Re: virus: Re: memes and spirits

David Kennerly (davekennerly@tcsn.net)
Sat, 29 Mar 1997 14:31:24 -0800


> Reed wrote:
> Spirits are percieved as having "intentionallity". A spirit can "want"
> something,
> can plan cognitively, etc. A spirit is a whole point-of-view without a
> current
> body. A spirit is as complicated as the person it is said to "possess".

Memes certainly want things too. They want to propagate. Or so it seems
from a distance. Up close I imagine they seem to be disinterested and
mechanistic. I imagine a meme to a be paradigm shift for a new thinkers to
better understand what is up until recently exclusively mystically
connotated. I think it is somewhat analogous to physics: light rays
relabeled as quantum wave-packets, and to biology: evil disease spirits
and bad vapours relabeled as germs.