Freewrite About Memes
Meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
I have a hard time understanding what memes are because people who talk about memes always blur that line between information and activity. I don't see how you can say something like a cultural practice is a unit of cultural information ever. Because to me its like a cultural practice refers to an activity, whereas cultural information is just a concept. So at best, we could say that a meme is the concepts that surround and support a cultural practice But you can't say, a meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice like dictionary.com has done. I just feel its important to note that an activity is NOT an information. Activities are significantly different from information, and so its wrong to equate them as identical. Unless we're all living in some tripped out matrix computer system, which i think is highly doubtful. It seems that this whole ridiculous theory about memes is based on the supposition that information is all there really is. And that activities are merely an accidental byproduct of information. But what is information. Information is not tangible. Its just a concept. So how can something that we can only think about, and never touch, be the only thing that's really there.
So going to a movie is a cultural practice, therefore its a meme?
You read a newspaper, you notice that Walk the Line is playing, you receive that information from the schedule, and you and a bunch of other people go to the theater, repeating the same behavior. So that's a meme right.
So eating cheerioes for breakfast is a cultural practice, therefore its a meme?
You're a kid, you're mom makes cheerios for breakfast, you watch her make it, you watch her poor cereal into a bowl, eventually you learn how to make it yourself by watching, therefore its a meme.
Isn't a cultural practice itself just behavior that is repeated in a culture by a significant amount of people. And if a 1000 people repeat a behavior, you could probably refer to those people as a culture if you wanted to, and thus refer to their behavior as a cultural practice. But memes are all about the causal linkage. So if 1000 people have never met, or noticed each other, or communicated anything between themselves by any means ever, and just arbitrarily happen to do the same thing over and over, that's not a meme. Its just a coincidence. But if a person perceives another person performing a certain kind of behavior, and then mimics that behavior, then a meme is involved. The information is a meme then if it gets communicated with the eyes or ears, but not if it is independently arrived at, or arrived at through some automatic biological instinctive process (such as when you're a baby, and you breathe for the first time, that breathing activity is not a meme, although everyone has done it, and its not a meme because you don't have to see it in order to do it, you just fucking to do it). Breathing is not a meme. So, that's nice that the act of breathing at least is meme-free, or starts out that way. But a meme is a unit of... information. So a meme is like a piece of math really, its a unit, and just as it is possible to play around conceptually with #1, #2, #3, these numbers still are just concepts and don't have independent existence. You don't walk down the street, and bump into a three. You might run into three signposts but you don't run into a #3 all by itself. They just don't have physical existence, because they're concepts. A unit of information is a concept. Even words on a page are not information, they are markers, the information is what they point towards. This is because information does not have independent existence of its own, information is just a concept. And concepts can effect behavior, because they effect our understanding of ourselves and our environment, and human beings who hold that certain facts are true can effect their environment in different ways as a result. This is the dumbest post. OK. In conclusion, the whole idea of memes is totally confusing to me and i will never understand even the simplest parts of it.
Everyone knows that genes and memes don't have consciousness of their own. But we're still likely to occasionally personify the genes, pretending that genes have motive and desire to replicate. We're likely to imply that copies are what the gene intends, believing that copies are the goal rather than conceiving of the copies as just the result of the activity that we're studying. And naturally, we're going to find ourselves presuming that the non-perfect copies and deviations are somewhat like accidents. If our focus is on how genes replicate perfectly over time, this will effect our consideration of deviations. Embedded in even a loose definition of a gene/meme is the idea that deviations occur as a result of a problem / a failure / a mutation / a chance occurrence, while we assume that the exact copies occur by design. To the extent that design is involved, the copies which are perfect and the copies which have changes (deviations) and the copies that are entirely unlike anything one could have expected are all designed into the system. And the system itself has no preference for one outcome over another. The copies themselves are not important to the system. The primary aspect of evolution is replication with changes. Because on the whole, an entity that replicates without changes is likely to pass out of existence. And as long as genes carry forward the the behavior of replication, the process itself will go on just like it has. But everyone still talks about evolution as if the genes want to reproduce themselves, and that gene or memes goal is to reproduce and win or succeed as if the genes were miniature people with all sorts of ambitions. So if personification is unavoidable, why not just personify the process in a novel way. Maybe instead of wanting to copy themselves exactly, all genes are attempting to go one better and to recreate something different from themselves. Maybe the possibility of change is what has energized the process all along. Maybe the possibility of deviants is the sole and only reason why the process is worth a damn.
Meme: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
I have a hard time understanding what memes are because people who talk about memes always blur that line between information and activity. I don't see how you can say something like a cultural practice is a unit of cultural information ever. Because to me its like a cultural practice refers to an activity, whereas cultural information is just a concept. So at best, we could say that a meme is the concepts that surround and support a cultural practice But you can't say, a meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice like dictionary.com has done. I just feel its important to note that an activity is NOT an information. Activities are significantly different from information, and so its wrong to equate them as identical. Unless we're all living in some tripped out matrix computer system, which i think is highly doubtful. It seems that this whole ridiculous theory about memes is based on the supposition that information is all there really is. And that activities are merely an accidental byproduct of information. But what is information. Information is not tangible. Its just a concept. So how can something that we can only think about, and never touch, be the only thing that's really there.
So going to a movie is a cultural practice, therefore its a meme?
You read a newspaper, you notice that Walk the Line is playing, you receive that information from the schedule, and you and a bunch of other people go to the theater, repeating the same behavior. So that's a meme right.
So eating cheerioes for breakfast is a cultural practice, therefore its a meme?
You're a kid, you're mom makes cheerios for breakfast, you watch her make it, you watch her poor cereal into a bowl, eventually you learn how to make it yourself by watching, therefore its a meme.
Isn't a cultural practice itself just behavior that is repeated in a culture by a significant amount of people. And if a 1000 people repeat a behavior, you could probably refer to those people as a culture if you wanted to, and thus refer to their behavior as a cultural practice. But memes are all about the causal linkage. So if 1000 people have never met, or noticed each other, or communicated anything between themselves by any means ever, and just arbitrarily happen to do the same thing over and over, that's not a meme. Its just a coincidence. But if a person perceives another person performing a certain kind of behavior, and then mimics that behavior, then a meme is involved. The information is a meme then if it gets communicated with the eyes or ears, but not if it is independently arrived at, or arrived at through some automatic biological instinctive process (such as when you're a baby, and you breathe for the first time, that breathing activity is not a meme, although everyone has done it, and its not a meme because you don't have to see it in order to do it, you just fucking to do it). Breathing is not a meme. So, that's nice that the act of breathing at least is meme-free, or starts out that way. But a meme is a unit of... information. So a meme is like a piece of math really, its a unit, and just as it is possible to play around conceptually with #1, #2, #3, these numbers still are just concepts and don't have independent existence. You don't walk down the street, and bump into a three. You might run into three signposts but you don't run into a #3 all by itself. They just don't have physical existence, because they're concepts. A unit of information is a concept. Even words on a page are not information, they are markers, the information is what they point towards. This is because information does not have independent existence of its own, information is just a concept. And concepts can effect behavior, because they effect our understanding of ourselves and our environment, and human beings who hold that certain facts are true can effect their environment in different ways as a result. This is the dumbest post. OK. In conclusion, the whole idea of memes is totally confusing to me and i will never understand even the simplest parts of it.
Everyone knows that genes and memes don't have consciousness of their own. But we're still likely to occasionally personify the genes, pretending that genes have motive and desire to replicate. We're likely to imply that copies are what the gene intends, believing that copies are the goal rather than conceiving of the copies as just the result of the activity that we're studying. And naturally, we're going to find ourselves presuming that the non-perfect copies and deviations are somewhat like accidents. If our focus is on how genes replicate perfectly over time, this will effect our consideration of deviations. Embedded in even a loose definition of a gene/meme is the idea that deviations occur as a result of a problem / a failure / a mutation / a chance occurrence, while we assume that the exact copies occur by design. To the extent that design is involved, the copies which are perfect and the copies which have changes (deviations) and the copies that are entirely unlike anything one could have expected are all designed into the system. And the system itself has no preference for one outcome over another. The copies themselves are not important to the system. The primary aspect of evolution is replication with changes. Because on the whole, an entity that replicates without changes is likely to pass out of existence. And as long as genes carry forward the the behavior of replication, the process itself will go on just like it has. But everyone still talks about evolution as if the genes want to reproduce themselves, and that gene or memes goal is to reproduce and win or succeed as if the genes were miniature people with all sorts of ambitions. So if personification is unavoidable, why not just personify the process in a novel way. Maybe instead of wanting to copy themselves exactly, all genes are attempting to go one better and to recreate something different from themselves. Maybe the possibility of change is what has energized the process all along. Maybe the possibility of deviants is the sole and only reason why the process is worth a damn.