Coffee memes

From: iam30974@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (least likely)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.coffee
Subject: Re: Coffee meme
Date: 17 Jul 1994 20:38:29 GMT


anrwlias@netcom.com (A.X. Lias) writes:

>Here's a question for memetic enthusiasts.  Why is it that over the last 
>decade the gourmet coffee meme has suddenly exploded.  It seems to have 
>reached the point that even small towns have at least one or two espresso 
>places.  Why is this occuring now, and why not before (say in the 50's)?

Hmm..  This brings up a question that I wanted to ask since I started reading
this group (yes, indirectly tied to the original subject).

It seems to me that many things which might be classified as memes are
actually more symptomatic effects of 'real' memes.  In other words, to
take on coffee, I think the relatively new explosion of espresso joints
speaks less about coffee and our infatuation with it, as it does about
the changing attitudes people have about spending time with one another.

Espresso joints have less to do with coffee and pastries and more to do
with dating and people networking.

Well, why go to a cafe?  You might be asking that certain someone out, and
while taking someone out to dinner has a lot of connotations attatched to
it (relatively formal ones), and since you can't really talk much in most
other situations, the cafe fulfills the need, in a sense, to gather more
for talk's sake than food's...

Cafe's are relatively speaking an urban phenomenon (with offshoots into
suburban America, but these are secondary), and probably came about as
a remedy for the disruption of the organized family unit which has become
less well-defined today than thirty years ago.

The cafe is the family dinner table of the 90's?

But, to re-address the question I had before, I can't help but feel that
there is something behind all these memes.  Take, for instance, religion
or politics.  There must be something behind the face of religion that
shares some commonality with our political nature.  To borrow from the
large bank of genetic analogies, these are _still_ merely phenotypes, and
it seems as if, to address their essential underlying natures would be
to tackle the same problems philosophy has been tackling for years..

So, why study phenotypes this late in the game?  Is memetics truly a new
way of looking at ourselves, or is it an analogy blown way out of proportion?

One need only look so far as to the origins of "Social Darwinism" earlier
this century-- a belief which served more to justify the concentration of
wealth in the hands of a select few, rather than to actually describe the
mechanisms behind it all.  Basically, one can assume through it that poor
people are poor for a reason-- they have genes which preclude them from
being inventive and responsible.  Likewise, if you inherit a large sum of
money from your parents, you deserve it because you have inherited (to borrow
the genetic analogy once again) traits which place you within a higher
order of humanity.

To believe in social darwinism today would be to bastardize much of what
darwinism actually says.  Now my question remains whether memetics is
truly a 'nascent science' which won't end up being a vehicle for justifying
the inferiority of some ideologies for the obvious "advantages" others
give.  And, moreover, to artifically select some ideologies would be to
copy the mistakes of revolutionaries past:  Is this all analogous to
political correctness to the nth degree?

Again, these are questions I have not settled for myself, and I would
appreciate any input on what others may think.

--
-ivan [but don't get me wrong.. I love coffee]

Iwan (iam30974@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) writes:

>>    (...) I can't help but feel that there is something behind all
      these memes.  Take, for instance, religion or politics.  There
      must be something behind the face of religion that shares some
      commonality with our political nature.  To borrow from the
      large bank of genetic analogies, these are _still_ merely
      phenotypes, and it seems as if, to address their essential
      underlying natures would be to tackle the same problems
      philosophy has been tackling for years..

Good point.
Let's suppose there is a hierarchy of memes:
Ancient, very powerful memes, operating at a subliminal level of the mind,
function as *hooks* for younger, swiftly evolving memetical structures.
From the perspective of the ancient ones, these young memes are indeed mere
phenotypes.

Example: the *god* meme is much older than the memes of christianity.
Christianity (or any other monotheist religion) is just a temporary
phenomenon in our meme-pool. When christianity dies out, the *god* meme
will survive and 'attract' new meme complexes.

Biological analogy: macro-evolution (evolution of a species over a very
large time-scale) is hardly affected by micro-evolutionary processes (fast
adaptations within a population).

>>    So, why study phenotypes this late in the game?  Is memetics
      truly a new way of looking at ourselves, or is it an analogy
      blown way out of proportion?

When we concentrate on the "macro-evolution" of large time-scale memes,
memetics appears quite similar to common sociological thinking.
It also bares resemblances to several *holist* philosophies, such as Jung's
theory of "collective unconsciousness" (meme -> archetype).

When we concentrate on the "micro-evolution" of 'fashion' memes (like the
gourmet coffee explosion...), memetics hardly adds to our commonsense
understanding of such processes.

Where memetics becomes really interesting, is at the point of contact
between the two types of memetic evolution. Here newly evolved memes 'by
accident' develop survival/replication tricks that help them last a little
longer than most temporary fashions do.
Occasionally, a young meme succeeds in 'being promoted' to a higher level
in the meme hierarchy. Hierarchical dependencies become tangled, and the
results are quite unpredictable.

It's this class of memes that is most important for the process of cultural
evolution. Therefore, main memetic interest lies in studying this class of
memes. (Any suggestions for a name?)
Memetics tries to discover non-trivial survival/replication strategies used
by specific memes of this class.
As Iwan says, these memes are still just phenotypes of more powerful
underlying memes, but they are also candidates for future cultural change.


>>    One need only look so far as to the origins of "Social
      Darwinism" earlier this century-- a belief which served more to
      justify the concentration of wealth in the hands of a select
      few, rather than to actually describe the mechanisms behind it
      all. (...) 
      To believe in social darwinism today would be to bastardize much of
      what darwinism actually says.  Now my question remains whether
      memetics is truly a 'nascent science' which won't end up being a
      vehicle for justifying the inferiority of some ideologies for the
      obvious "advantages" others give.  And, moreover, to artifically
      select some ideologies would be to copy the mistakes of
      revolutionaries past:  Is this all analogous to political correctness
      to the nth degree?

My impression of memeticist thinkers (Dawkins, Hofstadter) is quite the
contrary:
They describe memes in metaphors with a negative burden: *selfishness*,
*viral infection* etc.
This implies that being infected by a certain set of memes is nothing to be
proud of, or to derive rights from. Memetic infection is seen as a disease,
for which a cure may be needed. As long as a memeticist knows what he is
doing, and doesn't try to cure people who do not want to be cured, this
seems to me a good moral attitude.

However, you're right if you say that the memes of Social Darwinism are
still among us, waiting for new hosts to infect. We should be aware of this
danger.


--Marc
(My precious memes live by electronic feedback, so do not hesitate...)

From: betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.coffee
Subject: Re: Coffee meme
Date: 18 Jul 1994 19:19:08 GMT
In-reply-to: anrwlias@netcom.com's message of Sun, 17 Jul 1994 06:15:45 GMT

Coffee isn't a meme; it's a fad. There's a whole mechanism set up to 
promote fads, including but not limited to:

  -- popular culture magazines and TV shows that constantly look
     for the next thing to promote
  -- business and entrepeneurial magazines that list good areas to
     invest in
  -- willingness of banks to invest in and commercial landlords to 
     rent space to businesses seen as popular
  -- local media eagerness to promote and review faddish places
  -- existing stores trying to share the profit by expanding into
     that area...

For almost any area of consumer culture (food, drink, clothing,
automobiles, appliances, etc) there is a whole interconnecting system of
businesses who make their profits by exiting consumer demand and then
satisfying it. It is all quite deliberately engineered. This whole
seattle/coffee/grunge trend probably started with one or two bands having
one or two hit singles (swept into the national spotlight by the music
hit-making machinery.)

Usenet mailing lists are probably closer to spontaneous explosions than any
mass-market item...
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