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From: 71450.1773@compuserve.com (Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: ...plus c'est la meme chose
Message-ID: <Jun.12.12.20.06.1991.6115@planchet.rutgers.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 91 16:20:07 GMT
Sender: nanotech@planchet.rutgers.edu
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Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu


   > (d) and for crissakes, let's invent a word to mean "memetic
organism"  or "meme complex"! --JoSH] <

   Comment: First of all, a meme complex may well be only that--
a package of related memes which does not function metaphorically
like an organism because it does not contain implicit reproduc-
tive directions and functions.  I suggest that such a group of
related memes that do little more than stick together in the mind
and in transmission be called simply a "memebership."  Physics
lessons are memeberships.  Some meme complexes, like jokes, puns,
stories, jingles, poems, aphorisms, etc., are highly infective
without being very complex.  Perhaps these deserve a special
word, but I haven't been able to come up with one.
  
   For the next step up in complexity-- the fully developed
memetic organisms-- I can offer a couple of obvious portmanteau
words like "meme-org" or "someme" [soma + meme].  However,
perhaps we can do better.  As noted, observed memetic organisms
seem always to be highly evolved packages of philosophy/Weltan-
schauung which are infective not only because of logic or utility
or beauty of idea, but ALSO because of a built- in reproductive
and/or proselytizing component.  A common characteristic of
memetic organisms, therefore, is noise or bothersomeness or
missionary zeal, and thus I propose a more descriptive name for
these creat-
ures: "Screaming Meme-ies."  See those bald-headed guys chanting
"Hari Krisha, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Hari Hari, Hari Rama,
Hari Rama..."?  You're seeing the effects of a genuine Screaming
Meme-ie.  Same with the guys in straw hats yelling "Four more
years!"  Same with those Jehovah's witnesses at your door, those
Mormon missionaries, or those guys who try to sell you Dianetics
on the sidewalk or send you cryonics handbooks from Riverside
California <innocent grin>.  Hag-ridden all.


                                  -- Steve Harris


P.S.  Did you hear about the programmer who starved to death in
his shower?  All they found in there with him was a bottle of
shampoo that said "Lather, rinse, repeat."