In Brin’s speech he describes the idea of the meme that was floated by the scientist-author Richard Dawkins. A meme is the idea that the DNA that make up the cells of living organisms were competing against nature and each other. Dawkins describes a meme as a “living bundle of ideas.” Brin then takes these memes and compares them to viruses being spread by coughing and meme being spread around by speech and writings. He says that there are four major worldviews. Paranoia: Where an individual is constantly in fear of something bad happening. Machismo: How males sat at the top of the social heirarchy. The East: Homogeny, the group is more important than the individual. Dogma of Otherness: Driven by newness, tolerance to others beliefs. All of these worldviews are in constant conflict, battling for domination.
Some of the interesting things to come from this speech are how the Russians are paranoid because of how frequently they were invaded in the past. The other oddity is what the mothers in the Latin countries say to the male children, very disturbing.
I guess at this point the paper is a little dated because it seems as though Russia is no longer dissolving the paranoia meme. Actually it seems to be getting stronger with the endless reign Putin.
Lou Coban
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The comment by the Latin American mothers was very disturbing. The idea that mother's bring up their sons teaching them to be alpha males with no respect for anyone except their family seems strange. Brin was not very specfic to where this was said or even to the time period. Either way it is alarming.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Meade wrote a book about her experience with gender roles in Samoa in the mid 1900's. The alpha male mentality was very much a part of their way of life which was practically undisturbed until Meade researched them. It seems that on a small scale Machismo can function pretty well (like in a small tribe). But on a larger scale like a modern population I think Machismo loses lots of its appeal.
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on in Russia is quite intriguing indeed. Yet has the Russian meme really changed...?
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