Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 00:44:20 -0500
From: Josh Logan <someguy@sprintmail.com>
Subject: virus: Original meme.
I find all of this talk on how people see the world very interesting.
One discussion that I've had with my friends, however, is on the nature
of the original motivation behind the first meme. I initiated this
conversation before I learned of the fact that there was an actual
following to memes and similar thought patterns.
(snip)
The question I have is what the primary motivational force to what
people do. More exactly, I mean the original force that created the
original memes.
Josh Logan
------------------------------
Ken McE comments:
We will not be able to unravel memetic history until we have a better
understanding of the memetic present. Speculation unsupported by facts
can give us worthy areas to look into. It is, however, difficult to
unravel anything this complicated through a process of pure reasoning
We have not even begun to look into the question of what memes exist in
other branches of the animal kingdom. This might be a logical place to
look for older, simpler memes. Are memes host specific? Are they able
to be harmless to one species, but deadly to another? We don't know.
It is likely that the earliest forms of biological life were mostly
wiped out by later and more sophisticated forms. I would suggest that
the earliest human memes may long since have been wiped out by their
more aggressive descendants.
We have come to better understand the principles of such things as
movement and metabolism by comparative study of the world around us.
When we are ready and able to look for non human memes in the world
around us it is reasonable to expect that we will have begun the work of
tracking down the original primæval cave memes.
Regards, Ken McE 8-)
-- “Just blame it all on those pesky memes.” - W. L. Benzon