads either to self-contradiction or to
contradiction with accepted observations of the world. With philosophy X
and Y, such demonstration of contradiction could result first in adherents
dropping out, and second in prospective adherents deciding against becoming
adherents. But if philosophy Z embraces contradiction, then it could be a
more robust competitor in an environment selecting for the least often
refuted philosophy. Zen might owe some of its evolution and proliferation
to just such a kind of natural selection.
Perhaps this begins to make the sort of analysis that Bill Benzon was
looking for when he said "A memeticist might be interested in studying how
the doctrines and techniques of Zen meditation originated and spread."
(Although I am not sure whether he regards "doctrines" as existing in the
brain, given our previous discussions!)
--Aaron Lynch
http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit