How can I know that a certain piece of ideology is a meme or just part of it? Any empirical rules?
For a symphony or a book it is pretty straightforward. The self replicating feature and cultural persistence seem obvious.
However, how about a more general ideology like religious fundamentalism? How to define the boundaries? Is it one meme or several associated memes? How to go about these questions in the real world?
Memes are always comprised of sub-memes and in turn, are naturally embedded in wider patterns or arch-memes, according to the natural hierarchy of logical types. Due to the interdependent nature of thoughts, the effective 'boundaries' of any meme are in the mind of the beholder and may change on the basis of experience, intellectual expedience or inquiry. Relative meaning is derived from the level of focus, the resolution of interest.
1/3 - Thanks for the questions, they've helped me. I'm going to answer in a book. A piece of information is a pattern that represents something. They come in different sizes. In our case, the pattern is a neural pattern.
4 - Changes with experience - exactly. Relative meaning comes from the unique set of associations in the mind of the beholder. Focus and interest level play a part in the initial perception of the idea. After that, focus and interest in the idea are derived from the mental associations of the idea.
I appreciate the thread. I'll send you each a copy if you want.
But there is another interesting aspect to this. How about "fuzzy memes", memes that look like one certain piece of information but in another setting act as another kind of catalysator? Has anyone dealt with this kind of concept and what do they call it? Now the boundaries of fundamentalism seem pretty streight forward and very distinct, but what about not so fundie religions still trying to infiltrate the ideosphere, masking their memes as best they can to get past the information filters through infection strategies of "memicry"?
all memes are basically 'fuzzy' insofar as they are concepts, composites of ideas and inherently interconnected with other memes; none of them exist independently so it would seem that no meme is free of this contextual ambiguity .... for instance the meme 'automobile' can be seen in a variety of ways:
a commodity
a source of pollution
a machine to facilitate human transportation
a status symbol
a weapon
each of these labels represents a unique value ... like words in a dictionary, memes are fabricated and always arise within a cloud of associated memes defining any 'virtual' boundaries.
#1: Good question. #4 is key: the fuzziness of a meme or meme complex increases in inverse proportion to the degree of critical judgement brought to bear upon it. Much of human thought is inherently 'slippery', which on the one hand allows for great creativity but on the other hand fuels ignorance and dogma, as it is easier to re-interpret an idea to fit one's preconceptions than it is to view it objectively and update one's understanding - unless one has made a consicous habit of the latter.
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