What is the silent-tristero list?
> >Message-Id: <199512121837.NAA15040@k12-nis-2.bbn.com>
> >Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 01:53:16 -0500
> >To: silent-tristero@world.std.com
> >From: tbyfield@panix.com (t byfield)
> >Subject: words fail me
> >> are to creatures. I suppose it would be churlish of me to point
> >> out that biological metaphors have been a staple of authoritarian
> >> thinking for a long time; at least these particular biological
I don't know if it is churlish but it is certainly irrelevant. Logic
has been a staple of authoritarian thinking for a long time (logical
methods if not premises), but that in no way suggests that we should
avoid logic.
> >> metaphors appeal in a misleading way to whole ecosystems and
> >> not to single organisms with authoritarian "heads". The deeper
> >> problem is that these metaphors are moving in an antihumanist
> >> direction. Do the people who talk about memes really think of
> >> themselves as passive cultural dopes, or as inert media through
> >> which great swarms of ideas pass? Such a notion flies in the
No more than biologists believe that organisms are merely passive
media through which great swarms of genes pass (which is to say,
not at all).
> >> face of the massive work in which many organizations engage to
> >> encourage the proliferation of certain ideas and discourage the
> >> proliferation of others. It also greatly underestimates the
> >> large amount of collective cognition that is part-and-parcel of
> >> group identity among people with shared interests in society --
Memes require this "collective cognition" to survive. It is the very
substrate of their existence.
> >> not least the cyberculture, with its shared "bet" on benefitting
> >> from the outcome of technology-driven social upheavals. At the
> >> end of the day, treating ideas as "memes" is an abdication of
> >> personal responsibility. *You* choose what ideas you think and
> >> say and write, and *you* should take responsibility for them.
I agree we choose what ideas we think and say and write and we should
take responsibility for them. (And, yes, I believe we have free will
as far as I understand this vague concept.) I *don't* think we are
independent of the memes that infect us; our choices are a product
of the interaction of the memetic ecologies we call "I". This doesn't
mean we are passive nor does it absolve us of responsibility.
-- David McFadzean dbm@merak.com Memetic Engineer http://www.merak.com/~dbm/ Merak Projects Ltd.