From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 09:54:45 MST
On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Lee Corbin wrote:
> The most important aspect to me is whether we can distinguish
> political ideologies---in their effects---from other systems
> of belief. For example, most of your analysis might equally
> well apply, it seems to me, to my convictions about
> certain scientific or historical matters. If we take some
> theory that I've been exposed to for a long time, e.g., the
> Copenhagen collapse of the wave function, and I persist for
> decades in being unconvinced by it, then so far as I can tell
> the case is quite similar to that of political ideology.
The way I do memetics, I analyze memes as units of behavior rather than as
ideas or concepts. Ideologies, as conceptual/motivational systems held
self-consciously in memory, would be mental side-effects of memes
behaviorally-defined.
Political behaviors, religious behaviors, economic behaviors are all
similar memetically, with differences arising mainly just from the
different natures of the behaviors (as categorized within a certain
culture).
> Well, bottom line, I think that this is the way it is with
> political ideologies as well. Unlike scientific beliefs or
> historical facts, these do not lend themselves to ordinary
> modes of refutation, however. Ideologies are to a great
> extent based upon *values*, I contend. As such, they can
> never undergo complete invalidation.
True, ideologies are tied into motivational systems, mentally. But for
that very reason, new connections can be formed, and old ones abandoned,
if they are more "efficient" motivationally, for a particular person in a
particular context. It may be that for a wide variety of reasons, these
conditions never obtain for most people, so they never change their
ideologies per se. The exceptions can be dramatic.
gej
resourcesoftheworld.org
jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu
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