meme - SAMING - semblant
a new concept


I shall try on this page to gather and synthetise the information and my understanding regarding the new concept of meme.
While _meme_ has been notably coined in the Genetic field (R.Dawkins), I assume it has been also established in the Psychoanalytical field (A.Verdiglione after premisses by J.Lacan) under the name _semblant_ - in English 'seeming'. Since the natural resistance in a conceptualization process will use meme to forget the psychoanalytical field, and semblant to forget the Genetical one, I shall SOMETIMES use in this page the word _saming_ which will do an appropriate interface to stress the two other dimensions.

preamble - the Pace of Psychoanalysis

You wrote:
>Is it possible that ... postings are using synonyms for
>memory (e.g. citations, references to published articles,
>and well known metaphors) that are in fact memory??
>If a rose by any other name is still a rose, perhaps *memory*
>by any of several other names is still memory.
when I was noticing the quasi absolute lack of the use of the word _memory_ amongst almost a hundred messages (some of them quite long) devoted to <understanding resistance to change.>

(the observation about 'meme' has been secondary and more complex and refers to the notion that some participants had not yet "quite bought into the _meme_ thing")

You ask for an explanation of my way of thinking, and I shall gladly try to answer.

I am walking the Psychoanalytical pace, which follows some psychological principles. This is rather unique in science, where the psychology of the scientist is usually not accounted. However, it may be useful at some point, and I have applied it at the list which exhibits the science of complexity. At this pace, for instance, one attribute a weight on Good Will.

It is simple, nearly naive - but very unpleasant; in their attempt to eradicate the pathos, Psychoanalysts will seek for it in Good Will. For instance a Psychoanalysts would see a list of topics and when he would notice a title called <understanding resistance to change,> he would assume that it will be the best place to find the resistance to change.

For some setting in human psychology, this is a mixture of obviousness & absurdity - yet seeking for evil in the Good affirmation is not only uncomfortable because it is heretic - what is really unpleasant is that it works! every times.

This is a first principle, a kind of 'credo' in the method.

A next step, at this pace, will be the way to explore the located Good Will - and there again one may use a silly technique, as some would think. Psychoanalysts will listen for what is missing in the very literality of the discourse. For this I will built an example - following the _rose_ that you mention. Let's suppose a patient saying that s/he has something to understand.

Listening to this person informs that s/he expresses his/er [enough with this gender thing - I flip a coin: s/he is a she] Good Will in a support of the Green Cross International (Yoko Ono, Gorbatchev & Co). Then all along her discourse every time she mentions the topic, she talks about her father - but never, at that moment, about his mistress (that she mentions otherwise abundantly under her name: Rose).

The question is: what is hidden in the Green Cross?

The answer is very simple now.

This is how I have proceeded with the list. I assumed that the resistance was to find in the list itself (in its discourse). As the list was about 'change' and 'resistance' which are both known to be essentially matter of memory (abundantly mentioned otherwise) I made a check search to be sure - and the word indeed was 'censored' from the list ('censored' is the term Psychoanalysts use in this case). The rest of the operation brought me to the Meme as easily as the Green Cross reveals being a displacement of Rosicrucianism. So there again, you see how it is absurd!

So a good Psychoanalyst, I guess, would not insist on the sect issue (the memory), but he would allude to gardening (the meme work), just to see what is practical (ecology) in Good Will .

This may answer in a way, to your second question:

>I have missed the significance of what or

>why you think this is a crucial omission.

It may be a very personal opinion that I have developed after certain researches. I believe that a certain number of dominant beings, in history, have developed a drive which extended they 'selfish' care to the environmental sphere. I identify this genetical representation as Ecology. I believe that a Tradition resulted, which has developed up to the current science, technology, industry. The change that we are facing will ever be, only (if not failure and destruction) if we recover the memory of this foundation (this is also a Psychoanalyst's prejudice).

As it is proceeding through Genetics, I emphasize the concept of meme, that I often see misunderstood, IMO. Yet this cannot depart from the usual uncannity of the Psychoanalytical path; and I would like to answer more precisely about this pace that an honest intellectual recently called quite bewildering.

xxxx xxxKPcontrol{ALTtodo}

xxxthus first recall a weird obervation which will present the weird frame where the growth of Psychoanalysis takes place:

The place of Psychoanalysis

splits between Science of Magic and Science of the non-magical

The Second Renaissance {ce lien vient de Osman}

xxxxxxIoanaCOMPLETEand link reciprocally

I did not hesitate to call it the foundation concept of digitization (quantum) [/sub02/planet.htm]

Center of Mass

Psychoanalysis has a lot to say about 'meme' which is a fundamental concept that it has lately elaborate. Interesting enough, this elaboration took place independently and in parallel with the genetic conceptualization of the same. It only after Psychoanalysis named it ('seeming' - one could say 'saming') - that its definition could be compared with the concept of 'meme' that Genetics had also elaborate. Eventually, 'meme' and 'saming' appear to mean the same thing.

It is not very surprising. On the one hand, one sees the 'meme' originated in Genetics expanding in Artificial Intelligence, cybernetics, sociology, linguistics - while on the other hand, Psychoanalysis which is a 'practical linguistics' is seen expanding towards environmentalism, cybernetics, ecology and Genetics. So they would finally connect on the base of a concept.

The relation between Psychoanalysis and Genetics has been shown by L.Torasi, following J.Lacan. Torasi showed how the same rules which apply to the Lacanian Significand, apply also to the 'genes'. I have myself devoted a large part of my work to the Logic of Code which rules the mass psychology as well as the species ecosystems.

Up to that point, except for my English, this is not difficult to admit or consider ; but now, to consider the 'saming/meme' itself, may become more difficult. Fortunately there is a very good resource to help our understanding.

There is a important similarity between the shift of the world view in the Renaissance and in the 20th Century. The Renaissance set a model of the Cosmos space, while the 20th Century a model of the Psyche space (Unconscious) - they are strikingly similar, perhaps identical. In 1998 the laws of Quantum physics are still puzzling even the physicists, but it is clear that the general opinion understand that some 'psychological type formula' will describe a completed phase of our Cosmology.

Anyone who would spend time to study the cluster of the first astronomers and their intellectual elaboration process, is able to recognize the same cluster made by the first psychoanalysts. I have written this comparison in a rare book that I have had the pleasure to find recently in the New York Public Library catalogue. Yet, the thesis that even the participants in the elaboration of the world view would show repetitive form/behavior, is something far advanced - so it may suffice to consider psychic and cosmic representations as two sides of a same Moebius ring/tape. This may be very useful for getting an understanding of what are 'meme' and/or 'saming'.

From the Renaissance, nothing can be really used without Galileo's major contribution - that is the Center of Mass/Gravity, to define any cosmic object and its dynamics.

In the 20th Century a psychoanalysts has contributed to the science of Psyche with the concept of Seeming (aka Saming) which is remarkably close to the idea of Center of Gravity. The Seeming is a 'point' related and attached to the psychic object, exactly as a 'center of mass'.

(the only difference between the Renaissance and 20th Century models would be in the fact that Galileo's Center of Gravity looks like being 'inside' the object. In the 20th Century model, the Psychoanalytical view has shown the Narcissism is a fundamental law which causes a split and 'duplicate' the object - so that the Seeming may be 'seen' as a point/grain of a mirror in-between the object and its representation/reflexion)

---------------------

I hope that this short piece will be enough to trigger the attention on the use/misuse of the concept of _meme_. If one can see the _meme_ as a Center of Mass, a Grain of Mirror, one will be protected against the constant tendency to make it an object-like.

For instance, a _meme_ is not a Gene but it can define a Gene (as a center of gravity is not a stone, but it can define a stone).

There is currently an foreseeable degradation of the concept of _meme_ as it was not easy at The Renaissance, to understand what was the subtlety in the _center of gravity_, as for instance the -zero- took centuries to be approximately understood.

A Resistance may currently denature the concept of _meme_ , but, as a century after Galileo, the use of the _center of gravity_ would allow the Newtonian and further development of Time Space, the notion of _Meme/Saming_ will resist and eventually open to understanding of an Ecological space, that is memory and evolution.

Center(s) of Mass Psychology

Postface - the Space of Psychoanalysis




© CYBEK of New York, 1999.