Actually a meme is just the smallest unit of information that can be transferred through imitation according to Susan Blackmore's definition. So it can be how to build a fire, bake bread, pray with the rosary, part your hair, do the macarena, or physically indicate that you agree or disagree. Some memes are logical progressive ideas. Some are completely useless. Yes the corporation's marketing teams know how to bend memes to sell their products but they are no less at the mercy of those ideas than anyone else. Noone can _really_ control them bcse no one knows what will truly be successful. There are definitely common elements among the most successful memes, but that is still never a guarantee. Many times the cleverness of an advert supercedes the actual product for me and I forget completely what it was for.
Try to think of the advertisers being used just as much as they think they are using ideas, trends, fads and popular social behavioral indicators in their work. No-one lives in a meme free bubble.

But where does archtypal symbolism come from? Could it also be a crutch of sorts?
To be honest, my personal philosphy about reality is a combo of memetics, Rupert Sheldrake type simultaneity, quantum physics, a bit of eastern mysticism, western paganism, all wrapped up in a ball of sarcastic cynicism.
So while I may not deep down disagree with you about Jung and archetypes, even though I do _feel_ from personal experience that there are threads that run through everything (in some sort of decentralized chaotic pattern) there is the whole chicken/egg thing that needs to be examined.
How can "archetypal symbolism" exist without the minds to hold them, and spread them, and commune with others about them? Memes have been around ever since we started learning from each other. That doesn't mean that those archetypes aren't important to us as a culture--maybe even as a species because they may be integral memetic foundations that continue to help us relate, whether we are cognizant of it or not.
But they are still just a presentation of reality that humans have transferred and built upon forever.
What I'm trying to say is, and this is what keeps me humble, is that because we are crucibles, channels and repositories for memetic propagation and transfer everything that we _believe_ in is based on our memetic foundation. The exception is our personal experience. What happens to us, our private interface with reality our basic sensory interaction and process.
I find this very cleansing.
And yet that whole discourse in itself is just another human made idea.
It's lovely how it folds in on itself like that. It just gives me the opportunity to take things apart, re-examine them and toss stuff out once in a while. Even that meme itself!
So yes the crutch of religion, though I think of it more as constructs. We need to make sense of the world. And I think religions as societal constructs provide the social and cultural information within them that teaches the young the morés and values of that particular culture. That's why it's so difficult to change one little thing. If you have been taught that homosexuality is a sin and that is embedded in the whole infrastructure memeplex of how you view and trust reality, then it's going to be very hard to pull that meme out without the rest of it losing stability...
Like the mitochondria in cells, individual memes may group together or find safety in something larger....


This meme rant has been brought to you by obsidity with the generous support of Susan Blackmore....(seriously, I haven't read the book in a while but I wouldn't be surprised if I was directly quoting it.)

I'm going to start another thread I think, probably will end the same way but I feel like I'm going to go way off topic in a moment...
thanks, I like that moebius thing too. I better print this whole thread out before I forget what we all said....
But yeah. I do think that without the questing, rebellious mind we wouldn't have gotten this far in our self reflection.
The fact that we do have this great hypothesis to catalyze a rethinking of ourselves and our current state of being as a species is actually really positive to me. Because memes are ultimately fallible, mutating and disintigrating as fast as they are produced and spread, we can (maybe) step back and reevaluate what we are diehard believers in...
Which is funny because if everyone became aware of just how much they are driven by these things, it would be a hard day to be a meme. The 'meme' meme or metameme wins!
The mind/body dichotomy construct is definitely a weird one for me. I think it still stems from the "soul" idea, that there is something separate. I have thought about it a lot, like when people are making decisions that are bad for their body but they want it. Obviously some part of their body wants it. Even if it is a neurological process, that's still the body....I don't know.
That embodied cognition stuff sounds fascinating. Anything you can recommend as an intro to it?