Memes for Peace After Paris 13.11.15…

“Paris 13 November 2015” was neither the first terrorist attack

in Europe in recent decades; nor can it be expected to be the last. But it was the occasion to put France under an état d’urgence (state of emergency) – a condition which has since been renewed several times and is still continuing. It has inspired France to invest heavily in security, as it is obviously the task of a government to do whatever it can to prevent and counteract terrorist attacks against its people. In addition, it would be important not to forget already existing local traditions and practices which contribute to mutual understanding, and to peace and progress. From the point of the state, whether it has a secular commitment or is inspired by religious values, it would be regrettable if, absorbed in its task to guarantee peace to its people in the best way possible, it would forget to highlight, encourage and facilitate constructive traditions and practices that are already well established.

After-Paris-13.11.15 (pdf)

After all, concepts of a “just war” (bellum iustum) and of a “right to go to war” (ius ad bellum), later the concept of revolutionary violence to establish a new society that is supposed to be better, were developed long ago at times when wars were the affair of warriors: weapons of war such as swords, lances, spears, bows . . . would kill only a few people, or even a considerable but nevertheless limited number of people. Everything changes when weapons of war are available that can destroy, even several times, all humanity and perhaps all life on earth. Under the force of circumstances, any supposed “right to wage war” is at present replaced by an obligatio pacis, an obligation to maintain peace ^[1] for all major political powers such as states but also world religions, multinational companies and non-governmental organizations.

“Paris 13 November 2015” not only occasioned the state of emergency in one of the countries of the European community, it also was an occasion for researchers from all over the world at the Institut d’Etudes Avancées, Nantes, “promotion 2015-2016”, to formulate a brief contribution on “Paris 13.11.15” and the conflicts, the migrations and various attacks of the current juncture. One input was in the form of a proposal for a memetic management project, ^[2] the first of its kind, to contribute significantly but through entirely unconventional methods to peace in justice and sustainable progress. From the security measures taken in European countries against terror threats it is clear that there is some awareness of the importance of reducing agressive and destructive memes – more precisely, memes encouraging agressive and destructive behaviour spread through social media. Till now the potential of formulating and diffusing positive memes to counterbalance the destructive ones has not been explored.

The immediate aim of the website “Managing Memes for Peace and Progress” is precisely to do this.

At present, its focus is on translating and diffusing the selected summaries of articles in this booklet After Paris 13.11.15 – conflits, exodes, attentats: notes et analyses de chercheurs du monde entier (by a “collectif, sous la direction de Pierre Musso”), Paris: Editions Manucius, 2016, including the résumé of this proposal for a memetic management project which will be discussed more amply on the next page.

http://manucius.com/produit/afterparis/

As this publication represents the immediate reaction to the Paris events from scholars with very different backgrounds, it presents complementary and opposite but not mutually exclusive perspectives which are often different from those to which we are habituated.

Selected résumés and summaries or English versions:

Since the booklet has just been published and is available for a reasonable price (12 euros) and can otherwise become available, on request, in your city, university or neighbourhood libraries, this website will not give the full articles in French, but only résumés and if possible versions in different languages – languages which have, one way or another, a special pertinence to the conflicts and problems which are at present plaguing countries in a wide area around the Mediterranean Sea and in the world.

^[1] It was a remarkable step forward, in the first half of the twentieth century and especially after WWII, when states started to think in terms of the necessity to create and maintain world peace. However, even if one holds that under the modern conditions of the availability of weapons that can destroy the entire world 10 times over, states have no more a “right to wage war” (ius ad bellum), but only or at least primarily a duty to maintain peace, much of the violence-problem remains as it shifts to national and international ‘police’ functions of military forces, and of the right of communities to combat real or imagined injustices: see J.E.M. Houben & K.R. van Kooij, “Introduction”, p. 5-6. In : J.E.M. Houben et K.R. van Kooij (eds.), Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. ↩
^[2] A “memetic management project”: a project in which the management takes into account ‘memes’ and ‘memetic’ principles; and also a project that manages the circulation and diffusion of ‘memes’ in the ‘ideosphere’. The concept of the ‘meme’ in cultural evolution as parallel to the ‘gene’ in biological evolution has been proposed by Richard Dawkins, 1976, The selfish gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press; remarks on a memetic approach in Indian cultural history are found in note 17 in Jan E.M. Houben 2014. “A Tradição Sânscrita entre Memética Védica e Cultura Literária,” Linguagem & Ensino, v.17, n.2, p. 441-469. A “memetic paradigm” in project management as been proposed by Stephen Jonathan Whitty, “A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management,” International Journal of Project Management (2005) 23 (8): 575-583. In accordance with Whitty’s “memetic paradigm of project management” the “project management” of the proposed project for creating peace and progress should be as modest and minimalist as possible: all efforts should be primarily focused on formulating well-founded, positive and constructive ‘memes’ and on making these available in the languages that are most pertinent to a confict. ↩