chaffinch

From Dawkins chapter on Memes:

"Cultural transmission is not unique to man. The best non-human example that I know has recently been described by P. F. Jenkins in the song of a bird called the saddleback which lives on islands off New Zealand. On the island where he worked there was a total repertoire of about nine distinct songs. Any given male sang only one or a few of these songs. The males could be classified into dialect groups...By comparing the songs of fathers and sons, Jenkins showed that song patterns were not inherited genetically. Each young male was likely to adopt songs from his territorial neighbours by imitation, in an analogous way to human language."

From "You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination" edited by Katharine Harmon

What I want from this class and thoughts on memes

As I said in class, my work is very low-tech. Although not exclusively, I do use quite a bit of natural materials. However, I've recently been wanting to expand. I'm interested in learning any technical skills you can teach me in addition to having a dialogue about my work through crits.

I'm interested in memes as well. I'm interested in how they can act on a population in the same way genes can, even though they aren't physical, tangible things. It certainly relates to my own interests, which are based around the interraction between people and the natural world. But how would this make its way into my work? I'm not sure yet. But I would like it to be time-based (evolution takes place over time).

One example I've been thinking about since class: Evangelical Christianity is a set of memes (memeplex?) which is very good at making copies of itself. It has two different vehicles for making copies: having big, Christian families and doing missionary work to convert others. And look how they're taking over. On the other hand, I heard about another Christian religion in which sex was forbidden. You can guess how long they lasted.