Let's Prehend
A Manual of Human Ecology and Culture Design

MEMES, Tyrannical Elements of Meaning

Memes are "units of meaning - such as gestures, cliches, ideas and fashions of every kind -that spread from one `infected' person or community to another.y[Meme pronounced like "dream" not "me-me"] Memes are the DNA of our taste.", with a life of their own, LOO.

Mark *Kingwell explains his *VIRAL CULTURE in the April 1999 Harpers Magazine, reviewing CULTURAL SOFTWARE: A THEORY OF IDEOLOGY, by J. M. Balkin, ECSTASY CLUB by Douglas Rushkoff, CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED, by Daniel *Dennet, and THE SELFISH GENE, by Richard *Dawkins.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kingwell is too RIDly to get it. "...Some meme-heads talk hopefully of an `emergent politics' that might seep from the complex play of human consciousness and make the ecosystem more sustainable." ... "The editors of the Vancouver-based journal ADBUSTERS recently declared what they call `the meme wars' issuing a `blueprint of a revolution' more orless in the spirit of Guy Debord and the Situationist International of 1968 Paris ("The global economy is a doomsday machine that must be stopped an reprogrammed.")"

Kingwell clings to his ancient RIDs traditions asserting schitzy idealism in quoting Umberto Eco on the madness of metaphysical ambition, `comes to the conclusions that no classification of the universe is not arbitrary and conjectural.' As so should we. The psychologist Julian Jaynes once compared consciousness to a flashlight that could only ever illuminate what came within its limited, highly mobiley[FF] beam: the rest of what was real remained in darkness - including the structure of the flashlight itself. Balkin, Dennett, and others explain-it-all thinkers would probably call that giving up. I call it facing up - to the infinite task of acknowledging our limits." Presumably, Mr. Kingwell wants to leave it up to SAM's MOM, p.239.

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