It seems obvious to me that culture has complex patterns both whose underlying deep themes and surface manifestations can contradict, and that it is at the ultimate level a non-self-consistent jumble of these themes—which nonetheless span generations and form a recognizable whole. If that isn’t usefully called a culture, why not?
The reason I dislike talking about the culture rather than the memes is that it presents the culture as atomic, rather than the memes. If we know the culture has sex-positive and sex-negative elements, why not talk about those elements directly? They’re what’s interesting, and differentiating between them is valuable. The culture is what you get when you blend them together, and if we’re trying to analyze them then distinctness is valuable.
I tend to agree with respect to the importance of complex cultural patterns and deep themes. Culture is far more relevant than memes in this context. The more powerful ‘memes’ floating around here are the ideas Sally has about sexual liberation and health being the important factor—and they are far less important considerations than the underlying cultural and instinctive incentives that her emotions are trying to process for her.
It seems obvious to me that culture has complex patterns both whose underlying deep themes and surface manifestations can contradict, and that it is at the ultimate level a non-self-consistent jumble of these themes—which nonetheless span generations and form a recognizable whole. If that isn’t usefully called a culture, why not?
The reason I dislike talking about the culture rather than the memes is that it presents the culture as atomic, rather than the memes. If we know the culture has sex-positive and sex-negative elements, why not talk about those elements directly? They’re what’s interesting, and differentiating between them is valuable. The culture is what you get when you blend them together, and if we’re trying to analyze them then distinctness is valuable.
I tend to agree with respect to the importance of complex cultural patterns and deep themes. Culture is far more relevant than memes in this context. The more powerful ‘memes’ floating around here are the ideas Sally has about sexual liberation and health being the important factor—and they are far less important considerations than the underlying cultural and instinctive incentives that her emotions are trying to process for her.