I suppose though that even being all knowing can be corrupting. Taking the Superman analogy a little further, Brainiac is the character who continually seeks to be all knowing, and look at the trouble he gets into. Albeit, his programing appears to be corrupt. Is it really necessary to destroy everything once you’ve learned everything there is to know about it? Is it really that arduous to share? Actually, I can come up with only one plausible reason why Brainiac might want to destroy everything after he’s learned everything and that’s so he doesn’t get tied up in the minutiae of every culture he comes into contact with. In other words, he kills them off so he can move on and learn something somewhere else without having to worry about missing something when he leaves. Perfectly reasonable, if a bit selfish. Me, I wouldn’t care if people came up with something new after I’ve moved on since I’m assuming being all knowing, I’d pretty much be immortal and able to come back later for a refresher. Regardless, Shakespeare says there’s nothing new under the sun, so history, unfortunately, is bound to repeat no matter what culture you encounter. Really not necessary to destroy a culture when the next one may have  parallel development.

On this date in the year 1916, Reformed Alexandrian Witch and author Stewart Farrar was born in Highams Park, Essex, England.

Memes… they’re viral and they’re everywhere.

A meme (according Wikipedia… itself a major vehicle of the great mnemonic migration that is the internet) is a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices from the Greek word mimema for “something imitated.” Memes are transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena (like blogging). Many consider memes an analogue to genes, self-replicating and responding to selective (environmental) pressures. Richard Dawkins first introduced the word in The Selfish Gene (1976), applying evolutionary principles in the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

Like genes, memes evolve by natural selection through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual meme’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts. An example of a very profligate meme is religion, particularly the Judeo-Christian-Islamic branch, which has proven both beneficial and detrimental to their hosts and other competing memes. The Christian meme almost wiped out the Pagan meme, but it rallied and is now competing in an altered environment.

Memes are viral. Like the first single celled organism which adapted by uniting with other single celled organisms, keeping the best qualities to pass on to their offspring, our memes pick up or pass over other memes all the time, adapting, changing, and synthesizing offspring which can sometimes, but not always be traced back to their origins. We can say the concepts which evolved into our ideas concerning modern law came from Hammurabi, but we know that before his tablets, there were laws which governed human behavior. His laws, by our standards are quite barbaric, but through the process of mnemonic evolution, our thoughts concerning justice have evolved.

Though the existence of memes is only speculative, by studying the past, we begin to see a pattern of intellectual, cultural, and emotional evolution which has nothing to do with physical evolution. The human animal has not evolved in millennia, but our thought processes continue to change even on a day to day basis. We clothe ourselves in memes. We use them like fire to light our way in the darkness of our own ignorance. Without them, we would only be animals, scurrying around in the dark, three meals away from barbarism (Thank you Plato). Without memes, we would have no recourse but to descend into anarchy, unable and ill inclined to pass our a-ha moments on to the next generation. It is through memes we communicate, sharing the concepts that grip us like an unwashed hand (eeww, gross! lol Germs…). Memes spread and cannot be stopped, no matter how hard any regime tries to sterilize our thought processes. Ideas change, memes seek new outlets. Like society, they can stagnate and turn on their hosts. Look at the Inquisition and witch trials.

Genes and memes both have a biological imperative to spread. It’s impossible for any human being not to interact and seek to share with others their experiences in life. We learn in childhood to keep some things private, but memes, like genes, seek expression. In terms of evolution, nothing exists without purpose. Even the appendix has been found to be part of the immune system. Memes serve a function, even if, like the appendix, it is not clearly understood yet what that function is.

Is it Disney or the Church being criticized here?
Only the artist knows for sure.

When I was a child, my mother had a large flag pinned up in the hall, and taped to it was a picture of Frank Zappa (on the crapper). At its most basic, the juxtaposition of Zappa and the flag was a reaffirmation of freedom of speech, and that is really what is at stake in any disrespectful depiction of the flag. When someone “disrespects” the American flag, what they are really saying is, “I do not think that our leaders respect the ideals of this nation, but they haven’t taken away my right to freedom of speech (yet) and I’m damn well going to sensationalize my disgust and disappointment with the current regime by destroying this symbol in the hope that my message will reach as large an audience as possible.” But I paraphrase.

In the end, destroying a flag in any way is not art; it is a political statement. Altering any symbol in a less than respectful way is a political statement. Either way, our freedom to make such a statement is protected by the same institution that we attempt to criticize through the act of desecration. The old adage stands true: Actions speak louder than words. Most people who resort to flag burning have had their concerns about the state of our country and the direction in which it is going ignored or dismissed by those in a position of power, so they resorted to the attention-getting tactic of desecration of the symbol of the country they feel has let them down. Would burning an elephant or donkey in effigy have had the impact of destroying a flag? I think not. The flag as a symbol is a meme, and any attempt to destroy a meme will strike at the core of any human being. Memes are the framework to which we tie our understanding of reality. To destroy or damage a meme is to peel back a bit of the human psyche to the slavering thing underneath… and that thing tends to lash out in the light of day. It’s why we keep the human beast well-insulated in a blanket of meme-enforced civility.

I’ve decided the WCFQ will be moving to its own blog. I think perhaps it gets overshadowed by my holy day posts (certain kinds of folk may be offended by them) and the length of my other posts (yeah, I’m verbose), so I’ve decided to create a separate WCFQ blog which will only post passed over featured questions. Also, since Xanga has made it possible to post things in advance, the WQFC will be switching to a Monday through Friday update schedule, rather than everything all together on Sunday. So there will still be five questions, but each will have its own day. Over the weekend, I think I’ll try something a little different. While the regular questions are essays, the weekend post will be a creative writing prompt called Writer’s Challenge. It can fiction, poetry, whatever you choose. I’ll post a scenario or a a bunch of images or instructions, and you can do whatever you like with them. What do you think?