Subject: Re: when is a meme selfish?
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 14:52:29 -0400
From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
On 08/29/99 13:19 the inimitable Bill Spight made this comment =8B
>Your remarks are in line with Weber's idea that the meaning of a cultural
>artifact resides in its purpose. <s>
And I only know Weber from his name on my barbeque grill on the back
porch.... ;-)
But he's added to my list.
Yes, I guess he and I would call a spade a spade. Do I take it even
further, in that I see _no_ meaning in an object itself whatsoever? Take
enough contextual information away from the observers of an object, and
it loses all meaning, totally, as if it never had any at all to begin
with. Both the encoding and the decoding are observer-resident
operations. Memetic objects are symbols put into time and space of a
desired replicand. Or am I being haplessly nitpickesque here? It sounds
like I'm harping on the obvious, but, for some reason, I think it's
important to lose the object entirely. We only need it forensically. But
that may be a very good reason to need it, and giving it any other reason
for being there may just muddy the waters.
Yes, no?
- Wade
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