Conceptual Symbionts, Memes and Football

As you might have guessed by now - I hate the word 'memes' - it kicks up all sorts of images and associations with organicity that it shouldn't, so I came up with something better/less confusing/other. Ta-Da:

Conceptual symbionts.

My new and exciting bit of jargon. These little beasties are classified (a) by having no direct physical components, (b) by being a collection of ideas, or closer to the mark by being a sequence of ideas which both lead to and re-inforce eachother, and finally (c) once adopted, become indespensible on a global scale, at least for a period of time.

It must also be noticed that the initial idea in the sequence is one that is already implicit within whatever system it arises from.

I've searched around for a good illustration and come up with football. Not, alas, the American kind, because I don't know enough about it and lack the will to bother aquiring such knowledge, but the British kind. "Soccer". Blasphemy.

Back in the old days football was played very differently. Okay, so there was still the goalie, and 10 other guys dressed in shorts, and a ball, but the way the game was played. Basically, one guy would get the ball and, avoiding countless tackles by the opposing team, dribble it all the way to within shooting range. Then shoot. GOAL !!! Yay, everyone shout hip-hip-hooray.

Passing was very infrequent, done only under extreme duress, and usually backwards to another player who would attempt once again to get into the penalty box all on his lonesome. Basically, though all the players of any given team were nominally on the same side, they didn't really play together. "Team" was spelt with eleven "I"s.

I don't know who 'invented' the "passing game", I'm pretty dumb concerning football history - I blame growing up in a town where the home team was so pathetic no-one except the real anoraks ever supported them - but I think it was the continental teams when leagues started opening up internationally.

Basically three-men cells would run up the pitch and through strategic passing, circumvent any tackles coming their way, get within range and either blast one in directly, or again, lure the goalie into coming out early and pass around him.

They began to win every damn game, flattening the British teams completely. Outrage, this was our damn game..! How dare they, those foreign upstarts, who did they think they were..!



Of course, next season, many of the English teams were playing a passing game, at least the successful teams anyway. The one's that didn't, got relegated, and sank out of sight. After a while, the only teams left, were the ones which passed.

And this encapsulates the idea of a conceptual symbiont:

The first idea: "Pass the ball before you absolutely have to."
leads to: "Have someone ready to recieve it running nearby. Don't run up alone."
leads to: "Have that player run in a strict formation, so you will always already know roughly where to pass the ball, whenever pasing becomes necessary."
leads to, "Have two players in formation, in case one avenue of passing becomes obstructed."

Each idea leads from, supporting and extending, the former.

Then of course, the ideas begin to gloabally expand their effects, because they allow for specialisation. Whereas before each player had to be: A good runner, a good dribbler, a good tackler, a good striker - now with a three man group you could have one great striker, and two (or more) great dribblers to support him - laying the ball off to him after they had brought it to within range.

Midfielders to pick up loose balls, and double as striker-support, defenders to put down attacks - multiple, clearly defined roles, allowing for mutually supportive specialists.

All stemming from a simple initial idea of "pass the damn ball genius."

This is what I mean when I say "Conceptual Symbiont."

Anyway, since we've already got the football, we may as well run with it. Just imagine the football has a religious symbol on it.

Team size. In football, a team's limited to 11, plus a few subs. In life however, you can field as many players as you can get onto the pitch. There's more to it than that though - it's no good having more players if no-one knows which side they're playing for, or in which direction they should be kicking the ball.

The monkeysphere. I know I go on about this a lot, but it is absolutely foundational to any social theory. A.B.S.O. F.U.C.K.I.N.G. L.U.T.E.L.Y.

We're so blasé about meeting strangers these days. We see a dozen a day, and talk to/interact with a couple of them in the course of work/socializing whatever. We think nothing of it.

The only real predator of man left on the planet is man. So why aren't we scared of these everyday strangers..? I mean, imagine there was no law, no over-reaching systems of mutual co-operation - everything you owned, you made; everything you ate, you grew or raised; your water, you lugged up from the well yourself, from the river. The house you live in, the clothes you wear - all of them came from your hands. You do not need anything from another. And they, if they exist (you haven't seen them) shouldn't really need you for anything either. So why would they approach you..? Simple curiousity..? Imagine there's a mountain range between you and some guy you've only ever heard rumours about anyway, would simple curiousity be enough to get you to cross them..?

The only reasons for utterly self-sufficient groups, living in adequately-resourced areas isolate from each other, with no previous history of interaction, to visit one another, are bad ones.

Let me illustrate the situation:

Welcome to blob-land. I want you to imagine a bunch of blobs. They have two states: Sedentary and passive, mobile and aggresive. During their lifetimes, these blobs grow slowly, absorbing nutrients from the area where they lay until one of two things happens:

*Their size goes over a certain value, let's say around 250-300 units.
*They exhaust the nutrients of their locale.

In the first instance, the bloated mother blob splits, and calves off a new blob which promptly switches into mobile-aggressive mode and disappears over the horizon. This new blob doesn't stop until it finds somewhere with enough nutrients to support its growth, where it settles into sedentary mode. If there are no such places left unnoccupied it will attack and either displace another blob, or assimilate it utterly, unless driven off.

In the second case, the whole blob, whatever it's current size, switches into mobile aggressive mode and goes off on the hunt for somewhere new to live.

I think this, barring a little inter-group female raiding/exchange, adequately describes the general state of primitive mankind.

[Remember Game-theory 101..? Remember the initial winning strategy at low pop. density..? "Always default". ie, always attack, and always attack first. And remember, "Always default" is also responsible for keeping the pop. density low, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.]

Now, we forgot football. Incorporating the above, I want you to imagine that the players in each team are not individuals, but blobs - groups of people about 150-200 - in size. For example - this is a mid-fielder - Hobbes.

He's quite a big lad, isn't he..?

But how is this Hobbesian game played..? Despite the general 'team'ness, there is no team. A player gets the ball, and is tackled. But the player, and the tackler, are largely on their own. It's one-on-one. In fact, the whole global game, despite there being 22 players on the pitch, is only ever one-on-one. In any tackle event, the other 20 players might as well not exist. No-one on either side will help their player/tackler because the target is 'the ball' and personal glory, not so much the overall outcome of the game - and under these conditions - a far better strategy is to wait until either the ball spins free, or to tackle whoever gets the ball, while they are tired from the recent conflict.

Now let's chuck one of the Hobbesian teams off the pitch, and install a passing-game playing continental. The players of this team have decided to sacrifice the personal glory of scoring an individual goal, to the more global joint-glory of 'winning the game'.

Which team wins..? Not a hard calculation. The continentals are playing eleven men against a team of one.

In summary - any conceptual symbiont that increases group cohesion or facillitates trust between unrelated groups - enabling the 'passing game' to be played - will tend to spread via proxy of those who believe. And as a species, we may have undergone coevolution with this emergent function - evolving more developed neurophysiologic 'organs' of belief, and boosting the ability of these beliefs, once formed, toward expression in the kind of consistant behaviour so crucial to mutual trust.