Meme: Still fucking stupid

Remember Ceiling Cat is Watching you meme? Well, I have a Part 2.

Meme: a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.


Ideas are not finite, discreet, entities which can be packaged, and transferred from one incorporeal mind to another incorporeal mind.
Brain states, if we are uncomfortable with "idea" are, again, not discreet entities which can be packaged and transferred from one brain to another brain.

An idea is not an entity.
A brain state is not an entity.

If we want to talk about ideas / brain states as finite nuggets which are transferred from one mind to another via language, speech, gestures, rituals then we need to read Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein explained how language is not the transfer of one idea from one mind to another mind. Language is a game. Or read Roy Wood Sellars and his explanation of language.

When I say "the apple is red" I do not take my idea "apple is red" and somehow shove it into your little fucking brain / incorporeal mind with my magical virus words.

No one actually thinks than an idea or brain state is a little virus in my mind / brain which somehow poofs off into your mind / brain unless you’ve had the particular vaccine which applies to that particular idea / brain state. But the only way to maintain that "meme" is sensible is to tell that exact story: Some little finite and discreet idea "goes" from my "mind/brain" to your "mind/brain" via "language".

"meme" is a half-assed attempt to get Darwinian Evolutionary Theory to apply to Culture Studies. And it is fucking stupid.