Reality TV is driving reality. –Cynthia Schneider

On the evolution of “losing gracefully”

I’d like to provide some context for the comment about “Afhgans learning to lose gracefully”. Over the course of the first four seasons of the AFGHAN IDOL program, the behavior of the contestants changed. In the first couple of seasons, those who lost did not always take it well, and sometimes reacted strongly, even violently. This behavior has changed over time as contestants and their fans got used to the ups and downs of winning in losing. In recent Afghan history (Russian occupation and Taliban) there have not been many opportunities to experience winning and losing in what otherwise might be normal activities of sports and talent contests. So, it is not surprising that reactions to winning and losing in the public arena of Afghan Star have evolved over time. –Cynthia Schneider

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

…it’s also a potent conversational seed, as evidenced by the spirited discussion taking place within the comments on the page for this video, regarding what consititutes “real” adherence to ancient doctrines.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Abstract

The concept of cultural evolution is central to any discussion of “memes”. It was because of the possible existence of Darwinian evolutionary processes beyond the gene-based biological that Dawkins introduced the concept in the first place as a possible substrate. Strangely enough he, of all people, did not initially distinguish the gene and genome-like from the phene and phenome-like aspects of cultural evolution, a confusion which he corrected thereafter. The meme concept was generally not very well received in academic circles, albeit the reception among those interested in Darwinian-style theories of cultural evolution was more mixed. Publications on memetics were interdisciplinary (which can itself be a problem); they often ignored many of the conventions of academic discourse; they were sometimes written by non-professionals for a popular audience; and they were commonly viewed by social scientists, when they paid any attention at all, as yet another (post-sociobiology) incursion by biologists into their subject matter. At least as important as these obvious reasons for the less than enthusiastic reception was the fact that the concept was introduced at a time when there were rising “discontents” within the biological community itself with neo-Darwinism (as it was known in Britain), or the synthetic theory of evolution (as it was known in America), i.e. with population genetics or the genetical theory of evolution. Moreover, it was introduced by the very person around whose work many of those discontents crystallized. I think it is fair to suggest however that by linkage in peoples’ minds, the wide diffusion of the meme concept gave Darwinian-style cultural evolution a lift, helping drag the latter some distance out of the small, scattered academic niches in which it dwelt at the time.

Beyond the sociology of its invention and reception, objections to the meme concept that there are discrete units of biological information, – genes, but not of cultural information – memes, are not persuasive as will be discussed. For example, the concept of a “gene” has historically varied, changed and continues to do so, which, of course, is exactly what a cultural evolutionist should expect of a concept, including in science. Moreover, memes, defined by analogy with Williams evolutionary gene concept, can be isolated in some cases e.g. in generations of internet posts as Best for example has shown. So the concept cannot be banished on a priori grounds and it can do a job of useful scientific work. On the other hand, many other terms have been used in a variety of social scientific disciplines for informational units in cultural transmission and evolution. Moreover, in some cases, social learning can occur by observation i.e. in the absence of instructions encoded symbolically and transmitted at all. If the meme concept can be useful on the one hand but is not always required to talk about cultural evolution, is it ever necessary? I tentatively conclude that there is no readily available substitute when the conversation is inter-disciplinary and when the social learning mechanism involved in the cultural evolutionary process under discussion is the transmission of symbolic, digitally- encoded information as in oral or written language.

The Toronto Semiotic Circle organized a symposium on “Imitation, Memory, and Cultural Changes: Probing the Meme Hypothesis” held at Victoria College (University of Toronto), Northrop Frye Hall, Room 205, on May 4-6, 2007.

Related posts:

1. Nova Spivack: The Evolution of the Web: Past, Present, Future Nova Spivack (twine.com) provides perspective on the semantic qualities at...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.