Note to Keith: saying "meme" a lot doesn't make you intelligible.
Sorry. I didn't realize the term was unfamiliar within this group.
A meme is an element of culture, a replicating information pattern affecting behavior. There are many other related definitions that are also ok as long as you get the idea of a spreading idea over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
I wrote one of the earliest popular articles on memes "MEMETICS AND THE MODULAR-MIND" in Analog (1987).
http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=hkhensonE5ozq9.K8x%40netcom.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
It was reprinted in Whole Earth Review and that version is webbed here:
http://www.nancho.net/memes/infoviru.html
"The entire topic would be academic except that there are two levels of evolution (genes and memes) involved and the memetic level is only loosely coupled to the genetic. Memes which override genetic survival, such as those which induce young Lebanese Shiites to blow themselves "into the next world" from the front seat of a truck loaded with high explosives, or induce untrained Iranians to volunteer to charge Iraqi machine guns, or the WWII Kamikaze "social movement" in Japan are all too well known. I have proposed the term "memeoid" for people whose behavior is so strongly influenced by a replicating information pattern (meme) that their survival becomes inconsequential in their own minds."
18 years later and in view of the rich developments in evolutionary psychology, I now think that the particular class of xenophobic memes that drives tribes (or nations) into wars is *tightly coupled* to genes.
War was an adaptive response of genes to overpopulation and periodic privation/starvation during the vast majority of our evolution when we lived as hunter gatherers. For details of my horrified thoughts on this subject you can put "xenophobic memes" (with quotes) in Google. I am almost the only one using that term.
Incidentally, war may be highly non-adaptive for technologies higher than hunter gatherer. For example, warfare in the American Southwest starting about 1250 CE and the response the tribes made (moving into forts) was incompatible with their corn farming technology. This incompatibility caused continuing privation driven war. The result was that most of the population died out in a generation. It is quite a story. http://www.athenapub.com/8prewar.htm
Easter Island is another spectacular example of humans switching into war mode. In that case, war and starvation reduced the population to perhaps 1000 people from a peak that might have been up to 20,000. At the much lower population level the environment was able to recover somewhat and with the rise in per capita income (mostly food) warfare switched off.
It is unnerving to discover what looks like an airtight evolutionary psychology based argument that humans have conditionally activated psychological traits that (among other things) massively impair rational thinking. This is because genes that turned off rational thinking in some circumstances did better over the long haul.
If you can find a flaw in my reasoning on this subject, I would be very interested in hearing about it.
Keith Henson
(from the above URL)
From AD 1150 to 1250, communities became more defensive in location and construction, incidents of violence increased, and the new social system disintegrated. The Late Period (AD 1250 to Spanish Contact) is described by LeBlanc as a time of "crisis and catastrophe." Within 50 years the entire population of the Colorado Plateau moved into approximately 100 very large communities constructed in clusters of 2 to 18 pueblos. Many were built with line-of-sight communication in mind. Over time the communities declined in size and most of them were completely abandoned. Finally, the entire Colorado Plateau was reduced to 3 clusters of sites: Acoma, Hopi, and Zuni. At the time of Spanish Contact, Acoma consisted of a single pueblo and Hopi and Zuni both had been reduced to 6 or 7 pueblos each.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 10:13 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Meta Level was Winning the War on Terror > > At 03:34 PM 30/03/04 -0800, you wrote: > > > > The truth is that sufficient violence ends violence. > > > > > > That is true enough. But that only works when you can seal the > > > outlines of the geographical area and flood the same with your > > > troops. > > > >It also works if you are violent enough to convince the rest of them > >they need to knock if off or they're next. Remember, we > don't want to > >occupy and control these countries. And the violence we've already > >visited on them has made a few of them blink (like Qaddafi Duck). > > > > > > I prefer to give them a memory of a mushroom cloud over Medina > > > > that will make them remember that they shouldn't fuck > with the adults. > > Quick comment on Mike's postings and related material such as > America the Theocracy. > > This spread of xenophobic memes such as Mike advances is to > be expected for both being attacked and widespread belief in > a tribe substitute (nation) that the future is bleak. The > US's economic situation--converting to a third world income > distribution--is such that a huge number of people in the US > have seen their incomes fall. > > If I am right about the way human psychological traits map > from the tribal days, this is one of the two things that > increase the circulation of > xenophobic memes. The other one is being attacked. The > evolved purpose > of spreading xenophobic memes was to sync a tribe's warriors > up to attack. > > If the build up of xenophobic memes continues long enough, > the US will see massive public support for attacks that will > kill millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. Hunter gatherer > tribes would sometimes kill everyone in an attacking tribe > though they usually just killed the males. > > Will it go that far? It's hard to say, it certainly did in Rwanda. > > Keith Henson > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l >
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
