{"id":4771,"date":"2018-11-16T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4771"},"modified":"2018-11-15T05:33:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T13:33:45","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapters-29-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/11\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-ii-chapters-29-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld II&#8217;: Chapters 29 &#038; 30"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters of <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, the wizards get William Shakespeare on the right track, and we learn about MEMES! Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>You know, purely because I think this conversation will be a lot of fun, but I have a question: Would this count as fanfiction? Would it count as <i>real-person<\/i> fanfiction? Is the fact that it is published explicitly for profit the one reason that disqualifies it as fanfic, despite that it qualifies in every other aspect? Seriously, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the writers taking their love of an existing person\u00e2\u20ac\u201dWilliam Shakespeare, in this case\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand crafting a new story out of the facts of his life. Is this further muddled by the fact that the authors are all integrating his story within <i>another<\/i> fictional world?<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting topic to me because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, the obvious reason being that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been involved in fan studies, fanwork, and the like for a long, long time. (Seriously, next year will be the TEN year anniversary of Mark Does Stuff, which is an absurd thought, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my life??? TEN YEARS OF THIS, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL.) I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a stretch to call all three authors \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fans\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Shakespeare, but does that constitute this piece as a fanwork? My gut says it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s far more complicated than that, but still: a fun thing to think about, no?<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I am really pleased at the way these two chapters basically address how stories are often (perhaps <i>always<\/i>) in conversation with one another. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happens in the Discworld chapter, first of all, since the wizards unknowingly influence many of the things that appear in Shakespeare\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work. (And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m of the mind that Shakespeare would have found the Hedgehog Song to be a riotous adventure.) But in the Roundworld chapter, the notion of storytelling is taken a step further than that. Throughout <i>The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned about the purpose of stories in human evolution and how this separates us from other creatures who do not tell stories like we do. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s summarized here, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an addition to it: the concept of a meme. I will remain delighted that this is one of the few things that I knew about before reading this book; not long after I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d become an atheist, I was recommended Dawkins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, and I devoured it. (It worked for me then, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve since found Dawkins to be\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Lot, and he is Very White. That seems to be the case with most of the big names in the atheist movement, unfortunately, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really interact with the community at-large anymore.) So, I knew about the genetic context for memes long ago, and the social application of memes has generally made a ton of sense to me <i>because<\/i> I knew about Dawkins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Obviously, memes have massively changed in a lot of ways\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthey most likely permeate all our lives here on the Internet\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of comforting to know that they existed long, long before the <i>idea<\/i> of the Internet even existed. You can see them etched onto ruins and buildings in Greece and in Rome and all over the world. The Egyptians had memes, plenty of religions had them or <i>were<\/i> them (or were at least memetic in nature), and I kind of love the idea that the world has changed a lot, but also not changed at <i>all<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I do think that in a general sense, religion is a meme, but so are many other things, so I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find that statement to be particularly wrong or offensive. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious, though, and I kind of want to read <i>Is God a VIrus?<\/i> because I want to know more about the memetic nature of organized religion. How would you quantify a religion that is evangelical in nature? What about one where proselytizing is encouraged or mandated? How does that affect the notion of religion being a meme? Because that makes me think certain religions are <i>intentional<\/i> memes, rather than just simply appearing to be them. Of course, I have a very personal stake in that kind of idea; my mother definitely used storytelling to pass on moral lessons to me. Her belief system was definitely a coadapted meme complex in that sense, since these various memes were tied together in a collective body of belief. One that was deeply contradictory, I should note, so I have anecdotal and personal evidence that aligns with what Blackmore and the authors speak of at the end of the chapter. More often than not, it was vital that my parents spread the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of their religion to me rather than help me, and they <i>did<\/i> choose that over being good to me. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s within a specific context, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe it applies to <i>every<\/i> scenario within an organized religion.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Still, I did not expect to talk about the science of memes while reading this book. I LOVED IT.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/1e_Ydk_0X-M<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters of The Science of Discworld II, the wizards get William Shakespeare on the right track, and we learn about MEMES! Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,552],"class_list":["post-4771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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