Managing Memes for Peace and Progress —
In attempts to manage problems of violence and constructive and destructive behaviour, the importance of the underlying ‘memes’ diffused and circulating in the ‘ideosphere’ is usually largely neglected. The peace that is aimed at by MemePeace is not a static condition but a dynamic and sometimes competitive enterprise by individuals and groups inspired by various backgrounds. Since peace is based on progress and progress requires peace, robust peace and sustainable progress will have to go hand in hand. As for the meme, the term was proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976): it should rhyme with ‘cream’ and is meant to be, conceptually, the counterpart in cultural life of the ‘gene’ in biology. Long before problems of extreme violence and destructive behaviour arise, society should try to understand and manage the numerous memes circulating in its ‘ideosphere’ and try to achieve a stable equilibrium of positive and constructive memes favouring peace and progress. Among the memes — formulas or projects — at present proposed here, some are primarily concerned with the positive creation of peace, others with projects for sustainable progress that create opportunities for individuals and for small and medium enterprises and investors.
In the last two to three years the world has become sharply aware of the detrimental potentiality of aggressive and destructive memes – more precisely, of memes encouraging aggressive and even self-destructive behaviour propagated through various networks inlcluding social media. Till now the potential of formulating and disseminating positive memes to counterbalance and surpass the destructive ones has not been explored.
The immediate aim of memepeace.org and of the website “Managing Memes for Peace and Progress” is to do precisely this:
to formulate well-founded, positive memes and to make them available for consultation, inspiration and dissemination.
In order to generate a positive, long-term impact, memes for creating peace and progress should be well-founded, and should be carefully translated into different languages. Well-foundedness of the meme can be achieved not only through research into modern conditions of meme-diffusion in the planetary ‘ideosphere’, but also on the basis of the study and analysis of major earlier periods of the planet’s ‘ideospheres’, and of the nature and impact, constructive or destructive, of the memes that have circulated in these ‘ideospheres’ in past decades, centuries, millennia (which, before means of communication such as telephone and internet were available, were very much separated on geographic and linguistic lines). Sources for studying these ancient and historical conditions are antique documents, ancient scriptures, pre-modern western and non-western knowledge systems, etc. Carefully translating any proposed positive, constructive meme into relevant languages is important, as in many conflicts lack of familiarity with linguistic diversity is not just a complicating factor but part of the causal nexus. This lack of awareness of linguistic diversity is all the more problematic if it is paired to a conviction that the one or two languages one knows have direct and exclusive access to universally valid principles. More conducive to developing workable solutions to conflicts would be to conceive of the universal as a horizon, as currently argued by the Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bache Diagne, taking linguistic plurality as a point of departure. A philosopher, according to Diagne, should first of all be translator and rethink his universals each time anew in each language, or at least in a few different languages: “le philosophe doit se faire traducteur afin de penser l’universel à nouveau frais” (Souleymane Bache Diagne in Philosophie Magazine, no. 100, juin 2016, p. 57). In principle, all languages should have “equal rights” in philosophical reflection: there is no language that has any privileged access to universals.
MemePeace plans to engage in focused research both of current problem areas and of the world’s major religious and intellectual traditions. Conditions of creativity and progress in intellectual world history and conditions of stagnation and loss of cultural capital and ideodiversity require careful investigation. In addition, the potential of memetic or meme-based management is to be explored. Research in these domains is at the basis of proposals for memes, as multilingual formulas or in other forms, for peace and progress.
To contribute to these aims MemePeace plans to organize, on its own or together with suitable partners, conferences, lectures, art events and concerts — for the latter following the lead of several traditions in the world that music can establish profound peace (śānti preraṇa) in an expressive medium that goes beyond linguistic boundaries.
This website is set up by the not-for-profit organization MemePeace (Stichting MemePeace), founded in The Hague on 16.9.16.
(28 August 2017: in lieu of a homepage while improving and developing the site)
If you like this website even in this preliminary stage we invite you to make a small financial contribution to keep it independent, free from advertisements and focused on its aims.
Bank account IBAN NL96 INGB 0007 5645 83 of Stichting MemePeace, Netherlands.