I consider the ego to be the structure we build which enables us to interact with the world. So memes would be a part of that, however I do not believe them to be the sole cause of ego. While many selfish characteristic do seem to come from auto-toxic memes implanted during the socialization process, the ego is capable of developing on its own independant of outside input.
Re:Ego, Evolution and memetics
« Reply #2 on: 2002-10-06 03:20:49 »
Susan Blackmore, the author of the book Meme Machines would tell you that selfishness and egoism are simply meme products, and suggest that they can be overcome by Zen Buddhist regimen. I disagree. I think that confuses the fitness landscape as purely a memetic product itself. Ego simply arises in response to the need for a narrative point of view, and a necessity to describe our own participation as an agent in causal relationships. To whatever extent she might believe that she has overcome ego and selfishness, it appears inevitable that she returns to these "memes", promoting her book, collecting royalties, and generally engaging in life as Susan Blackmore.
There are, however, some people who genuinely seem to misattribute or fail to attribute their own responsibility to themselves on a fairly consistent or frequent basis. I would however suggest that such things happen not because these people have actually overcome their memes, but because they suffer from various forms of organic brain disfunction, i.e. boderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, etc. In fact, the people that I have had to interact with who suffer from these problem, do seem to have concepts of self and other, but generally tend to misapply them to themselves and other imagined or real people. Instead of recognizing their thoughts as their own, they hear voices, talk to god(s), etc. or believe that they themselves have said and/or done things that they have seen others do, or heard of others doing.
So Jake, are you implying that all Catholics/Christians are Schizophrenics suffering from organic brain disorder's?
CoV...Yet another antagonistic religion claiming to have the "answers"....Hmmmmmm¿
[Jake] hmmmmmm. . . . No, I don't really see any implication like that in anything that I said. Now that you bring this up, I can certainly imagine someone suffering from schizophrenic symptoms attributing their experiences to god or jesus talking to them. But I certainly don't think that most or even all self identified Christians suffer from such symptoms. What made you think that I was implying this?
ego is just a sub-set to pride and with out it you have no confident and with it you should be able to controll memes if there part of you it's the adaption to master your own human machine. knowing there there is one thing but controll them or be controlled. i have an ego why Because i take controll of things around me. is that my memes or my selfcentered ego . and too know ones-self is to have controll of that machine. Hay this place is kinda neat just when i'v run out of Quistions Thanx Lucifer!!
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