To: Peter, Kenneth, Dan and Jonathan
From: Roger
KENNETH WROTE:
Most investigations into the psychological problems of people come down
to the model of disease, there is something wrong WITH YOU !!
With the meme- approach and especially with the Meme- Meme- View,
you come to a very different conclusion.
That is, that people are not in control of themselves, their memes are.
So, in the case of a murderer, it is not his fault but his memes did it for
him. Of course, in a case like this, there is nobody to point at as who really
did the murder, so he walks free.
Don 't be surprised, in the USA, there is already an existing case where
a murderer did walked free because his defence- laywer could proove
that the man has a genetic defect.
So, in my view the next step will be that the man 's defect-memes will act
as a defence- strategy.
ROGER REPLIES:
This issue seems to be a memetic version of the free will / deteminism issue.
Which some of us at this website have reached a consensus on (IMO a good
one.)
The problem with free will and determinism has roots in the Humpty Dumpty
duality of SOM. As long as reality is artificially sliced into discrete
fronts and backs, lefts and rights, subjects and objects, mentals and
physicals, the pieces can never be put back together again. We mistake the
dividing process for inherent features of reality. We forget that the
opposites are relative and co-defining and that there are lots of ways to
divide reality.
To switch back to memetics, the issue of "Was it my will or the meme's?" is
to dualistically separate a person from their ideas. The truth is that
people are (or can be) partially defined by their ideas. Free will is the
title we give to convergence between our definitions of our self and our
behavior.
The memetic defense "my memes did it not me" is, as you allude in your post,
ridiculous. Common sense recognizes it as such. Only dogmatic dualists (ie
many western philosophers and pseudo-intellectuals) would fall for such an
absurd interpretation.
I am a fan of Blackmore's, though it has been a while since I read her work.
But I feel she actually comes to similar conclusions as I painted above.
Despite her concerns that memes are a powerful driving force, she certainly
seems to embrace the essence of Zen and non-duality in the end of her popular
book.
Rog
PS -- Failure to hold people accountable for their memes is a great way to
guarantee that they WILL conveniently divorce themselves from control of
their thoughts and behaviors. The whole thing really is (as you say) a
fuzzy, self-amplifying fractal feedback loop.
PPS -- Sorry it takes me so long to reply. I only have time on weekends.
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