elanya | thinking about memes, thinking about thinking...

Right's it's early in the morning, so my brain should be all fresh and alert right?

I've been thinking about memes. SOme of the ones I see go by... mostly the randomly generated quizes, are silly. Sometimes they are amusingly silly, in their own way, or when interpreted correctly. I like taking them for fake people and seeing how they turn out.

Some of them are neat, like the interview one, for instance, or the one where you tell people honestly what you think of them. Or the picture one, where people leave you pictures that make them think of you. In a way, it's egotistical, yes, but it is also an interesting way of seeing what people think of you, and of contrasting perceptions between your friends and between yourself and your friends. I really don't see what's wrong with that. And even if it is 'only' ego stroking, what's wrong with that? Isn't self validation part of the reason we need people? Is it more acceptable to troll for comliments subtly than to ask for them?

Some of memes are creative, like the one that

eljuno posted last night, where you leave a comment and he makes you an icon based on one of your lj interests. I think it's pretty nifty, but I won't be joining since I couldn't design an icon if my life depended it. Well I won't be offering you that opportunity, I did ask Juno for an icon. (And my apologies in regards to pronouns by the way, I'm not quite sure where things fall, so to speak...). Just because you're participating in something that other people have done first, does that mean that it isn't worthwhile?

Anyway, I do have more things to say on the subject, but I have to be off to class...

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I've been thiking about memes for a while. I often question why people do things, and wht they are looking for. I'm curious like that. I won't deny that there was maybe a catalystic event that made me think about it more, recently :p

Not being able to take criticism and 'requiring compliments to function', as you put it, are not mutually inclusive. However, accusing someone (naming names or otherwise) of engaging in "the absolute worst kind of purile fantasy-fulfillment", that is not constructive critcism :p It's rude, to put it midly. As a participant in the meme in question, I think I have reason to be offended by your rant.

It's true that you lack a certain social grace, and this has been noted in the past, bu yourself and others. You calim not to care, and that's fine. I believe you most of the time. however, I think that your inability to understand people is really going to hurt you in the long run, in any number of ways. You really seem unable to see past the dichotomy of rational/emotional, which is a shame, because this dichotomy if an over-simplistic model and not representative of how most people really think, act, and, generally, live. True objectivity may be a noble goal for a scientist, but it is not one that is possible to obtain, and I think that sometimes you think yourself closer to it than you really are.

Anyway, that was sort of a digression. I think my thoughts on compliment giving/receiving is being better illustrated in the ongoing dialogue with your wife, atm, so I am not going to repeat it here.

Before I start, I should point out that Shan told me I was "rude and offensive" in my comment, above. As usual, I didn't mean it to be, but she tells me the part about not naming names comes across with a "snide, insinuating slant". I assure you it was strictly unintentional: I did that in order to not inflame those third parties I would normally have used as examples (as I used myself for the converse case). The Catch 22 is that if I was to name names, then I'd be criticizing people who I believe can't accept criticism, so I shouldn't name names. But without those examples, I don't have much of a "realization" for my argument. Shan said that it wasn't so much that I didn't want to identify people, but that I shouldn't have said that there were actual people I chose not to identify, which confuses me indeed, since she said that it would have been perfecly all right for me to say something like: "We both know people that behave ...". I see that as the same thing, and didn't mean to offend (as always), if any offense was taken. Okay, having said that, let's move on. ;-)

Not being able to take criticism and 'requiring compliments to function', as you put it, are not mutually inclusive.

I didn't claim they were *necessarily* though I've observed that if a person holds one trait, they tend not to hold the other. In a sense, I do see a generalization to "either a person can take compliments or they can take criticism, but not both", but that's a subjective interpretation.

However, accusing someone (naming names or otherwise) of engaging in "the absolute worst kind of purile fantasy-fulfillment", that is not constructive critcism :p It's rude, to put it midly. As a participant in the meme in question, I think I have reason to be offended by your rant.

Okay, that's a fair point. I may have been overly rude in expressing my anger and frustration at what I perceive to be a gratuitious and self-serving (yes, those are negative terms), but rudeness requires a target: I had no individuals in mind when I wrote that. As claimed elsewhere, my frustration is with a trend, not the individuals that express that trend. I think there are deeper forces at play here, mostly dealing with differing world-views. To oversimplify, I think people are usually clumped towards one end of a "social/rational" continuum. Of course, I tend to value the rational end more, and use positive terms like "intellectual" to describe peers in that cluster (which doesn't preclude others from being intellectual, just that those in that cluster tend to be concerned more than the others with "traditional" intellectual pursuits), and negative terms for the other end of things (examples omitted for brevity and fear of recriminations =] ).

The biggest problem, as I see is, is that people can/do/will read my posts and comments in a very different light than that which I intended them to be interpreted, especially if they're on the other end of that continuum I mentioned. Not having enough interest in bridging to what I perceive as having less value (thier interests), I tend not to adjust my style accordingly. Thus I am percieved as rude, offensive, inconsiderate, and a whole passel of other negative terms by some kinds of people. Yes, I could spend the effort to be unambiguous in my writing/speech, but I have no interest in doing so, as they have no interest in checking with me to see if the meaning they've understood was what was intended. I'm willing to cooperate, but only if the effort is commensurable. In the specific case of me ranting from my own soapbox, however, the effort must be higher on the "outsider's" part, otherwise the situation just isn't fair.

Did that make any sense?

Sorry, I'm not convinced that you can possibly have meant it in the abstract, because in your post, you mentioned (though not by name) that part of your disgust was that 'mind-rot' had reached to your 'second-tier' friends; that is, it was not merely the existence of the meme in the abstract, but that there were specific people doing this meme, leading you to rant the way you did.

Well, as I said, no amount of argumentation on my side will convince you. Either you trust me, and accept that I'm telling the truth about my intentions (the "don't shoot the messenger" case), or you doubt me. So I'll let it drop here.

It's true that you lack a certain social grace, and this has been noted in the past, bu yourself and others. You calim not to care, and that's fine. I believe you most of the time.

Perhaps what's missing is a careful definition of what it means to "not care", when I use that phrase. It comes down to a distillation of the above: I lack interest in expending the effort to bridge to a mind that I believe isn't going to be interested in my ideas (or in supplying ideas that I would find interesting). I can expand if desired.

however, I think that your inability to understand people is really going to hurt you in the long run, in any number of ways. You really seem unable to see past the dichotomy of rational/emotional, which is a shame, because this dichotomy if an over-simplistic model and not representative of how most people really think, act, and, generally, live.

I understand your objection, though as mentioned above, I don't see this as a dichotomy, but as a continuum, where the extreme positions are mutually exclusive. I place myself very near the extreme, but admit that the huge majority are somewhere in between (though "clustered", IMO). I also understand that this isn't an adequate model of people's behaviour, though it does serve as a sort of "general classifier" for guiding my discussions with people I meet. Life is too short to obey all the social pleasantries, if doing so limits the amount of intellectual activity that can be shared.

True objectivity may be a noble goal for a scientist, but it is not one that is possible to obtain, and I think that sometimes you think yourself closer to it than you really are.

Hmm. I appreciate the observation, a "reality check" is a good thing now and then. ;-) I don't believe myself to be as nearly objective as you suggest, though. I know, probably far better than you do, just how far I am from being "truly objective". There's a reason I don't accept the self-label of scientist. Not yet, anyway. I aspire to be a scientist, though there's a long, long ways to go before that happens.

Anyway, that was sort of a digression. I think my thoughts on compliment giving/receiving is being better illustrated in the ongoing dialogue with your wife, atm, so I am not going to repeat it here.

Groovy.

BTW: "catalystic" (catalytic), "bu" (by), "calim" (claim), "however" (capitalization)

thinking about memes, thinking about thinking...

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