David Brin’s Survival of the Fittest Ideas: The New Style of War—A Struggle Among Memes introduces a new concept of something called a “meme”. A meme is a “living bundle of ideas”. They thrive inside the human mind and have the power to replicate themselves. He compares memes to viruses in that they spread from person to person “infecting” one another with ideas. Brin then describes memes’ roles in four different worldviews: the paranoia, machismo, the East, and the Dogma of Otherness. In the paranoia worldview, memes of fear spread throughout a society leading to peoples’ support of a leader as long as they promise to protect them from the enemy. The Machismo worldview perpetuates a meme that oppresses women and centers around revenge. The East worldview promotes a meme that regulates hierarchy. Finally the Dogma of Otherness seeks out a meme that supports diversity and change.
I found Brin’s article to be interesting as it seemingly proposed new concepts by comparing the spread of ideas to genetic coding. However, upon further reading I don’t believe he is saying anything new or particularly innovative. Perhaps his presentation of a new concept of “memes” may seem original but I really think he is just restating how ideas and ideologies operate. It is widely accepted that ideas spread throughout a culture and affect that particular culture’s structure and functioning.
In the section titled “The Underlying Structure”, Brin acknowledges that he is not talking about “nations or religions or superficial cultural things like language or rituals”. So my question is what is he talking about?? If he’s not talking about culture or nation societies, I’m confused as to what argument he is trying to present throughout this entire article.
I agree, his arguments are a little convoluted and obtuse. In his section of "The Underlying Structure", I think he's trying to propose something that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Maybe it's more subtle, but I think he's trying to diverge from nationalism and religion and possibly argue in the realm of ideology but he doesn't make it explicit.
ReplyDeleteHe does lay out false assumptions and negates to realize the narrative of the Other, placing a false idealization of the oppressed. As I wrote in my piece, he assumes that the Other embraces tolerance and diversity but in actuality, it's through intolerance that equality exists. The civil rights movement was not about tolerance but intolerance. MLK was not the only civil rights leader, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Fred Hampton, etc. are the ones who actually had a great impact to the civil rights movement.