TheAgitator.com
Christmas Kills
Friday, December 5th, 2003Looks like the Washington Post, of all places, is picking up on the post-reductio America meme–am I using “meme” correctly?
Anyway, check out this list of ways your celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus can kill you. Look for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to come for your eggnog…
I thought the point of the post-reductio meme was that we should be AFRAID to suggest ridiculous prohibitions, because we’ll only give the nanny-staters ideas.
I’d be willing to bet that the list was a cropped version of the Nanny Staters’ list.
“Meme” is one of those words that bloggers always seem to be using, and I always felt out of the loop when I saw it. I just went and looked it up.
I still don’t really know if it is complimentary, or derisive, or neutral.
Some guy named Richard Dawkins apparently invented the word “meme”, which he defines by saying:
“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.
Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking — the meme for, say, ‘belief in life after death’ is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of people all over the world.”
I suppose that’s a good point, digamma.
I guess it just seems like when the Washington Post starts pointing to the nannies and showing how absurd things are, things are significantly more absurd than I’d imagined.
Since we’re on post-reductio, I heard someone on talk radio this morning facetiously suggest that one day the govt might even rid us of the Christmas holiday altogether… sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?
That article was written by Joel Achenbach, who generally writes pretty humorous things.
Since when is the English language static, annoymous?
When do we get building regulations on gingerbread houses?
Meeeeeme weaver, I believe we can make it through the ni-ight…
Gene – that’s the worst pun I’ve heard in a long time. I laughed out loud when I read it!
I can’t believe this article was in the Washington Post! I didn’t know big papers let anyone with a sense of humor write anything but boring news stories. The whole paper where I live Tennessee is a joke; I just don’t think it was meant to be funny.
“Some guy name Dawkins?” Some guy? Dawkins kicks ass. Good read.
The Selfish Gene
The Blind Watchmaker
Check him out.
Dawkins does kick ass. For a book that attempts to make a rigorous, scientific definition of memes see Robert Aunger’s The Electric Meme. He leaves it open to discovery whether they exist as actual replicators or not, but he narrows the search and elucidates the concept.
Dawkins is a first class moron.
Meme = an encapsulated idea