From: Epidemic (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Thu Nov 13 2003 - 15:05:17 MST
[quote from: hkhenson@rogers.com on 2003-11-11 at 06:56:15]
That is not true. You can learn things that are never transmitted from a previous knowledge source. One example, you can set and learn the combination of a safe that you never tell anyone. Second example, you learn (from the environment by trial and error) as a baby that unsupported objects fall. The knowledge that unsupported objects fall is part of our common knowledge, but not a meme. It is not passed on the way we learn how to make coffee or the short cut to multiplying by nine. These are memes, elements of our culture.
Ideas about \"self\" such as \"immortal soul\" or \"thetans\" are learned and are memes. \"Identity\" itself however is not learned and *is* a function of mammalian brain hardware. Ask yourself if a dog or a cat has \"identity\"? Would it still have an identity in a world where it never met another animal of any kind? Of course it would!
Every invention that humans have made are either improvements of old inventions (evolution in action), formed by accident (mutation) or based on observations of natural phenomenon (memetic inheritance). The notion of an identity, that my experience is different from your experience, is learned from observations. I can control my fist, but not yours. You behave in a manner that I do not necessarily desire you to. Therefore, from observable nature, I learn (inherit a replicated meme) that I am separate from you, that I have an identity. Based on the inherited (replicated memeplex) language of my culture, I label my independant identity 'I.' Thus, the "I" meme represents my belief that I am separate from you.
Going back, and I should put another warning sticker here, to my comment about Buddhism before, certain metaphysical concepts that abound (esp. in Zen) state that we are not separate, that all things are interrelated and interdependant. If that supposition is true, the "I" meme would be a fallacy, further proving that it is simply an inherited belief and not an objective truth, as you seem to be implying.
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