Hello Roger, Kenneth and everyone
Thank you all for your well thought out responses. I find I am having a
very
difficult time making the connection between memes and the MOQ, so I
would like to go back to Roger's definition of the term meme. Forgive
the digression.
"Memes are defined as any
social pattern, behavior or thought that is imitatable. Examples include
songs, tools, techniques, strategies, beliefs, ideas, religions, roles,
principles, styles, morals, and virtually anything else making up human
society."
The argument in your quote seems to rest on memes being imitatable and
so memes are a kind of independent entity making themselves known
to human beings only, who then imitate the memes and thereby propagate
them. Certainly that is not what you mean, however. The MOQ states
patterns of value are the (hu)man and are in no way independent, so if
we begin there and equate memes with
patterns of value, then memes are the (hu)man and imitation results as a
moral
conflict between inorganic patterns and biological patterns. The MOQ
explains how, intellectually, we are completely unaware of imitation and
so consign it (erroneously) to being a universal principle to our unique
human-ness.
If I were to venture a definition of the term meme, in light of the MOQ,
it would be something like this: memes keep us in place. Memes are the
image we have of our self and the image others have of us and this image
is one and the same; it exists both inside and outside of self (the
last, illusion, for there is no inside or outside). We will fail to be
different than that image no matter how hard we try, for we are trapped
in the image, by the image. We cannot see it! We are it! I don't know
what that does to memetic theory but I fear it shoots it all to hell as
a SOM construct (consider the debate going on concerning if memes are in
the brain or not). Memetic theory seems to begin on a foundation of
quicksand. If the MOQ can rescue it, please feel free to rebut. So far I
have read nothing to the contrary.
As for morals being memes it would seem that line of reasoning
undermines what the MOQ is all about. Value. And the more I read of
memes, so does memetic theory. Looking forward to your response.
Dan
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