Metameme

In the field of memetics, a '''''metameme''''' (or '''meta-meme''') is a meme about a meme. The concept of memes themselves has been called "''the'' Metameme".<ref name=":0">Glenn Grant. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180827172807/http://reoxy.org/memelex.htm A Memetic Lexicon] (Archived)</ref> Ideological tolerance and the rhetorical device of metaphor are metamemes.<ref name=":0" /> Tolerance is: <blockquote>A meta-meme which confers resistance to a wide variety of memes (and their sociotypes), without conferring meme-allergies. In its purest form, Tolerance allows its host to be repeatedly exposed to rival memes, even intolerant rivals, without active infection or meme-allergic reaction. Tolerance is a central co-meme in a wide variety of schemes, particularly "liberalism", and "democracy". Without it, a scheme will often become exo-toxic and confer meme-allergies on its hosts. Since schemes compete for finite belief-space, tolerance is not necessarily a virtue, but it has co-evolved in the ideosphere in much the same way as co-operation has evolved in biological ecosystems. (Henson.)<ref name=":0" /></blockquote>Metamemes have recently{{When|date=March 2026|reason="recently" is vague}} attracted new attention, and the terminology around them has evolved significantly.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}}

==Measuring social evolution== Metamemes may be used to measure the evolution of a given society. It has been proposed{{Vague|reason=It is not specified who proposed this.|date=May 2024}} that the degree of consciousness a society has about the very memes that form it is correlated with how evolved that society is. The difficulties associated with measuring the "metamemetic content" of a given society, however, render that proposition impractical.{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}}

This can be viewed (to some extent) as a memetic approach to the American sociologist Gerhard Lenski's view that the more information a given society has, the more advanced it is.{{cn|date=May 2011}}

==See also== *Memeplex, Memetics and memetic engineering — examples of concepts that are meta-memes

==References== <references/>

==External links== *[http://metameme.org/definition.html Definition] - MetaMeme.org *Freinacht, Hanzi (2020). ''[https://metamoderna.org/what-is-a-metameme/ What Is a Metameme?]''

* Category:Social concepts