List, my description is not incompatible with the 4-stage model presented.
In fact if it is assumed that memes function as symbols, their very nature
is to encode (and decode)...this would assume that these two steps are not
stages but an everpresent process--leaving the two stages I proposed.
Further, both the god meme (in its various configurations) and the religion
meme (either the pro or con) are a part of a larger meme complex whose more
obvious nature is protagonism and antagonism as regards an ideal.
Since "art" proposes such an ideal (as an icon and epic saga) and as
imagination takes this ideal and divides it into protagonist and antagonist,
the historical epoch which exemplified this developmental stage of the meme
complex (and its resolution) might well be the greco-roman conflict.
The development of the individual (which I assume follows the development of
civilization) might similarly show that imagination is superior to
art-as-technology (an ideal recording of historical fact, de facto). The
meme complex which signifies art and the one which represents imagination
thereby competes for the ideal for inclusion into either of two possible
memetic configurations.
It is because of this ambiguity that the "free radical", *ideal*, might be
encoded or decoded by either art or imagination, alternately. But to say
that "My God" (as a free radical) might be a complex in-and-of itself--that
is, that "the anti-religion meme and the Oh-my-God meme may replicate one
without the other" is to miss the *developmental* necessity.
I assume that an ontological (or "logical") progression which involves "My
God" as the cause of *idea*--in the realm of imagination--or the effect of
history in the realm of art--limits it's ability to encode BOTH art and
imagination into a meme of its own...though it might form the central,
symbolic, axis of an incomplete complex drawing it (in a viral sense) to be
hosted by either <art> or <imagination>.
Brett
Brett Lane Robertson
http://www.window.to/mindrec
MindRec ICQ "chat" UIN 6630756
I would rather suffer defeat than have cause to be ashamed
of victory.
Quintus Curtius