> DMcF wrote:
>
> I think it would help if there was a term analogous to phenotype in
> memetics. I've seen 'memotype' and 'phenomeme' but neither has caught
> on as far as I know.
> ======================================================================
>
> I was just thinking about something like this when I was driving
> downtown yesterday. I was doing the last of my Christmas shopping and
> listening to the sountrack from Mortal Kombat (no joke).
>
> Anyway there is this silly little sound byte that is repeated throughout
> one of the songs, "I am the chosen one. I am the chosen one..."
>
> This got me to thinking about the Chosen One Meme. How it is prevailent
> in religions, pop culture-- sci-fi/fantasy-- and political rhetoric...
> how it is gender specific. It is a good sound byte to put into a cd that
> is marketed for teenage boys.
>
> Could this be phenotype. A meme that still has all of its strings
> attached? They are still visible to the semi-trained eye?
>
> This could be a useful project for the church. Identifying phenotypes.
I don't think it's gender-specific.
I have observed that the most effective science fantasy builds at least 2
or 3 of the 10 key delusions [the Chosen One Meme is one!], that
Karl Menninger listed in his book "The Mind", into the plot. Doing this
explicitly has improved my own fiction.
[The book is still effective for a basic overview of conventional
psychology. The copy I have access to has a print date of 1925--it
refers to World War I as The World War....]
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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