I have been mulling over something that could be considered a meme. When humans do something often enough, it becomes habit, and when they view the world in a certain way, it becomes habit as well.
Each commercial on mass media outlets is out to push a product or meme, but the total effects coalesce to make consumerism. An ad for a toy doll has little to do with an ad for a pick-up truck, but when all such ads are taken together, the over-arching meme can be seen. We watch TV shows where people have dead-end, low-paying jobs, yet can afford large homes and attractive furnishings. While not stated overtly, the underlying idea is there: abundance for all, regardless of income.
Day in and day out of stuffy, sickly-lit classrooms would definitely takes its toll over time. The power trips of teachers and administrators. The control of bathroom breaks, lunch times and seating, the suppression of personal expression in the form of dress codes and uniforms all culminates to a thought patterns that seem a lot like memes. Growing up in strict, authoritarian schooling systems can lead a person to be submissive to authority. It was not one interaction or one implanted meme that did it, but several over time.
I have called this a "meta-meme" in my own mind, and define it as a meme that is not the result of a single infection event, but a series of many, vaguely-related memes. They still change the way we interact with the world, sometimes on a level so hidden, we cannot recognize or spot it.
Has anyone thought of this before? Does this make sense? Or am I totally off the mark?
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense; its called 'conditioning' and is a highly effective means of social-control.
max18pratt2
Sep 15, 2006 2:21pm
Commerican, how can we talk (or even think) about something "hidden."
Memetics, in one since, is just another method of predicting phenomenon, as are science and religion. The experience of talking about things that are hidden comes from past experience of finding new explanations. Put we don't really find the; we make them up. They don't exist until we think of them. So, by inventing new Mete-memes to predict things, you are not discovering something that was there be for.
"Boundaries" is a term used to describe Physical properties, and memes lack those. The behavior of cultural occurrence can not be accurately predicted be Memes represented on any type of Cartesian coordinate system. It is better to view memes as organisms which live in the mind's of humans. The " behavior " of memes in the mind is determined (or rather predicted) by the memes that make up that meme. They compose it's "genome" or memone. Memones are not like blueprints but like recipes for a cake; in a blueprint each part of the blueprint corresponds to a particular part of the house, but each word of a recipe dose not correspond to a part of the cake. Rather, when all the peaces come together, them form something. Or the compositions of the memes in a memone is part of them memone.
Science could described as a memeplex consisting of methodolgical memes, the accumulated knowledge, the general attitude of skepticism, etc. All of those seperate memes consist of smaller memes and so on.
This might seem problematic if you are trying to describe it as a hard science, but genetics has the same problem with gene boundaries; you have the gene, or geneplex for the eye, but consists of more genes than I could go into here.
commerican
Ogmin
Ertt