> Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snippage> > I wrote one of the earliest popular articles on > memes "MEMETICS AND THE MODULAR-MIND" in Analog >(1987). > > http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=hkhensonE5ozq9.K8x%40netcom.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
"History classes have made us more aware of the genocidal depredations resulting from the "master race" meme that was part of the Nazi meme complex. Considered from the viewpoint of memes, Hitler was less a prime mover than a willing victim of this particularly nasty and pervasive variety of information disease. Had plague struck Germany in the '30s instead of Nazism, we would have understood it in terms of susceptibility, vectors, and disease organisms. What did happen may soon be modeled and understood in terms of the social and economic disruptions of the time increasing the number of people susceptible to fanatical beliefs, just as poor diet is known to increase the number of those susceptible to tuberculosis. For vectors, we have personal contact, the written word, radio, and amplified voices substituting for rats, lice, mosquitoes, and coughed-out droplets. A pool of "sub-memes," many of them ancient myth, contributed to the syncretic Nazi meme in much the same way mobile genes contribute to the virulence of the influenza viruses." The "ancient myth," or Golden Age era for which many yearn (the "Look-Back"-ers, per Himself), certainly can induce mass horrors, as you point out; the "Look-Forward"s seem to be more hopeful to me. But were the social revolutionaries like Marx etc. looking more forward or backward? [My knowledge of these movements is at best sketchy. They seem to be Looking Up A Dark Tunnel, to me.] Militant fundamentalists of all religions/ideologies fall into the Look-Back camp; their fear of new ideas and independent thinking seems to lead them to violence or authoritarian policies to control people. Or attempt to control, anyway. "However, most memes, like most microorganisms, are either helpful or at least harmless. Some may even provide a certain amount of defense from the very harmful ones. It is the natural progression of parasites to become symbiotes, and the first symbiotic behavior that emerges in a proto-symbiote is for it to start protecting its host from other parasites. I have come to appreciate the common religions in this light. Even if they were harmful when they started, the ones that survive over generations evolve and do not cause too much damage to their hosts. Calvin (who had dozens of people executed over theological disputes) would hardly recognize Presbyterians three hundred years later." <smile> I think of memes like the Golden Rule as beneficial symbionts, although in the strictly biological sense they tend to benefit others, rather than those who express the Rule in action. Originally, or at least by the time it was probably incorporated into our genes, altruism likely did benefit continuation of the expressor's genes, in the survival of relatives. "Sheer exhaustion may have been one of the most significant factors in developing a grudging tolerance, which in these later times has taken on a patina of virtue in the division of our culture known as "liberal."" <grin> Exhaustion as a virtue! What then of its offspring, Indifference? It's not nearly as self-congratulatory to think that tolerance sprang from mere fatigue, instead of as a lofty Higher Ideal achieved through Noble Thought and Sacrifice... Debbi who carries both the Look-Back (frex Tolkien's Lothlorien) and Look-Forward (frex Star Trek's Federation) memes, somehow managing to co-exist ;) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway http://promotions.yahoo.com/design_giveaway/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
