Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 22:18:07 -0800
From: ca314159 <ca314159@bestweb.net>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Good and Bad Memes ?
Tim Rhodes wrote:
>
> I don't think it's useful to define memes in terms of their relationship
> with consciousness. Consciousness is an neurological phenomena. (Which I
> believe they may have located in the brain, but I don't have the article
> handy at the moment--anyone?)
COMPLETE Focus story at http://focus.aps.org/v4/st30.html
Link to the paper: http://publish.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v60/p7299/)
> Memes are aided in their spread by it's
> actions, but I don't see what's gained by linking the two (memes and
> consciousness).
Memes sound to me from what I've read so far, like paths in the mind.
If someone else has a path with alot of side roads, that path sounds
useful for getting to other mental "places". Like metaphors linking
ideas, memes seem to provide roads linking mental places. If someone
is "not immune" to your meme, they may adopt it, perhaps in place
of a road that they were using previously which would then become
vestigial.
If a road is travelled often, it may need widening. The meme may be
so often used to "explain everything" that you find you have adopted
it as an "ideology". It may be so "useful" that no one is immune to
to it. But "useful" is a relative term here and an ideology may be
"useful" for survival, but not necessarily "moral". Memes seem to
as much propaganda as useful mental analogies or metaphors.
Gulliver's travel's for instance, seem packed with memes.
Same for Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Often a "useful" toolbag of memes seems to have a cult following of
good or bad merits.
Is this a correct interpretation to some extent ?
--http://www.bestweb.net/~ca314159/
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