I must first congradulate you on your contributions. All were very thoughtful and well written and most quite long! Anyway, I've made a small selection for you of some of the ones I thought were the most insightful. I will let you comment freely on them - that is they won't be filtered.
I think the comment that is most intriguing comes from Mathias - particularly his last few words. Here, and if I understand him correctly and I'm not putting words in his mouth, he carries the meme - gene analogy very far.
Working on the premise that genes and memes follow the same algorithm and hence evolve, (just as Darwin deduced that we and all life forms have descended from a common biological ancestor and wondered what might this creature have looked like), Mathias asks indirectly what was the 'common ancestor' of our present day ideas?
In other words what was the archetypal meme?
What do you think?
(You should see your comment straight away this time)
regards
Ray
Nature, Art & Language
2 comments:
I'm not spiteful as I'm the first one to post.
The beginning of culture
The question is : what was the most primitive culture in the origine of memes?
Yes we can think of the origin of memes as there is an origin of genes and of species. The equivalent of replication would be the transmission of culture, the one of mutations would be the approximation made in that transmission. And the most important: the mix between genes which happens when the GAMETE meet (in sexual reproduction), would be the ASSIMILATION of a culture by another one. It can't be when a few people learn the two cultures because they have lived in two countries or live in a border, that's too MARGINAL. The mix of culture happened during invasions and COLONIZATION. Now it's through economy and COMMERCE.
In that vision, the origin of memes would be the culture of the ancestor which was just before the human appeared. It may have been made of observations of the environment and knowledge of what to do and not to do in it (which animals are dangerous which aren't) and the basis of technical knowledge (use a BATON to help dealing with animals...).
I posted the preceeding comment.
Nick
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