General types of conceptual metaphor

-up is good

-down is bad

-more is a bigger pile is up is good

-less is a smaller pile is down is bad

-inflation was rampant

-sales took a nosedive

-the competition will eat you alive (competitors are ravenous wolves)

-The market is growing, but their piece of the pie is shrinking (a market is a pie)

-"in" a relationship

-"in" school

It will be smooth sailing from here on.

Once we get this installed, we'll be over the hump and it will be all downhill.

We have a tough road ahead of us.

• War metaphors - battles, weapons, strategies, allies, enemies, etc.
• Sports metaphors - teams, competion, difficult plays etc.
• Weather metaphors -- Storms, sunny skies, rain on your parade etc.
• Journey metaphors - heading somewhere, smooth sailing, rough ride, traveling together etc. 
• Health metaphors - Breath easy, Rest easy, Cure the problem, Trim the fat, etc...

What is Memetics? aka Thought Contagion

• Selfish Gene --> Selfish Meme      Both are examples of selection theory requiring
  
  1. A replicator
  2. Variation -- (imperfect duplication)
  3. Selection among variants
   
  • Richard Dawking -->"The Selfish Gene"
     
  • Aaron Lynch -->"Thought Contagion"
     
  • Richard Brodie --"Virus of the Mind"
     
• Replicating Information Pattern (in brains or understandable by brains)
   
  • Causes behavior changes in Host
     
  • Can be passed along to other hosts directly or indirectly
    » eg. Mass media (include books), copyable inventions, products for sale
     
  • Success of a meme is defined in terms of replication
     
    • Implies that Memes need not be "good" for the host
       
    • Memes with long term success usually have survival value
      For a meme to have long term success replicating in many hosts, it cannot have severe negative consequences to the host. For example, the memes that defined Shakerism have essentially died out as central to the set of memes was celbicay and no children. Consequently, over time, the rate of adoption of the meme was slower than the deaths of the hosts.
       

The meme metaphor

Here is the new metaphor that we are using to structure thinking about these "units of thought" using Lakoff's capitalization conventions.

IDEAS ARE LIVING AUTONOMOUS AGENTS THAT INHABIT MINDS
THE MINDS OF PEOPLE ARE HOSTS TO IDEAS
IDEAS PROPOGATE BY SPREADING FROM MIND TO MIND
IDEAS COMPETE WITH ONE ANOTHER FOR MINDS
SUCCESSFUL IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT PERSIST IN MORE MINDS

  The point of view is that memes have people, not the other way around.

Some entailments of the main metaphors and some variations that we can use:

• Accidental mutation
  Memes become accidentally mutated when the quality of the transmission or storage of the original meme fails to be adequate.
   
• Intentional mutation
  Memes that are conciously designed by self interested parties are often subtle mutations of original memes that had other social agendas in mind. For example, the cooption by the fashion industry of counter-cultural symbols usually involves some mutation of the original fashion to make them acceptable to a wider audience. The grunge phenonenom provides an ideal example, as the only thing required of the fashion industry was to make the clothes new, and put high prices on them. The pricing alone served to sanitize the dumpster diver look into high fashion.
   

• Distinction Memes
  These are the memes that we use to divide up reality into the orgainzation that we know. This part of memetic theory is a straightforward outgrowth of years of categorization literature, particularly illuminated by differences in categorization across cultures.
   
• Associational Memes
  These are the linking ideas that we hold to say that for instance, "Life is good for people with money." or "War is peace." or "Ignorance is bliss."
  Most metaphors can also be understood as associational memes.
   
• Strategy Memes
  Strategy memes tell us how to behave in a given context to achieve some result. For instance, the strategy meme that says "Go with the flow of traffic, and you won't get stopped for speeding." might inform our driving behavior. Or, "never go to bed with someone on a first date" might inform our sexual behavior.
   

• Prexisting Meme set
  The degree of compatibility with an existing set of memes strongly effects whether or not we adopt them. This phenomenon has much empirical support from the persuasion literature.
   
• Resistance memes
  There are two memes that most of us acquire at some time, that by their nature, act as a sort of memetic immune system for the rest of the memes that we hold against any potentially disruptive memes that we encounter.
   
  • Faith
    Faith represents any meme that you believe without question. Because you accept it as reality, it is very resistant to attack or modification by existing memes.
    
  • Skepticism
    Skepticism forms a shield against new memes that can be just as potent as faith. With skepticism built into our meme set, we take nothing at face value, but seek further verification of new memes and their potential value. Cleverly composed memes, however, can and do slide right past our skeptical barriers.
  • Taboo
    Taboos create a protective barrier to keep memes from being challenged. Taboos often have two layers, proscription of an activity, and proscription of talking about the activity or the taboo.
    
  • Adversarial/Intimidation
    The adversative meme, sets up an automatic adversarial position in its own host against competing memes. In doing this the host of competing memes becomes intimidated by the holder of the adversative meme, and in extreme cases, suppressing any communication of the competing meme to any other potential hosts.
    
• Hot Buttons (Brodie 1996) Untested assertions of memetics
  We have certain hard-wired and early-wired kinds of memes that have at their roots survival of the species and of individuals within a social group.
   
  • Primary Hot buttons -- the four F's
    Any meme will command at least a modicum of attention if it somehow deals with one of bioloy's four f's, food, fighting, fleeing, and ... finding a mate. As a species we have learned, perhaps have it genetically/chemically encoded that these are important things to attend to things that set relate to hunger, anger, fear, and lust.. Because of this, memes that use one or more of the four f's as integral parts of themselves will have a greater chance of being recieved by a new host.
     
  • Secondary Hot Buttons
    In addition to the four f's, memes that tap into the realms of belonging, identity, approval by others -- including those in authority, and caring tend to transmit easliy and replicate faster.
     
• Physical and emotional state
  The classic case of suceptibility to new memes comes in cult and military brainwashing, where by means of deprivation, and sometimes pleasure/pain techniques, individuals are "programmed" with the desired new meme. To a lesser degree, anyone can be caught with their guard down, and find themselves agreeing to memes and even replicating them without having so intended.
   

• Word of Mouth (friend, acquaintance, salesperson)
   
• Mass media (include books)
   
• Observation and imitation
  When we see a new thing, or behavior, for example a new fashion, the meme that entails that fashion has been communicated to us. If we adopt the new fashion, or tell others about it, then the meme has been replicated successfully.
   

• Rate of Spread
    The rate of spread generally depends on the same things that affect the spread of new products. However, the packaging of the message, the kind of person who communicates the message, as well as the social context in which it was received can significantly affect the rate of spread. (see Gladwell, The Tipping Point)


• Evangelism (selling itself)
  A meme can be considered to be evangelic if it includes as part of itself, the idea that it is important to tell other people. Hence, when the meme of an impending hurricane reaches a certain place, all residents will be likely to evangelically spread the word to any who might have been out of the normal information loop.
   
  • Crisis
    Depending on the severity of the crisis, people who accept the crisis's meme are likely to feel more or less inclined actively and effortfully spread the meme. Contrast the impending hurricane to the crisis of ecological disaster following years after the harvesting of a rainforest.
     
  • Religious
    These are the memes we generally think of as evangelic, hence the term. The admonition to go out and save others with this meme or mind virus is part and parcel to the message.
     
  • Commercial
    To the extent that a commercial establishment can sucessfully generate either positive word of mouth about its offering, or negative word of mouth (about the competion or failure to adopt the offering), that commercial interest has designed an evalngelic meme.
     
• Note that just because an idea is a good representation of reality does not mean that it can't be thought about as a meme. The evolution of scientific theory provides a wonderful case in point. At some point, the faith in authority meme gave way to the faith in observation meme. The faith in observation meme has evolved into the faith in the scientific method meme. At any given time, we communally hold a set of "scientific" ideas that may in the long run turn out to be just as absurd to future generations as the flat earth is to us now. The faith in the scientific method meme provides some measure of assurance that each new set of collectively believed ideas will be better representations of reality than whatever they have displaced.