> If I get the meme "go with the flow" or "enjoy the ride" will it open me
> up to infection by other memes about taking a more passive or reflective
> stance? Will I be more likely to take a more detached, easy going approach,
> until it forms a "way of life", supported by many related meme's in the
> resulting meme complex?
>
I think of the ideosphere having climate changes. In nature, there are
sudden storms, forest fires, or other seasonal phenomena which favour
one form of life over another. For example, rains in the desert cause
a host of organisms to spring to life which suddenly disappear when
the water dries up.
Similarly, the ideosphere is affected by mood changes. One may be a
"go with the flow" person and take up snowboarding and think, "this
is cool!". Then, after receiving an injury (a dislocated elbow, say :-),
one's emotional may change. Some just may shrug it off as a lesson if
they are particularly good at manufacturing dopamine in their brains.
Others may see the injury as a "lifelong burden" and suppress the
"enjoy the ride" meme in the future with "remember what happened last
time" vaccime.
> If I have that "go with the flow meme" and especially if I am on my way to
> hosting a large colony of related meme-complexes, is it almost impossible
> for me to be infected by a competing, unrelated meme complex, like pro
> individual, discipline, planning, and structure memes, such as "seize the
> day", "if you don't know where you are going, you'll never get there", or
> "you can make a difference"?
>
Memes, live viruses, can lie dormant until some kind of
immuno-depressant makes it possible for the meme to manifest itself.
So I think any exposure to a meme has the potential to make one a
carrier. (See http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/bigkarma/memes/abexotic.html
to the measures Japan once took to stamp out carriers.)
An example off the top of my head would be the "mid-life crisis". The
archetypical mid-life crisis involves a responsible adult, usually with
children, throwing it all away to "be a teenager again" to be sure that
they haven't "missed something along the way". This sudden change in
values may be triggered by stress, depression, boredom, etc.
People are good at compartmentalizing their values. A good example is
the American soldier. He is taught that he is fighting for "God and
Country". But if that soldier truly belives in God, he should adhere
to the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill.". But killing is his job--
the "Secure a Future for My Offspring", "Put Food on the Table" and
"National Security" memes have overridden his religious memes.
Meme complexes may actually compete component-wise for dominance of
one's actions. Sometimes this yields inconsistent (according to
the laws of Boolean logic) behaviour.
> It seems that groups would form around people who held compatible
> meme-complexes. This would cause both cohesion within the group and
> friction between groups. Groups would also be less likely to be able to
> understand each other or to take each other's memes seriously.
>
Because meme-complexes don't always compete as a whole, but as parts,
the interference between the complexes may yield behaviours that
produce friction within a group. Sometimes a mutation occurs because
of the meme-complex interaction. Witness the factionalization of
Christianity.
> How would we overcome these problems, while we are being overrun by
> related, colonizing memes?
>
This is a topic unto itself. I think it's a bit narrow to view the
exposure to new memes as a "problem". I think you will host many memes
and not know it. The real question is how one deals with the memes
when they manifest themselves in one's thoughts and/or behaviour. You
make it sound as though there is "one true meme complex" and that
competiton is unhealthy. I would disagree.
If we could lock in a meme-complex, the "Scientific Method" mere-
complex might never have had a chance as earlier, religion-based
meme-complexes would have blocked it out.
> If one type of meme-complex can inhibit unrelated meme-complexes, as I
> believe, then the prediction on this list, that different religions
> will soon fade away, leaving a more rational or pseudo-science outlook, is
> unlikely. The religious meme-complex seems quite strong. It is more
> than strong enough to inoculate against the competing meme complex that
> supports the scientific method.
>
I don't think there is a lot of opposition to the scientific method.
I think the opposition is to the amoral applications of science, or
the application of science as a tool of capitalism.
The scientific method may answer a couple of existential questions, but
unlike religion, it doesn't give a "cookbook" for living one's life.
So far, "capitalism" has been the meme-complex of choice that has been
the de-facto standard to fill in the missing bits of science to dictate
one's actions in life. There are people who are dissatisfied with this,
and for just cause.
The task, I believe, is to build and propagate a meme-complex that is
as motivating as capitalisms without the downsides of:
a) concentration of power in the hands of the few
b) rewarding deceptive practices
c) optimizing for the short term without regards to the long term
d) dismissing those things without a "price" as having no "value"
(eg. quality of life, preservation of the environment)
Those who have succeeded under the capitalist system will, of course,
fight any competing meme-complex with everything they've got. The
United States has used military intervention in far-off lands to
preserve the capitalist meme complex.
ACS