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Memes And Anti-Memes.
Citta
Veteran
Susan Blackmore , Neuroscientist and Zen student, has described Dharma as an ' Anti-meme meme. A meme that undoes memes '.
What say you ?
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Just to clarify...she isn't talking about the meme-generator type meme.
She is referring to the concept as devised by Dawkins.
An idea or concept that behaves like genes behave..
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Genes don't seek to destroy other genes.
Thats an interesting meme. The introduction of a perjorative to whit, ' destroy ' shows the meme mutating along the lines that Dawkins predicted.
I think you're trying too hard here, Citta.
Something that "undoes" something else is basically destroying that something else. And I've merely pointed out that genes are not aggressive in this way. If there were a meme that actively sought to 'undo' other memes, well, that would be a rather nasty meme. Short sighted memes are probably short lived. :-/
Not so. without the genetic material that facilitates the literal undoing of one of the x chromosomes and its reshaping by androgens, only females would be born. Just as an example.
'Aggression ' is anthropomorphic and is another example of meme mutation..in only two meme generations.
The idea that either genes or memes can be ' nasty ' is a third break in the meme/ gene.....
Dr Blackmore would appear to be vindicated.
I don't understand how the metaphor works in relation to memes. The Dharma meme helps to reproduce memes, including itself?
You wrote that Blackmore describes Dharma as an ' Anti-meme meme. A meme that undoes memes '.
What am I missing?
'Undoes ' by showing the essentially artificial nature of any meme..that it is a construct.
Just like undoing the meme ' fist' by simply opening the hand.
No destruction needed.
Just a pointing out of the provisional nature of any meme. By demonstrating that memes arise dependently.
So Dharma is a series of anti-memes that undermines prapanca and discursive thought and the projection of solidity onto all phenomena.
Of the top of my head, the idea of Dharma undoing memes makes me think of that class I'm taking on Coursera with Robert Wright (Buddhism and Psychology -- EVOLUTIONARY psychology, that is). In the first class he described the Buddha as a rebel against the choices natural selection made for us. There's probably a ton to immediately argue on that point alone, but you'd have to be there in the class, reading the material, and opening your mind up to the possibilities it presents.
Independently (I think) I got the impression the Buddha's message was aimed at undoing aged and outmoded behavior that served it's purpose on the savannah in mankind's early history. I'm waiting to see if I was onto anything in this class, now that I realized it was being taught by the guy who wrote "The Moral Animal" (didn't know that until halfway into first class, duh)
You do understand that all religious memes essentially claim the same. What does that tell you?
It tells me that you have another stock of memes of which you are fond..
I used to be able to destroy memes but I took an arrow to my knee.
An odd interpretation. I have no aversion towards memes, as some apparently do. It's simply a way of describing particular phenomena. Oh wait, I forgot, Dharma is beyond phenomena. I get it now!!!
@Nevermind, what do you mean the dharma is beyond phenomena?
****** R E A L I T Y ******
Memetically speaking of course.
Attraction or aversion to memes is just the memes talking.. and any definition of memes which see them as a way of describing phenomena is a meta-meme.
Dharma is the anti meme meme.
Not a way of refining our understanding of memes, but direct seeing beyond memes.
Including memeplexes that obscure to the meme transmitters their dependence on memes.
I guess this is a silly question but, if that's true then why does it still exist? Shouldn't it "undo" itself like any self-respecting anti-meme would do? It's okay if that's too hard to answer, but you could at least point out one meme that the dharma has undone. Pointing out just one shouldn't be too difficult, should it?
Its a constant process applied to the memeplex of a seperate unchanging existence..
The memes that feed your memeplex may be different to the memes that feed my sense of a seperate existence.
What is in common is the sense of self which is both a cause and result of a series of memes and which are in reality characterised by shunyata.
Its approaching midnight here and I have to be up early so i will lay my head and my memes on the pillow.
I thought that would be tough for ya, maybe after some rest.
In the meantime I will answer the question for you.
Unlike gene complexes, memeplexes do not have to benefit the genes in order to replicate. Memes and memeplexes do not have to be true to replicate, although the feeling of something being true or truthiness is beneficial to a meme's replication.
In other words, the Dharma meme doesn't have to be an anti-meme, it only needs to feel like one.
By their very nature memes can never be true.
That is the whole point.
So your answer does not compute.
And is predicated on your favourite meme " religion does not have to be true, just meaningful "...
Which sits at the centre of a memeplex.
There is no Dharma meme...Dharma is in its pure state the absence of memes.
An anti-meme.
As this thread has now become a competition based a simple repetitive recycling of a basic misunderstanding of the nature of memes, and that misunderstanding is now replicating itself in true meme fashion , can I please request that it be closed ?
Funny, you called it an anti-meme meme before. Lol
** An anti-meme** see above.
Susan Blackmore...' Zen is an anti-meme meme , its the absence of a meme, a negative, and that absence negates all memes.'
The fact is @Nevermind you have not understood the concept.
What I invited was a discussion of memes as understood by Dr Blackmore, who has conducted extensive research into meme formation . Rather than a d.i.y explanation.
And passive /aggressive smileys simply confirm your misunderstanding.
Your lack of understanding was clear from your second post on the thread.
The fact is on this thread and on other threads and other forums you cannot get past your memeplex..your mantram ' religion does not have to be true, it just has to be meaningful '.
Which is ( ironically ) essentially meaningless...and which prevents your understanding of some basic stuff.
You see it as an acme, an objective standard. it is in fact lacking in coherence...
It is sloppy thinking.
It's an interesting analogy and I think it apt, especially if we take a broader look at what the term meme is referring to, i.e., "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture" (Merriam-Webster). In this, memes are intimately tied to language, one of the primary mechanisms for the transmission of these ideas, behaviours, styles, and usages (much like how genes pass on their genetic information). It's essentially a type of becoming.
On the level of culture and psychology, then, we can say that that which is able to be expressed in language is ultimately a meme. The Dharma, on the other hand, is a meme that leads to an experience or realization where even languages breaks down, where the process of becoming ceases. We use a conditioned path to reach the unconditioned—the ideas, behaviours, styles, and usages of the Dharma to reach a place where we transcend our cultural and psychological conditioning (and even that of the Dharma, the proverbial raft left on the shore after the crossing of the river).
Phew..thats a relief.
For instance, "It's raining outside" is a meme? I guess I don't understand how you're separating culture and psychology.
As I pointed out before, all major religious memes claim the same. The so called raft is not taken to heaven or wherever. And even more telling is that the Buddha did not abandon the raft, he taught it (propagated it).
Perhaps you should check out Blackmore's book The Meme Machine, then. Maybe it'll help you better understand where @Citta and myself are coming from.
No analogy is perfect. They all break down at some point. Here, you may be right; but I think you're taking it too far/literally. But for the sake of argument, teaching someone about how to build and use a raft isn't the same as not laying your own raft aside once it's served its purpose.
As I said, the Dharma is a meme; and as such, it's replicated and passed on like any other. But that doesn't necessarily mean the relation to this particular meme is the same in someone who has 'reached the other shore' as it is in someone who hasn't.
A similar idea, I think, is conveyed by the Buddha's words to Citta in DN 9 that, "these are the world's designations, the world's expressions, the world's ways of speaking, the world's descriptions, with which the Tathagata expresses himself but without grasping to them," or in the words of Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "he picks them up for the purpose at hand and then lets them go."
You have not yet grasped the meaning of meme Nevermind.
You are instead putting your own spin on the term and then knocking THAT down.
The irony is it is your own mutated meme which is acting as a bar to your understanding of the debate.
In attempting to refute the points at discussion you are demonstrating the mutating meme in action.
Over to you for more of the same......
Why not simply say what you mean? Perhaps you only mean that memes can be expressed in language. That's simple. However they can also be expressed or conveyed via other avenues like art, rituals, etc. And factual information expressed in language, such as the weather, is not meme.
I guess that would depend on what it's purpose actually is. In any case, is it intelligent to say that a math professor has abandon mathematics? Or that an English teacher has abandon English? Or that an art teacher has "undone" art? Need I go on?
So what exactly is the difference?
Thats it...I'm out unless someone with some interest in actually discussing the subject instead of rehearsing their own long held dogmas wants to interject.
Nevermind if you could see how little grasp you have of the subject you would blush..
Fortunately for you your blushes will be spared by your inability to get past the central idea of all your interactions with various Buddhist forums 'It is not necessary for a religious idea to be true, it just has to be meaningful '
Erm... thats it.
The sum total of your life's contribution to the gaiety of Nations.
Toodle-pip.
Should anyone have any remaining interest after this farago of subjective ramblings this was the OP.
I think I've expressed myself clearly enough. As far as analogies go, I find the OP to be an apt one for the reasons given above. YMMV, of course.
Cant we just close it @Jason ?
I have learned my lesson..
Well, I generally don't close a thread simply because the person who starts it no longer wants it to be open unless it's devolved to a very uncivilized level. In this case, I've sunk the thread because it's essentially an argument between two people; but I've yet to close it because I think the topic itself has merit and I think it's salvageable. If you're finding it unfruitful, you're always free to stop participating. And if it doesn't improve, it'll be buried and forgotten soon enough.
I suppose it must be in the book, but no one here has yet explained how a meme, such as the "Dharma meme" (and there appears to be some confusion as to whether it's a meme, oddly) "undoes" memes. What exactly is meant by 'undoing' anyway?
Perhaps the book is not well written, so no one can explain what they've read?
Its more than a little frustrating to start a thread on a topic that one thinks might be of interest only to see it hijacked by someone who wants instead to plow his habitual farrow.
But there it is. It might just stimulate someone to explore the ideas and see if anything resonates for them.
Or perhaps nobody feels it's worth putting in the energy to explain their point of view further because your contributions thus far give the impression that you're more interested in being a contrarian than having an actual discussion.
In this discussion, the people in the know, have described the "Dharma meme" as both a meme and not a meme. And I'm the one being contrary???
Quite so. Call me Mr Picky but I generally find when someone willfully ignores what is being said and substitutes their own strawmen repeatedly I kinda lose interest.
Yes, because it's an analogy that I think you're taking too far/literally in order to argue against it. As I said, all analogies are imperfect and break down at some point. I certainly can't argue the point and say that it's a perfect analogy and it has no flaws (well, I could, but it'd be a foolish thing to do).
In answer to one of your previous questions, though, I will say that I understand the Dharma to be an anti-meme in the sense that it leads (or is at least said to lead) to dispassion and letting go, to freeing one's mind from memes (especially the self meme).
For a more detailed explanation, I suggest checking out Piya Tan's Memes: The idea of samsaric genes.
Piya Tan's article is excellent.
I'm being deliberately contrary because I'm arguing against a metaphor? Anyway, I'm happy to dispense with the metaphors.
If anyone has ever succeeded in "freeing one's mind from memes," as you say, with the so called anti-meme, it's safe to say that would have been the Buddha, right? Yet obviously the Buddha propagated this anti-meme by teaching it. This is not metaphorical. The Buddha did teach and propagate the memeplex or whatever you want to call it. There appears to be no sense in which he 'undid' this memeplex. It is alive and well to this day. Clearly it was alive in him if he taught it.
I'm afraid it's still not clear what is meant by "undoes." I'm not being argumentative. I would simply like to know how you understand this.
I'm not sure how much clearer I can be.
What the Buddha taught (the raft, meme, or whatever you want to call it) leads the mind to dispassion and letting go, to freeing one's mind from the conceptual proliferations and habits of self-identification (the process of I-making and my-making, the self meme, or whatever you want to call it) that give rise to stress and suffering.
Instead of these things being replicated through conceptual proliferations, one is able to cut them off at the proverbial root, within the mind, by the destruction of craving utilizing certain concepts and practices designed to radically changes the way the mind relates to experience. In this sense, they're undone, the mind becomes unbound, and 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for the sake of this world.'
The Dharma as a raft (i.e., teachings) is one thing, and can be seen as a meme. The realization that the Dharma leads to, however, isn't the raft and beyond conceptualization. Kind of like the old Zen saying, Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.
To put it another way, using one example, self-identity view (sakkaya-ditthi) can be viewed as the meme, and the process of 'I-making' and 'my-making' (ahankara-mamankara) — the psychological arising and ceasing of our sense of self, the ephemeral 'I,' that's propelled by the mind's proclivity to clinging to the aggregates as 'me' and 'mine' — is the replication of this meme.
The Dharma, however, can be viewed as a meme that potentially leads to a realization that stops this replication, ending the process of 'I-making' and 'my-making,' and naturally falls away when no longer needed. Kind of like how the attainment of the goal is achieved through desire, even though paradoxically, the goal is said to be the abandoning of desire, because at the end of the path desire, as well as the other three bases of power, subside on their own:
What's a meme?
A meme is a concept that defines a self-replicating concept (like a self-replicating gene (in the physical world) in the mental world. Some memes, like Christianity, and Islam, and Mathematics and Science, enable one to understand how and why these thoughts/ideas propagate themselves. However, nihilism is also a meme - but is self destructive!
So the point is the meme, like the gene, if perceived in the context of co-dependency for its existence, doesn't have any existence. So don't get wound up by it, its nothing really.
Metta
I had to look it up myself not too long ago...
It's like a bumper sticker online. hahaha
People like to reuse the same pic with different captions.
People paste it to everything and everywhere online.
It spreads like wild fire.... They can be funny as all outdoors.... hahaha
come again?