You’ll find a natural ally in this battle with my friend Phaedral who detests the whole idea of the ‘meme’ for (I think) somewhat different ideas.

I think you’ve hit the part I am least comfortable with on the head– the aspect of the idea of the meme which grows out of a kind of technological determinism.

The meme is advertisement. It rightly should have nothing to do with the idea(s) that it might be carrying.

As advertising memes are Good which means that, because they are phenomenally good at getting the memed thing out there, that they can appear Bad because it’s harder and harder for the idea to fly under the radar. That’s the Good Bad.

The Bad Bad is that the meme gets mistaken for the ideas that it represents. It’s inevitable because to be passed from person to person to rapidly and successfully it has to be a simple object, no matter how complex the concept it refers to. So people express frustration with the meme and, sadly, end up discarding the idea too. Kind of like the Net Gen meme– people are frustrated, and rightly so, with the shallow thinking that gets tossed around as part of the term. The sad part is when, as a result, the thinking that the meme represents– in the Net Gen case the observable phenomenon of learner change, in the EDUPUNK case a complex ideology– gets tossed out like the proverbial bathwater baby. That kind of thinking drives me up the wall!

Meme transmission follows a kind of Bell curve, I am sure… surviving the peak with a term that is still useful intact is probably rare… who knows what will happen with EDUPUNK!

“Doing what we always do because thats what we know”, as lucychili puts it, is half of the motivation. The other is the desired control of thought, word and deed of the individual. It is the antithesis of the truly creative mind.

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” ~Ayn Rand

As Lucy noted, it is the open, participative practice that I see playing out worldwide that gives me hope.

I couldn’t agree with you more here, and it is what has kept me more engaged with a group of fascinating and thoughtful people that aren’t afraid to act on their convictions. I think imagining alternatives and taking action on an idea is the most political of acts one can do at this moment, and I am hopeful as well because I am surrounded by folks like you from all over the world who aren’t afraid to try. We may fail, but that rally doesn’t matter, it’s the not being afraid part that is so damn important.

Hope, open participative practice, social ecology, and skills for negotiating contention which do not aspire to binary patterns of system v maverick, win v lose, might is right, and thereby lose the capacity for pluralist outcomes.

This quote marries some really fascinating initiatives within a communal based society, that —and this seems so key to me—can finally move away from the logical dichotomies that ultimately frame, and by extension restrict, most of our thinking currently. And this post is an excellent example of that.

As I continue to digest your comment, I’ll return with more…