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Topic: The Meme's Popularity
Part of the forum "Dialog Cafe" in the IshCon Forum Archive
| Poster and Date | Post |
| Truly Fri Nov 17th, 2006 at 11:31 PM |
Time once again for a bit of meta-talk! This topic is isn't spasmic and I wont even try to pretend to be angry about it. I am trying to address my curiosity though. Why is the theory or concept memetics so popular here? What is its usefulness that people have latched onto it and not another theory of cognition? Personaly I just like saying the word, its got a nice ring to it. After reading Susan Blackmore's book though, I wasn't so impressed. |
| MatthewJ Fri Nov 17th, 2006 at 11:59 PM |
Hey Truly. Well, these are the Ishmael Conference Forums. And Ishmael, as well as other works by Quinn, talks straight up about memetics. Particularly the "one right way" meme. So, since the people here have read ish, and found the book influential, it seems that there is inevitably going to be a bias towards memes, which are central to those books. |
| JCamasto Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 02:39 AM |
I don't understand what anyone memes anymore. Shit, does that make me a post-modernist? Can I be an -ism instead, or is that model not useful...? (Ok I'm hammered. But I just fostered some diversified local conections, so cut me some purity slack...) -Jim |
| Truly Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 09:57 AM |
*lets out some more kite line for Jim* I'm not accusing anybody of anything in this thread, i'm just trying to pin point why people like the meme so much. There really is no right answer for this one. For Mathew, Yeah, Quinn does use the meme term a number of times, but i'm not really sure he talks straight up about what that means. So what is the value of the idea of a meme over the value of something like a schema? |
| Talvir Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 11:07 AM |
"Truly" wrote: So what is the value of the idea of a meme over the value of something like a schema? Hey Truly, Straight up, I think memes grabbed the intellectual landscape first. It's on a hilltop, the firing arcs have all been cleared, the machine gun nests are built, the minefields and barbed wire have been laid. Basically, any other idea is going to have to battle up that hill and take out that 88. Err I mean, displace memetics from the popular mindset. - Joe |
| memeshredder Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 11:36 AM |
Gee why did I learn to stop worrying and love the meme? Let me tell you the story of why I'm no longer TonyZ. TonyZ was a cartoon character of Mother Culture. Tony ate a 'heroic' dose of mushrooms. The mushrooms took all that cartoony bullshit and rippied it into a million tiny pieces. Rather than float in the wind trying to ctach a piece here, catch a piece there, I recognized my ability to recreate myself, rather than try and put my old self back together. IN the process I discovered a lot of things. That's what these last 800 posts have been about. THe memes are as real as day. Your brain of memory has many layers of memes First memory layer: Single neurons that are prgrammed to fire and/or, with each time capsule and each chance to respond to the world being give their own neuron. This is called thin slicing, yeah or nay, and so on... the source of our binary makeup The second layer exists of groups of these thin slices, commonly referred to as 'moments' and memories. This appears to be the first level to the untrained cosnciousness. THe brain can be trained to see at even faster frequencies, but one must go through a process where you graduately produce in your body such frequencies, through the training of drumming and dancing and singing. There's a lot mroe to this, but I hope this gets the ball rolling on 'memes' and 'memory'. |
| MatthewJ Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 06:28 PM |
Hey Truly, In Beyond Civ, Quinn does in fact spend a number of pages discussing memetics in some basic detail. And the central message of his books is memetic - that the "one right way meme" is at the cause of our troubles and that we have to "change minds" [change memes]. So ya, what Joe said. Hey Tony, have you done any work with thin slicing? I've read blink, and am searching for more info on training myself to work with my thin slicing better. Mat |
| Rogerflat Sat Nov 18th, 2006 at 06:53 PM |
Quote: Why is the theory or concept memetics so popular here? What is its usefulness that people have latched onto it and not another theory of cognition? It's popular here because people like Quinn and Dawkins have made it the cornerstone of their work, or at least a significant part of it. It is useful because it is easier to understand cultural ideas as "memes" as opposed to some abstract collection of traditions and belief systems. |
| memeshredder Sun Nov 19th, 2006 at 11:45 AM |
everytime I sit at a drum I'm practicing thin slicing. |
| This page is part of the archives of the IshCon.org discussion forums, as they existed from November 2002 to January 2007. Some links and other content references may be outdated or broken. For more information about IshCon, visit www.ishcon.org. |