It's just another Manic Memetic Monday!
I'm sitting home isolating from the CoVID-19 pandemic.
Introduction
There's a perception that "jerks always get ahead," and presumably that "nice guys (1)" don't.
What does this mean?
When we talk about jerks within the context of an organization, do we mean managers, or everybody, for instance? I guess we'd also mean people who do things which are antisocial, cause harm to others. The other side of the coin is the "nice guys" who follow the rules and act like they care about others (and the organization) -- which "rules" are they following, and are the jerks not following them, or just following them differently.
The Will to Power
At the point we can wonder what motivates people, for good or ill, in an organization. Macromemetics tells us to get resonance from as many people as possible, as consistently as possible, is the goal all humans pursue. So how does that work in the Jerk Shop (2)? And how might it work in the theoretical (2) Nice Guy Shop?
Maximizing resonance is probably going to involve a memetic nexus or two, and in many organizations it already exists and one has only to step into the center of it.
Mass-resonance through a memetic nexus looks like a bunch of people marching, acting, enacting, willingly or unwillingly, in keeping with one's orders.
This sounds like it might be time for bullying to come in. I guess the fundamental question is the submission to power, and how it happens. Can the submission to power take place through the workings of normal memes, or does it have to be through immunomemes, i.e., bullying?
Once again, we confront the problem of what is an immunomeme? The Second Law of Immunomemetics tells us that any system of rules translates directly to a collection of bullying opportunities. The reverse analysis is often very useful as well, i.e., are the rules rules? yes, because there are clearly identifiable bullying opportunities which are recognizable parts of the culture, or no, the rules are not rules because you can't point to any bullying opportunities. An immunomeme is a bullying opportunity, i.e., something that somebody can enact, that preserves the rule or rules that are the justification for the bullying opportunity. Making an inventory of the bullying opportunities (mocking people for what they wear, racist and classist attacks, telling people where to walk or not walk, telling people to get back to work, etc.) is a way to describe the "rules" that can be said to exist in a population. People of a certain class or color must be seen to be working silently and diligently when a person of another class and/or color is around, and when they are not, this is relaxed, i.e., this immunomeme does not resonate ("Say there, friend, there ain't none of them Overlord blokes around -- what you talking about 'get back to work'?") (3).
Okay, extant bullying opportunities give us "rules," and also the reverse. When someone enacts an immunomeme, capitalizes on a bullying opportunity against another cohort member, they are pushing that person, with the help of the rest of the cohort, to stop an activity, or to begin or continue one. Again, the uncharted territory of what constitutes an immunomeme and how they work.
Not Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
Why do we have intellectual property laws? Because we need them. People like to imitate each other, only some people invent things, we're all good at copying things, whatever they are. It's basic Micromemetics -- the behavior of individuals vis-à-vis imitable ideas.
Conclusion (for now)
There’s a lot to this, I think. The question itself invokes what is an immunomeme and what is a memetic nexus. A jerk who gets ahead needs a command of both. Is there anything to the idea that in order to be a memetic nexus one has to be a jerk? Or that you can’t be nice to everybody?
Im going to try to focus on a kind of textbook, that is, writing entries which will be part of a textbook, laying out the ideas of Macromemetics, as opposed to writing individual treatments of special cases.
Stay tuned!!
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(1) Not trying to be sexist here. Groups of women (in the USA) refer to one another as "you guys". Supposedly that's how you spot a Yankee, i.e., referring to a group made up only of women as "you guys."
(2) An organization where the jerks get ahead, as opposed to a "Nice Guy Shop," whatever that might look like (it might only be theoretical), where nice guys
(3) This is a very difficult problem to avoid in American and British Commonwealth, and indeed probably all cultures that derive from Europe, but also other places, i.e., everything is polarized by racism and classism, and also sexism. Which memes are eligible for deployment, and when, are often predicated by race. This is probably the topic for another essay, but the police in the USA are an example, since it used to be their job to pursue runaway enslaved Africans. We haven't really made a serious effort to "replace" that set of memes in our police. They have been programed since hundreds of years to go to check which "race" a person is, and then act differently according to what that was. There is also an enormous "jealousy" (for lack of a better term) on the part of the majority or ruling group (since it's not always a majority) towards the downtrodden group, since the subject group exercises often all the memes of the ruling group, while at the same time having an entire separate set of their own memes to which the ruling group have no access. However, the ruling group imagines, or gets glimpses, and envies the ruled group's supposedly more free and interesting sexuality, different and perhaps tastier food, intimacy and helping between individuals, and so forth.
__________________________________________
(1) Not trying to be sexist here. Groups of women (in the USA) refer to one another as "you guys". Supposedly that's how you spot a Yankee, i.e., referring to a group made up only of women as "you guys."
(2) An organization where the jerks get ahead, as opposed to a "Nice Guy Shop," whatever that might look like (it might only be theoretical), where nice guys
(3) This is a very difficult problem to avoid in American and British Commonwealth, and indeed probably all cultures that derive from Europe, but also other places, i.e., everything is polarized by racism and classism, and also sexism. Which memes are eligible for deployment, and when, are often predicated by race. This is probably the topic for another essay, but the police in the USA are an example, since it used to be their job to pursue runaway enslaved Africans. We haven't really made a serious effort to "replace" that set of memes in our police. They have been programed since hundreds of years to go to check which "race" a person is, and then act differently according to what that was. There is also an enormous "jealousy" (for lack of a better term) on the part of the majority or ruling group (since it's not always a majority) towards the downtrodden group, since the subject group exercises often all the memes of the ruling group, while at the same time having an entire separate set of their own memes to which the ruling group have no access. However, the ruling group imagines, or gets glimpses, and envies the ruled group's supposedly more free and interesting sexuality, different and perhaps tastier food, intimacy and helping between individuals, and so forth.
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