Stop Paddling/Start Sailing is more than just a story. It is introducing many people to memes for the first time. For many people the word meme is scary and the concept of memes is even more scary, but I believe this is because people are not clear about what memes are.
Extract from The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore:
"...when you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This something can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, a piece of information but if we are going to study it we shall need to give it a name. Fortunately, there is a name. It is the Meme.
Oxford English Dictionary: Meme - An element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation
Put simply by Roger's mother: A meme is any idea that can be passed on repeatedly from person to person.
It is worth considering: Not all thoughts are memes… but memes have become the tools with which we think.
We may be frightened to hear: memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes, (D. Dennett 1991)
And strangely: Our memes is who we are. (S. Blackmore 1999)
Hearing grand ideas like this will put some off thinking about memes, but should the enormity of the idea be a good reason to shy away from it?
In Stop Paddling/Start Sailing the author’s first look at things from the meme’s point of view is described as well as his realisation that memetics was the best way he could make sense of his life.
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