The Meme Meme, The Self-Reflexive Meme and the New Dawn of Memetics
Excerpts from “The Empires of the Mind” and $
Memetics is the study of memes, but a meme is not just any idea, though; memes are ideas that behave as life. The word meme is a contraction of mind gene, a concept developed by Richard Dawkins to describe ideas will to exist, grow and propagate in a very similar way that life does. The concept of memetics is founded on the realization that since the word meme is itself an idea, it is descriptive of itself. It is a self-reflexive idea, and from that concept we can derive the meme meme.
The meme meme is a self-aware meme, just as humans are self-aware; the meme meme is then a tool for humans to achieve a higher level of consciousness about themselves, as their identity is composed of ideas and so our self-identity is a personal meme. A meme is then not just any idea or word, but a self-reflexive idea, ideas that describe themselves. Most ideas exist analogously to bacteria, they are self-contained by that which they are ideas about. There are passive and conscious memes, most are passive, but some are quite aware that they describe themselves. Some of these are very dangerous as they deny that they are ideas of themselves, but instead claim they are ideas which are more important as abstractions than as definitions of which they are abstractions of; these memes are viruses which can only exist within in the human mind. They tend to care more about propagating themselves than the survival of the minds which they exist in as they are intentionally divorced completely from the physical world and so regard the physical world as inconsequential. However, we should care because we exist in the physical world and so we must be careful of the ideas we allow to live in our minds.
Since the meme meme is self-reflexive itself, it can be used to diagnose other self reflexive ideas. The difference is that where the meme meme is an abstraction of ideas which are abstractions of what they define, and is about understanding how these abstraction operate, other self-reflexive ideas are abstractions of abstractions which reject the importance of that which the abstractions are of, only defining the abstractions themselves. The meme meme is only a meme itself, it is a definition representing a concept. In order to utilize the meme meme a system must be utilized which bases its structure on the concept of the meme meme. This is where Memetics comes in.
Memetics formalizes the meme meme into a useful abstraction, one which can be used as a subjectively objective device for measurement. What it measures is a meme’s relation to what it represents; it is a system of logic, in fact, it is the ultimate system of logic. It as an abstraction which can be used to define any self-reflexive meme, as a self-reflexive meme. It can then determine what the meme is representing.
What this work advocates is not specific policy, but a system in which policy is learned on all levels autonomously through experience. The primary political goal is to achieve the separation of state and economy. It will itself begin to construct the replacement structures to free the minds of individuals through the establishment of an open ideological system of learning. This cannot be legislated. So long as the definition of self-identity is retained the mind can never be enslaved. The purpose of this work is to save truth from being burned alive. Its goal is to shorten the reclamation period of civilization and install a system of objectivity and learned morality in a world of self-interested individuals working together to achieve mutual benefit bound by an identity of self in relation to the universe, in the worst case scenario. In the best case, its goal is to inject an ideological cure that will cancel out the positive ideologies of un-definable structural abstraction. This anti-body for closed positivist ideologies is a negative open ideology focused around the absolute abstraction of ideas as exponentially increasing definition of information. Hopefully it’s implementation is enacted as a state of mind so that the entropy increased in the phase change to global civilization is abstract rather than a physical increase in entropy, as much as possible. The only cure for a closed definition of structure with an undefined system based on a specific abstraction of perception is a defined system with an undefined, open structure based on the absolute abstraction of all perception requiring an infinite flow and build of definitions.
This absolute abstraction is God perpetually defined. The retention of the word God strips the misconceived supernatural conception and re-perceives the definition as accurate definition of human perception of the universe perceived with the Faith in the axiom that fundamental physical laws will always reign supreme, percieved or not and percieved accuratley or not. Reality will be reality no matter what humans perceive and there are non-relativistic absolute consequences for all action or inaction. It is the human responsibility to discover these fundamental laws so that we may live better and interact more effectively with the physical universe to develop it to our desire with intent and regard to physical possibility. God is an idea, an idea is a meme. As the word meme represents a concept describing the nature of ideas and it itself is an idea, it describes its own existence. From this we derive the meme meme, the self-reflexive meme. It, like humans, science, money, and the representative government of a complex civilization of mutual-self interest and divided labor based on the rule of contract that protects the individual, is self-reflexive, it defines its own existence. The meme-meme is self-aware. All that humans have to communicate and perceive in a complex manner are memes. All human perception is defined by memes. This makes the self-reflexive meme the most powerful tool humans have yet discovered to define the universe. It provides a new standard to evaluate our perception with as we necessarily observe the objective through a subjective filter, so to we can use the meme meme, or the memetive plane, to measure the subjective ideas in relation to objective reality as measured. These are then the three perspectives and the three planes of human reality, the objective external, the subjective individual, and the memetive which interacts with the other planes to develop a weltanschauung. Once the process of objective base, creative subjective workspace, and memetive mirror reflection of society and universe becoming more detailed with the constant increase in definition as the creative subjective identifies more about the objective base and widens the gap revealing more information to be discovered subjectively and verified objectively. The flow of defined information collected through learning, experimenting, relating, questioning, and inferencing and creating begins to increase at an exponential rate exponentially more efficient than without this awareness. In fact we have been exploring the edges of this since the Judaism and Plato.
Ideology is world view. Ideology is the level between the subjective and the memetive. Between the subjective and the objective we find the physical reality of human civilization. The subjective is the filter and the innovator depending on if information is coming in or going up to be checked with the current accepted highest probability worldview. So long as we look to the objective and memetive planes, the subjective will expand both with increasing definition of discovery and invention. The memetive is the bigger picture and requires ever increasing definition. It is the absolute abstraction of religion, ideology and weltanschauung destroying all absolute definition requiring an embrace of uncertainty, and a faith in the process of learning, accumulating knowledge and creating. The Closed Memes only check observation on their fixed world view and only implement based on that world view. They either totally reject objective observation, something impossible without an already large base of information taken for-granted, or they reject subjective desire. Either way they have breached the arch into the ideological and never come back, all observation is filtered through greater ideology only and observed only in the context of civilization.
If one takes a concept to its extreme logical conclusion, and it contradicts itself or the larger reflection the odds are very good that it is this idea that is flawed, not the larger picture, but there are times when the entire larger picture must change when empirical evidence requires it. If it idea contradicts itself in the end, then it is wrong entirely or there is a missing piece with which to govern it from the feedback loop that when found will retain its trajectory through reality. In a linear time stream it is best to observe patterns rather than trends and seek verification in other systems of learning. Through the use of inference two unrelated systems can be observed to have similar traits. If two systems share core traits other aspects derived of that can be used and inference predictions can be derived from this with which to develop loosely scientific and thus far more scientific weltanschauungs. Once this exploration begins, it will catalyze the greatest phase change yet.
Phase change comes when the old order destroys itself leaving the purity of the successful and new. Phase change is the reason why fossil records leave gaps. When a new species emerges it is first slow but when a successful mutation is arrived at the process becomes almost immediate. One example of this would be the white moths of Siberia suddenly became ill adapted to the darkening of the forests in industrialization. The white moths were eaten leaving mutant black moths which survived and bred replacing the white variation. Out of this phase change will emerge with free thinking individuals bound by absolute abstraction requiring increasing definition by its own definition. This transitional phase change will increase entropy to a high degree, but will produce a level of efficiency that will quickly replace and overtake the old systems of trial by imposition. If Memetics spreads efficiently and rapidly enough it has the chance of containing the rise in entropy caused by the self-immolation of ideology to the collective minds of civilization. Just as the use of thought before implementation can save the entropy of arbitrary experimentation so can memetics metabolize phase change of global civilization. Through this we may stop the destruction before it starts. If this is impossible and the ideologies are fixed to firmly in the minds of the humans they infect then it will have injected itself already and will spread through minds, freeing humanity from the tyranny of the Empires of the Mind.
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