electricalgwen

...neither can the floods drown it.

One time, my supervisor at work took a small group of us out at lunchtime. Only we didn't have lunch. He gave us a choice: "We can have a feast for the body - or a feast for the mind." (Imagine it in an Inigo Montoya accent.) So we went to the nearest bookstore instead and he bought us each a book.

I got The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L'Engle. It's a very moving, simple, beautiful description of an approaching death and how the family dealt with it. L'Engle herself died this past week, age 88.

Her "children's" books tackled difficult subjects like death, religion, sexuality, hatred, and love, in a straightforward way and without being preachy, although her faith is evident throughout. When I was 15 or so, I kept giving "A Ring of Endless Light" to friends for birthdays etc., and I've continued to give away various of her books, including the wonderful poetry collection "A Cry Like a Bell". (The poem from the point of view of the mother of baby Judas is amazing.) Of her adult novels, I particularly recommend "A Live Coal in the Sea."

Lloyd Alexander is dead, too. Where's my childhood gone? *sigh*

Suggested reading: The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore

An excellent, fascinating and thought-provoking book that starts with the most basic point, defining a meme: pointing out that it is a replicator, just as a gene is. It then works on from there, exploring all the logical, inevitable consequences of that, doing a good job of melding biology, genetics, sociology, neuropsychology and philosophy. There are some pretty radical implications for neurobiology, consciousness, AI and religion (among others).


Her conclusion on the self:

( Terrifying as this thought seems, I suggest it is true. )

And on the theme of creativity:

( I am not saying that there is no creativity. )

She also covers the differences between memetic and genetic evolution (for instance, memetic transmission can be Lamarckian as opposed to Darwinian), and suggests answers to two major puzzles of evolution, the size of the human brain, and the origin of language, based on memetics. Everything is well-referenced, and it's a relatively easy book to read, though worth stepping away from and musing on every so often to let the ideas percolate. (Note, though, that it's not one to dip in and out of randomly - read in order, it's carefully constructed.)

Ironically, its success is largely going to be determined by how popular the meme of memetic theory is, not whether or not it's true... Which in a way proves its point. QED. And given how frequently the principles of natural selection are misunderstood as applied to biology, I suspect they will be even less accepted as applied to cultural and informational evolution. Sigh.

If you like this sort of thing, I also recommend Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, which is just wow, and How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker, which is pretty cool although I don't always agree with him.

¹The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 8-9.
²Ibid, p 236.
³Ibid, p 240.