Have we not yet gone far enough with the concept of memetics? It is easy to ask how a bible tract is different, fundamentally, from a virus or mold spore. We legitimately ask if the latter are living organisms per se when they are in an inanimate state, and we have become comfortable with dodging the difficult questions that they pose by tooling our definitions and discussion to avoidance cognitive dissonance and unanswerable questions. But if we are honest with ourselves, should we be asking if a bible tract is not just a physical reproductive spore of a meme, but a simple, observable artifact of a non-biochemical living ecosystem that exists everywhere around us and within us... that is as invisible to us as water to a fish, more alien than any creature we have yet dreamed of in science fiction, that is as fundamental to our nature and our world as the periodic table or genetics, and that is practically and pragmatically investigable and describable given the necessary discipline and effort?
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 17:21:51 +0000