Message-Id: <199905250633.CAA14687@mail4.lig.bellsouth.net>
From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 01:47:49 -0500
Subject: Re: JCS: Of memes and witchcraft
From: "Paul Marsden" <paulmarsden@msn.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: JCS: Of memes and witchcraft
Date sent: Tue, 25 May 1999 07:29:36 +0200
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > "The truth in memetics seems to be the simple fact that we human
> > beings are indeed always, to some extent, passive recipients of
> > existing ideas - not because those ideas are parasites infesting us
> > but because we are social animals, closely bound to those around us by
> > familiarity and affection, so that we largely pick up our habits from
> > them." [Mary Midgley, "Of memes and withcraft", jcs-online, 5/20/99]
>
> Enough already! This statement says more about the author than about
> memetics. Life is not just one damn thing after another, it is one damn
> thing *instead of another*: evolutionary culture theory, or to use the
> neologism memetics, is not only about heredity (one thing after another),
> but also about selection, (and indeed cultural variation). Humans are
> anything but passive recipients of information, we use it selectively.
>
And choose it selectively, too! We are active seekers and
evaluators, accepters and discarders. We are no less dynamic
than the memestream in which we swim.
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