I was just guiding a religious studies major — related to anthropology — through some of the back alleys of 2020 presidential politics, North American style.
The Yang Gang (those backing the candidacy of Andrew Yang) are hip to the fact that internet wars are fought with memes. Tulsi knows this two, and they’ve paired up in some of the propaganda.
Per my basket-weaving here on Medium, I’ve bought in to STEM + PATH, where the + represents a bridging operation, over what we used to call the C.P. Snow chasm. I’ve also paid attention to the A’s insertion into STEM, making STEAM, however I’ve kept the A meaning Anthropology, with Art under that umbrella. Then PATH has the same A (standing for the same thing), meaning we might cross them Scrabble-wise, while keeping our memes coherent.
Memes relate to mnemonics (memory palace stuff), as well as to memetics (the study of memes). The term “meme” itself was coined by Dawkins to mirror “gene” as an element of the genetic code. The memetic code is epigenetic, and includes language and culture. Memes connect to icons, emoji, and the collective almost-conscious.
If we’re talking about connecting the dots to form webs or networks, then individual memes could be those dots.
What some literature does at this point, is take the graph theory inherent in any talk of “connecting dots” (by means of edges), and marry that to polyhedrons, wire-frame skeletal graphs that close around to make containers.
Lets get back to the Yang memes, which include gun toting and weed smoking as socially acceptable activities. There’s no pandering to prudishness, in that an Asian sense of eroticism infuses the Youtubes.
My religious studies friend has more exposure than I do to the memes circulating in Kathmandu. She sends me pictures of wall art and graffiti, at times explaining their significance. She understands the political parties there more than I do. However, she’s not a political science major, and her focus is on more esoteric matters having to do with Sanskrit, Raga, Charya Geeti (Tantric music) and Charya Nritya (Tantric Dance). There’s a lot of Theater in…
