----- Original Message -----
From: Johannes Volmert <jvolmert@student.uni-kassel.de>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2000 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: MD MEMES
Hi Johannes, great post, felt completely at ease reading this. Thanks.
> So that has lead me to the conclusion, that it must the perspective we
look upon this being responsible for not understanding it. This was even
more astonishing because when we look at everything else by means of the MoQ
it works in an almost elegant and beautiful way.
<<That can mean two things,
1_ the Moq- terms as applied upon this list are wrong or perhaps not com-
plete.
2_ that I, not fully Moq well grounded has a wrong perspective looking
upon it.
I don 't think 1 and 2 are wrong, both seem to be right in their place.
IMO, as said on the discussion here, the Social level of which Pirsig
writes in his books lacks a certain degree of completeness. I for one,
offered to fill in the gaps with memes. In that way we should be able
to explain what happens on the Social level.
If it would be however that memetics in not the right tool to explain
things well so be it. No harm done.
But, your idea of the isolation of an individual for closer observation is
IMO closer to the thruth.
My main problem with what other memetisisits do and write is their
lack of consideration for what one individual stands for. They always
talk in collective ways about memetics, where IMO, the individual is
the corner- key to crack the nut here.
That is not their fault, their memes still act in such ways. As a society
we don 't yet understand the full potency of being an individual.
> A near-by example: What is a family? A family CONSIST of at least a man
and a woman and perhaps a few children. But when an imagined
'six-level'-alien would like to find out more about human beings family, it
would'nt be sufficient to describe what makes a man and what makes a woman;
he (it) should look at what special value arises from this 'family-system',
isn't it?
<< Have you ever watched the TV- serie called, The third rock from the
Sun, where aliens were sent to earth to study what it is like to be human?
Great show, good laugh !! If you ever have the chance, do so, all the
anwsers you need are there !! There is more to it, than just family...
And yes, in a broader sense we have to look at the simple individual to
see what makes society.
Take for example, not a very good one, but good enough to get my point
across, Germany just before WO II, how is it possible that millions sworn
in Hitler as their leader, if not, I must be careful here, each individual
had
the desire to do so !? ( Each had his/ hers reasons).
Of course, you can argue propaganda, fear, unemployment etc made it
Hitler easier, but if not the ' Volksgeist ' was the trigger, what was !?
Like you, I suspect you are Dutch, when the Dutch football team is playing
the whole of Holland is set alight in an Orange colour.
Each of you is so delicated to the task to scream the team forward that it
becomes a collective movement. But is started within you, a desire, a need,
a genetic or memetic twist started of the whole thing, like it started
within all
the others at the same time. In memetics such a thing is called the Diana-
Virus ( idit Susan Blackmore) Others would call this our collective con-
sciousness ( Jung).
It is IMO very wise to say that Intellect is connected to the ' social ',
indeed
it can not walk alone, it has no reason to take over the Social Texture
either, because if it does it would comprimize its own existence.
Like I said, Intellect is ' BETWEEN ' people, it is what people are con-
nected by.
The memetic concept, is, if you think of it and pull it to its conclusion, a
very ' dangerous ' one_nothing of what we know, nothing of what we
think we know is left standing upright.
Memes are useful or succesful patterns of behavior or thinking that get
not only stored physically, but they can get stored also in books, on
computerdiscs etc., but the handing over to our children is still in debate.
My stance here is that for all we know, info is handed over to our children
only in a genetic way.
I think, like I tried to explain in the example about the Turkish girl that
also mental info is hand over. That is what I call the Memetic- Maxim or
the pre- memetic rules, those set(s) of rules, ideas, dreams, concepts,
thoughts which we inherited from our parents.
The girl got the right mentally ideas, dreams and thoughts but unfortunaly
her genetic built- up ( and partly her memetic built up of the species, here
the Turkish people) she could not change and secondly, the society where
she was brought up in did not pushed her forward. On the contrary !!
IMO, one of the major reasons why immigration don 't work properly, is
due to that fact. The yougsters of immigrants today, are not Turks nor
are they Belgium. In Holland, as I can see it, the problem can get better
solved, because most people of strange origine are people from former
colonies and they speak the language. They ' know ' already what it is
to be a Dutch....
Thanks for reading, looking forward to some reply...
Best regards,
Kenneth
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