From: SQUONKSTAIL@aol.com
Date: Fri Oct 04 2002 - 15:03:42 BST
Squonk: Hi John B,
I feel we agree language has been conflated beyond discourse. So i shall
leave that.
Your next criticism is more substantial. You say
SQUONK: "Memes are a second replicator. You must get this straight and
confront the magnitude of that which is being postulated: Culture is a life
form of its own; it is evolving.
When you say, 'As Susan Blackmore points out, there is no guarantee that the
memes are good for us' you gloss over:
1. You ARE memetic patterns evolving concomitantly with YOUR genetic
patterns.
2. The best memes survive of which one memeplex is that there is a YOU in
the first place. (In other words, it is valuable for you to believe there is
a YOU so that YOU can transmit the meme-of-self.)
3. The evolution of memes is motivated by the very same motivation that
evolves genes: DQ."
What you are saying I translate to be that "I am a thought in the mind of
culture."
Sq: You are free to translate, but i am suggesting something in line with the
MOQ which says patterns may contain each other. Therefore, although culture
is memetic, culture may be contained in human biological patterns. Without
people, culture is not human.
Your point 3 is a statement of faith and cannot be refuted, but
does not convince me. Blackmore points out that memetic evolution is very
new and not necessarily helpful to us as organisms. Do you suggest that we
are not also organisms? Daniel Dennett's metaphorical tower places humankind
alone on the top (Gregorian) floor, but Blackmore's response is that "Life
may be short on the top floor."
Sq: Oh yes, we are organisms as i address above. Culture is not helpful for
biological patterns and the MOQ supports this with a philosophical
supposition we call a MOQ.
And this is a moral process, as biological patterns, (the kids you refer to
below) can be quite nasty and troublesome to put it mildly! ;)
So I would simply assert that your first point is at best a partial truth,
confirming my view that there is an obsessive element in the current
acceptance of postmodern dogma, similar to that which almost overwhelmed
psychology for almost fifty years when behaviourism ruled most university
psychology departments.
Sq: I cannot claim truth, i point to the quality of the explanatory power for
memetics.
However, please note, and this is were you and i may part company, i feel
memes are in line with a non-substantial metaphysics of value which you
regard as a matter of faith.
I argue for a developmental approach to the self,
which begins without memetic patterns or language, and unfolds in a
progressive manner, incorporating language and memes, but NOT restricted to
them. I further argue that the full development of the self involves the
undoing of those early childhood experiences that filter all subsequent
experience, and lead to the disembodied memeplex YOU that you describe in
your second point.
Sq: Indeed. But my low quality feeling about your project is that it ain't
arf long winded squire! ;) And this feeds into my plea for turning up the
signal...
Finally, you say:
SQUONK: "If postmodernism itself is viewed in the meme paradigm, then what
we are witnessing is method memes have found for exploding into chaotic
profusion of convoluted patterns and shapes going crazy with little regard
to static latching.
You have to decide if you wish to be in the grip of this memetic storm, or
whether you should like to see it for what it really is and contemplate the
consequences of the storms progress?"
If I am merely a bunch of memes, as you suggest, WHO decides "if you wish to
be in the grip of this memetic storm"? Surely your argument is phony.
Sq: Indeed. A good question, and one i wish to address with some urgency:
I have argued for a 'Hypermeme' which is a method some memes have evolved for
organising all other memes. In other words, some cultural patterns have
evolved intelligence. Intelligence emerges from culture as the MOQ indicates,
and has a methodological tone to it: Logic is but one such method and one
that dominates today?
However, there is an Art involved here; and good methods move with artistry;
thus logic is not the basis of intelligence; DQ is the basis of intelligence
as it is the base of all patterned movement.
That which weaves and spins the methods of our intelligence is mystic in
nature and the basis of the MOQ. Pirsig calls it DQ, Herrigal calls it 'It.'
You seem to rely on a sentimental "there's still something in my heart, That
can
find a way to make a start. To turn up the signal" as an answer. In terms of
your own argument surely that 'something' is just another meme.
Sq: Indeed i understand why you should feel this to be so. Memes are not
intelligent; they are blind replicators rather in the fashion of genes?
Culture values its own privileged status and such patterns feel threatened by
intelligence. However, postmodernism (an intellectual postulation) has found
a way of disrupting culture by dissolving it in a soup of random
juxtapositions; it denies the value of one culture over another?
You may take a work by Monet and digitise it, alter the scale, orientation,
colour balance, cut, paste, juxtapose, fart about to your hearts content and
plaster it all over a wall calling it 'Art' when really it may just be a pile
of aesthetically displeasing crap with little cultural reference?
I do accept the "magnitude of that which is being postulated" in memetic
theory. It is in my mind a deplorable outcome of a blinkered set of
postulates, but once you step within those you are quite lost. There is
indeed, then, no YOU, other than the current mix of memes in residence.
Fortunately, there is no good reason to accede to this nihilistic outcome,
and a little observation of the young of our species is the best antidote to
this obsession that I know.
Regards,
John B
Sq: As i suggest above, memes are not the be all and end all of the story,
for the centre of who we are is not a blank void, but rather something you
can indeed search for? And i agree with you that in order to begin that
journey, one has to drop the methods, the memes, the desires of old and
ingrained patterning.
I feel we should address a potential problem here:
In my view, searching for one's centre is a very dangerous journey. I feel we
should ask if it is a good move for us to suggest people try?
Maybe it would be better for us to accept the journey as possible but not to
be undertaken lightly?
I hope you give this some careful thought, because i sincerely feel you may
benefit greatly from the few tweaks regarding a level of evolution
controlling memes which has evolved out of the cultural memeplex?
And i tell you openly and sincerely, MY project is to take the aesthetic
materials of my experience and inject a philosophical assumption i accept and
feel to be enormously valuable: a MOQ.
After all, is this site not the place i should be welcomed as one who wishes
to try? If not, i have no hope.
All the best,
Squonk.
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