Coda definition is here.
The title of this post is the same title that Randall Wray used to wrap up his many postings at New Economics Perspectives about a meme for money.
His postings are excellent, I have learned much from them. Much about money and much about thinking. Much about putting the two things together with good thinking. With good thoughts expressed as memes. The meme is like glue connecting simple perceptions of a concept that are "liked" because we have a preference to like them. Perceptions that jive with our frame of mind.
Conceptual things find a natural receptor in us just like the things that float around in our bodies until they find something with a natural receptor to take it in. All kinds of different keys that float around our bodies until it finds the lock they fit. Conceptual things from out minds float around and find an inviting home to enter where the key fits in the same way. Things we like we send to friends we like (or don't like if they would not like it). That is a hug to friends and hit to frenemies. Liked conceptual things called meme ideas spread to liked people, or at least to people who are willing hosts. Some of those willing hosts that give entrance to the to the floating thing cause its death (apoptosis) most often for a greater beneficial systemic purpose to enable a new or healing thing by its absence.
Conceptual things called memes spread by encapsulation in a packet frame consisting of control information wrapper with the address of the receiver and a user (receiver) payload.
What you say??
I have just presented two analogies that serve to open the door to the understanding of meme. One was biological and the other from the internet where the mechanics of a machine (hardware) work with the logic of our minds (software). Artificial intelligence is machines not just applying the logic product expression of our minds expressions to do something but formulating the logic in a machine mind like we do in our mind.
The body of a single example person and how it works is a good analogy to use in the explanation of mind and meme. I could develop that frame to explain meme in terms of a total body and how all of its unique micro parts exist and work together. Once developed I could make the same explanation in the frame of computers and society. It would be a simple one to one substitution of words. Words that may be different but have the same contextual systemic relationship meaning. Society is structured and works analogous to how a person works at the biological level because our minds work with conceptual things in the same way.
I choose to use the analogy of computer hardware and software. I understand that better and is one step closer than biology analogy to the ultimate narrow focus problem domain of money, the problems there and their solutions. The step to get there is in the problem domain of society. Money is first and foremost a (even if we know or understand absolutely nothing about it) purely conceptual social thing that expresses itself in our real social structure.
Randy Wray is a subject matter expert. His broad subject matter domain is Economics. His applied specialized domain is Modern Money Theory MMT. While that link is his specific explanation of the concept a broader and maybe less accurate description if given by the Wikipedia description in terms of Chatlism.
Randy's domain expert concepts are at the Leading, Bleeding Edge.
The R and D of discovering what money is money and finding that it really exists or is better expressed and understood in a different frame than what we commonly believe to be the best given frame of understanding money (which we do not because it is a mysterious unknown thing that we only make guesses about and our current frame is our best frame just like black magic or flat earth was once a frame of understanding)
Sidebar here: Some not only bled for daring to push the frame but also got burned for it others have a day named after them that we celebrate. Some got burned first and them got a name celebrating what they got burned for. Social stuff is fascinating!
Back to Randy and his search for a meme. He took the elegant approach to his focused problem domain by going to a broader domain that is necessary to promulgate a better idea. A better idea that is Economic Progressivism , an idea that is Progress in the Political Domain. An idea that is Progress in the Social Domain. The domain of structural morality or at least efficiency. The possibilities in their meaning and relationship is something else to explore. Some efficient structures were moral in their own frame but obscene in a larger frame.
How to change a conceptual framework? An age old problem. Methods are old as well. New understanding of the underlaying concepts of old methods is perhaps the way to more effectively accomplish change. If change is happening faster then perhaps the rate of speed is entirely due not to a faster car but better way to apply basic energy. Progress!
Am I getting somewhere here????
The other eternal quest for progress!!
If there are any readers of these posts you may have discovered that I publish any new post as it develops and some time later after I add to it I update it. It is generally a work in progress with many updates as it progresses until I move on to the next post.
There is more to come on this one until it grows to such a length that it requires re-focusing. Randy wrapped up his focusing on solutions with a Coda on exploration and application of meme. I will make a Coda of my explorations too.
This is Lakoff:
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