The memetic lexicon is one of the seminal documents that explores memetics and the definition of ancillary concepts and beliefs.
The Memetic Lexicon was written by Glenn Grant. Read his story about the Memetic Lexicon in "Memes & Me"
Dangerous to itself. Highly auto-toxic memes are usually
self-limiting because they promote the destruction of their hosts (such as
the Jim Jones meme; any military indoctrination meme-complex; any
"martyrdom" meme). (GMG) (See exo-toxic.)
The part of a meme-complex that promises to benefit the host (usually
in return for replicating the complex). The bait usually justifies, but
does not explicitly urge, the replication of a meme-complex. (Donald Going,
quoted by Hofstadter.) Also called the reward co-meme. (In many religions,
"Salvation" is the bait, or promised reward; "Spread the Word" is the hook.
Other common bait co-memes are "Eternal Bliss", "Security", "Prosperity",
"Freedom".) (See hook; threat; infection strategy.)
Since a person can only be infected with and transmit a
finite number of memes, there is a limit to their belief space (Henson).
Memes evolve in competition for niches in the belief-space of individuals
and societies.
Any attempt to hinder the spread of a meme by eliminating its
vectors. Hence, censorship is analogous to attempts to halt diseases by
spraying insecticides. Censorship can never fully kill off an offensive
meme, and may actually help to promote the meme's most virulent strain,
while killing off milder forms.
A meme which has symbiotically co-evolved with other memes, to
form a mutually-assisting meme-complex. Also called a symmeme. (GMG)
A sociotype of an auto-toxic meme-complex, composed of membots
and/or memeoids. (GMG) Characteristics of cults include: self-isolation of
the infected group (or at least new recruits); brainwashing by repetitive
exposure (inducing dependent mental states); genetic functions discouraged
(through celibacy, sterilization, devalued family) in favor of replication
(proselytizing); and leader-worship ("personality cult"). (Henson.)
Currently without human hosts. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyph
system and the Gnostic Gospels are examples of "dead" schemes which lay
dormant for millennia in hidden or untranslatable texts, waiting to
re-activate themselves by infecting modern archeologists. Some obsolete
memes never become entirely dormant, such as Phlogiston theory, which
simply mutated from a "belief" into a "quaint historical footnote."
"A tune or melody which infects a population rapidly."
(Rheingold); a hit song. (Such as: "Don't Worry, Be Happy".) (f. German,
ohrwurm=earworm.)
Dangerous to others. Highly exo-toxic memes promote the
destruction of persons other than their hosts, particularly those who are
carriers of rival memes. (Such as: Nazism, the Inquisition, Pol Pot.) (See
meme-allergy.) (GMG)
The part of a meme-complex that urges replication. The hook is often
most effective when it is not an explicit statement, but a logical
consequence of the memeUs content. (Hofstadter) (See bait, threat.)
A person who has been successfully infected by a meme. See infection,
membot, memeoid.
The realm of memetic evolution, as the biosphere is the realm
of biological evolution. The entire memetic ecology. (Hofstadter.) The
health of an ideosphere can be measured by its memetic diversity.
Anything that tends to reduce a personUs memetic immunity. Common immuno-depressants are: travel, disorientation, physical and emotional exhaustion, insecurity, emotional shock, loss of home or loved ones, future shock, culture shock, isolation stress, unfamiliar social situations, certain drugs, loneliness, alienation, paranoia, repeated exposure, respect for Authority, escapism, and hypnosis (suspension of critical judgment). Recruiters for cults often target airports and bus terminals because travelers are likely to be subject to a number of these immuno-depressants. (GMG) (See cult.)
See vaccime. (GMG)
1. Successful encoding of a meme in the memory of a human being. A memetic infection can be either active or inactive. It is inactive if the host does not feel inclined to transmit the meme to other people. An active infection causes the host to want to infect others. Fanatically active hosts are often membots or memeoids. A person who is exposed to a meme but who does not remember it (consciously or otherwise) is not infected. (A host can indeed be unconsciously infected, and even transmit a meme without conscious awareness of the fact. Many societal norms are transmitted this way.) (GMG)
2. Some memeticists have used `infection' as a synonym for `belief' (i.e. only believers are infected, non-believers are not). However, this usage ignores the fact that people often transmit memes they do not "believe in." Songs, jokes, and fantasies are memes which do not rely on "belief" as an infection strategy.
Any memetic strategy which encourages infection of a host. Jokes encourage infection by being humorous, tunes by evoking various emotions, slogans and catch-phrases by being terse and continuously repeated. Common infection strategies are "Villain vs. victim", "Fear of Death", and "Sense of Community". In a meme-complex, the bait co-meme is often central to the infection strategy. (See replication strategy; mimicry.) (GMG)
A mediasphere is a term used to describe the collective ecology of the world media, including newspapers, journals, television, radio, books, novels, advertising, press releases, publicity and the blogosphere, to include any and all media both broadcast and published.
A person whose entire life has become subordinated to the propagation of a meme, robotically and at any opportunity. (Such as many Jehovah's Witnesses, Krishnas, and Scientologists.) Due to internal competition, the most vocal and extreme membots tend to rise to top of their sociotypeUs hierarchy. A self-destructive membot is a memeoid. (GMG)
(pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. (Wheelis, quoted in Hofstadter.) (See meme-complex).
The full diversity of memes accessible to a culture or individual. Learning languages and traveling are methods of expanding one's meme pool.
A form of intolerance; a condition which causes a person to react in an unusually extreme manner when exposed to a specific semiotic stimulus, or `meme-allergen.' Exo-toxic meme-complexes typically confer dangerous meme-allergies on their hosts. Often, the actual meme-allergens need not be present, but merely perceived to be present, to trigger a reaction. Common meme-allergies include homophobia, paranoid anti-Communism, and porno phobia. Common forms of meme-allergic reaction are censorship, vandalism, belligerent verbal abuse, and physical violence. (GMG)
A set of mutually-assisting memes which have co-evolved a symbiotic relationship. Religious and political dogmas, social movements, artistic styles, traditions and customs, chain letters, paradigms, languages, etc. are meme-complexes. Also called an m-plex, or scheme (Hofstadter). Types of co-memes commonly found in a scheme are called the: bait; hook; threat; and vaccime. A successful scheme commonly has certain attributes: wide scope (a paradigm that explains much); opportunity for the carriers to participate and contribute; conviction of its self-evident truth (carries Authority); offers order and a sense of place, helping to stave off the dread of meaninglessness. (Wheelis, quoted by Hofstadter.)
A person "whose behavior is so strongly influenced by a meme that their own survival becomes inconsequential in their own minds." (Henson) (Such as: Kamikazes, Shiite terrorists, Jim Jones followers, any military personnel). hosts and membots are not necessarily memeoids. (See auto-toxic; exo-toxic.)
In the study of memes, a memesphere is analogous to a biosphere in biology. The memesphere can be compared to the mediasphere in that, like the mediasphere, "the collective ecology of the world media, including newspapers, journals, television, radio, books, novels, advertising, press releases, publicity and the blogosphere, to include any and all media both broadcast and published," with less focus on the content of the collective ecology of the world media than how this eology can and is constantly influenced by memes through the social science of memetics.
Related to memes.
Accumulated mis-replications; (the rate of) memetic mutation or evolution. Written texts tend to slow the memetic drift of dogmas (Henson).
One who consciously devises memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others. Writers of manifestos and of commercials are typical memetic engineers. (GMG)
"A Memetic Lexicon"
Version 3.5
Glenn Grant, Memeticist
"An idea is something
you have;
an ideology, something that has
you."
--Morris Berman
What if ideas were viruses?
Consider the T-phage virus. A T-phage cannot replicate
itself; it reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium, forcing its
host to make millions of copies of the phage. Similarly, an idea can symbiotically
infect your mind and alter your behavior, causing you to want to tell
your friends about the idea, thus exposing them to the idea-virus. Any
idea which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced meem).
Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules,
a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens
to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical
memes include individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons,
inventions, and fashions. It may sound a bit sinister, this idea that
people are hosts for mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this
is what human culture is all about.
As a species, we have co-evolved with our memes. Imagine
a group of early Homo Sapiens in the Late Pleistocene epoch. They've recently
arrived with the latest high-tech hand axes and are trying to show their
Homo Erectus neighbours how to make them. Those who can't get their heads
around the new meme will be at a disadvantage and will be out-evolved
by their smarter cousins.
Meanwhile, the memes themselves are evolving, just
as in the game of "Telephone" (where a message is whispered
from person to person, being slightly mis-replicated each time). Selection
favors the memes which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to
communicate to others. Garbled versions of a useful meme would presumably
be selected out.
So, in theory at least, the ability to understand
and communicate complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection
should favor those who aren't too conservative to understand new memes.
Or does it? In practice, some people are going to be all too ready to
commit any new meme that comes along, even if it should turn out to be
deadly nonsense, like: "Jump off a cliff and the gods will make you
fly."
Such memes do evolve, generated by crazy people, or
through mis-replication. Notice, though, that this "believe-and-you-will-fly"
meme might have a lot of appeal. The idea of magical flight is so tantalizing
-- maybe, if I truly believed, I just might leap off the cliff and...
This is a vital point: people try to infect each other
with those memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the memes'
objective value or truth. Further, the carrier of the cliff-jumping meme
might never actually take the plunge; they may well spend the rest of
their long lives infecting other people with the meme, inducing millions
of gullible fools to leap to their deaths. Historically, this sort of
thing is happening all the time.
Whether memes can be considered true "life forms"
or not is a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave
in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the analytical
techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics,
and semiotics, into an effective system known as "memetics."
Rather than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth"
of an idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea gets itself
replicated.
Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies,
and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity
from dangerous information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance,
that you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...
The lexicon which follows is intended to provide a
language for the analysis of memes, meme-complexes, and the social movements
they spawn. The name of the person who first coined and defined each word
appears in parentheses, although some definitions have been paraphrased
and altered. (NB: in some cases, names in parentheses refer
not to the word's inventor, but to the originator of an addendum to a
definition -- e.g., the definition given for "cult" is my own
[GMG]; additional concepts that follow are paraphrased from Keith Henson.)
*
Sources:
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
Keith Henson, "Memetics", Whole Earth
Review #57: 50-55.
Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas.
Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable Words",
Whole Earth Review #57: 3-8.
"GMG" = Glenn M. Grant
1. One who studies memetics. 2. A memetic engineer. (GMG)
The study of memes and their social effects.
1. The actual information-content of a meme, as distinct from its sociotype.
2. A class of similar memes. (GMG)
Any meme about memes (such as: "tolerance", "metaphor").
The concept of memes, considered as a meme itself.
Any of several currently-epidemic memes which predict catastrophic events for the year 2000, including the battle of Armageddon, the Rapture, the thousand-year reign of Jesus, etc. The "Imminent New Age" meme is simply a pan-denominational version of this. (Also called the `Endmeme.')
An infection strategy in which a meme attempts to imitate the
semiotics of another successful meme. Such as: pseudo-science (Creationism,
UFOlogy); pseudo-rebelliousness (Heavy Metal); subversion by forgery
(Situationist detournement). (GMG)
Any memetic strategy used by a meme to encourage its host to repeat the meme to other people. The hook co-meme of a meme-complex. (GMG)
A meme which attempts to splice itself into an existing meme-complex (example: Marxist-Leninists trying to co-opt other sociotypes). (GMG)
A meme-complex. (Hofstadter.)
1. The social expression of a memotype, as the body of an organism is the physical expression (phenotype) of the gene (genotype). Hence, the Protestant Church is one sociotype of the Bible's memotype.
2. A class of similar social organisations. (GMG)
The part of a meme-complex that encourages adherence and discourages mis-replication. ("Damnation to Hell" is the threat co-meme in many religious schemes.) (See: bait, hook, vaccime.) (Hofstadter)
A meta-meme which confers resistance to a wide variety of memes (and their sociotypes), without conferring meme-allergies. In its purest form, Tolerance allows its host to be repeatedly exposed to rival memes, even intolerant rivals, without active infection or meme-allergic reaction. Tolerance is a central co-meme in a wide variety of schemes, particularly "liberalism", and "democracy". Without it, a scheme will often become exo-toxic and confer meme-allergies on its hosts. Since schemes compete for finite belief-space, tolerance is not necessarily a virtue, but it has co-evolved in the ideosphere in much the same way as co-operation has evolved in biological ecosystems. (Henson.)
(pron. vak-seem) Any meta-meme which confers resistance or
immunity to one or more memes, allowing that person to be exposed without
acquiring an active infection. Also called an `immuno-meme.' Common
immune-conferring memes are "Faith", "Loyalty", "Skepticism", and
"tolerance". (See: meme-allergy.) (GMG.)
Every scheme includes a vaccime to protect against rival memes. For
instance:
A medium, method, or vehicle for the transmission of memes. Almost
any communication medium can be a memetic vector. (GMG)
An infection strategy common to many meme-complexes, placing the potential host in the role of Victim and playing on their insecurity, as in: "the bourgeoisie is oppressing the proletariat" (Hofstadter). Often dangerously toxic to host and society in general. Also known as the "Us-and-Them" strategy.