X-Message-Number: 11972
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 07:04:26 -0700
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: I'm still saying "Meme" in my head.

John De Rivaz writes,

>Perhaps it is my lack of understanding with what I am reading that made me
>think of *memeplexes* as organisms within an ecosystem. I suppose that 
>one could have a memeplex containing just one meme, but its survival value 
>may not be very good. 

What's a meme? Everything's a meme. Take any map, split it up any way,
call any part of it a meme - who's to say you're doing it wrong? So then
one person's memeplex is another person's meme - what's the difference?

More significantly, who's to say it's the same map? Your example

>"Blind faith is good" 
>"have blind faith in God" 
>"God speaks through me".

uses value-loaded phrases "blind faith" and "God". To a devout christian,
"blind faith"  isn't what he has. To a Wiccan, a "God" is a very different
beast than to the christian. Even between a couple of old sceptics like us,
those words no doubt carry very different baggage. Your nice concrete memes,
and the "plex" they rode in on, dissolve into personal constructs under
casual scrutiny.

Peter Merel.

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