Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

tangerines's picture

As we were discussing “the

As we were discussing “the end” and death this week, I found myself thinking back to our earlier conversations about memes. What I took away from Paul's lecture on Tuesday was that because we live on in other people’s minds and memories, we can never really die. We remain “in conversation” with those who have died, which in a way makes it hard to explain what constitutes “life”. This strikes me as being similar to memes – they exist and survive in our minds, and it’s very hard to define what constitutes a meme. Are we merely memes? I think that just as we can transmit and create memes, we can become memes by sharing ourselves with others, whether it is by leaving behind a book for others to read or by having a conversation with someone that will be remembered after we’re gone.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
13 + 4 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.