Ideas that keep popping up

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Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Ideas that keep popping up

Post by Skip »

If a meme is a thought-packet or idea that originates in an individual and is passed into the cultural meme-pool, there to be replicated, spread and perpetuated.... Is it? That's my current understanding of what a meme is supposed to be.

Then what would you call an idea or thought-packet that keeps arising spontaneously in many individuals, in many different cultures and times? Like, how every teenager, some little while after they learn about macrocosm and microcosm think "Hey! What if our whole solar system is just an atom in the thumbnail of a giant?" Would that be a teme? (I left the h out for conformity to the pattern.)

At some time, at various distances in the human past, in disparate places and under different circumstances, a whole lot of people came up, independently, and they believed, originally, with the idea: "Hey! What if the world and us and everything was made by somebody just like us, only waaaay bigger?"
It's a teme. People just carry it without any reason or purpose, and then build elaborate creation stories on it.
marjoram_blues
Posts: 1629
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2015 12:50 pm

Re: Ideas that keep popping up

Post by marjoram_blues »

Meme > memetic

Why not lose the tea and let's have an 'eme' ? > emetic.
Humans spewing forth...
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