I just relistened to an audiobook version, and really, it stunned me…I recommend her Earthsea series highly. Especially if you yourself live near the Ocean, or in an Archipelago!

I never claimed to have any original ideas. And thank goodness for it. I just enjoy stringing brilliant old ideas together.

Thanks Curt for mentioning “Beyond Civilization.” I really want to check it out since I too have been curious about how the theory and study of memes can change society for the better. Next year, I am planning to move to Portland to start my study of Chinese medicine, and so of course, I am interested in spreading some radical ideas about what it means to be healthy. I want to help cultivate a society where self-awareness is regarded as a value and a requisite to a good and ethical life. I want to see the disassociation of heart and mind healed. I dream of a generation that is comfortable with paradox. Can mimetics be the framework through which to approach the spread of some of these ideas? Or is there a better skillful means out there, to borrow a term from Buddhist philosophy?

But thank you Willem for raising a flag about the mechanistic roots of memes. If mechanistic thinking is at an excess, maybe a tool of a radically different nature is needed to effectively counterbalance the unhealthy effects. I’ve only recently discovered your blog, but I look forward to reading more about what you have to say about storytelling. Maybe that will be the better tool.

You wrote: “What do you think.?”

—

What you said makes sense, and has given me a lot to think about.

thank you,

Curt

It all comes down to context. I don’t say I agree with Daniel Quinn’s choice - but I do recognize it.

I personally use whatever tool I need to accomplish what I want to do, as holistically as possible. Different folks have different priorities.

Honestly you’ve hit on a complex web of issues, having to do with: what you have to say, who you want to say it to, what downsides you’ll accept depending on the tools you choose.

By making the choices I’ve made, I have accepted that I’ll probably always have a very small readership, “a niche of a niche” so to speak. Daniel Quinn certainly wants more impact than that, but then he sacrifices depth (for lack of a better word) to achieve it.

What do you think.?

yrs,
Willem

You wrote “Instead of answering your question directly, I’ll try to answer the question behind your question. I suspect it may run something like, “Should we suspect the usefulness of Richard Dawkin’s ideas because he interprets their implications according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism)?”

Does this put the question well?”

Hmmmmm…I guess I really didn’t care whether or not Dawkin’s interprets reality according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism in this particular instance. I’m trying to see if using memetics as a tool to help save the world (In a Quinnian sense) is a viable option. I see you as a like mind (in a Quinnian sense) being inventive with the work that you do to help save the world. And what I’m hearing you say is that memetics is limited.

Does this make sense? Am I hearing you correctly?

Take care,

Curt

Instead of answering your question directly, I’ll try to answer the question behind your question. I suspect it may run something like, “Should we suspect the usefulness of Richard Dawkin’s ideas because he interprets their implications according to a modern mythology of meaninglessness and mechanism)?”

Does this put the question well? Indigenous peoples experience that all Story and Song live and have life. A mythology of a people constantly expands and grows, the individual stories and songs of which interbreeding and interacting like in any other ecosystem - a desert, a forest, a lake.

To me, this certainly matches up with the skeleton of the idea of memes; but Dawkin’s only sees the mechanics of the process (if even that).

The missing piece (the missing meme, perhaps ) that we need to understand the systemic process of mythology involves an understanding of its living and interacting nature. Stories don’t simply involve the transfer of data from one human to another; they involve the sharing of a living being, in a living process, like pollination, or digestion.

This kind of work, to understand how a scientist has killed what they study (killed its living nature), constantly sits in front of us. Dawkin’s doesn’t do it alone. All science forces us to push its incomplete understanding to the level of a true system science - a Mythology.

It feels to me like working at the United Nations as an e-primitive interpreter.

I hope this answered your question.

What do you think about Daniel Quinn using Richard Dawkins work on memetics in BEYOND CIVILIZATION? And have you memetics useful in your thinking?

Take care,

Curt