There are words that disciplines like science or philosophy borrow from common usage. Philosophy, for example, uses the term “phenomenon” in a particular way that bears only cursory resemblance to ordinary usage. In a discussion about Kant, there is nothing extraordinary about a phenomenal object. Law and science use the term “force” in very specific ways, despite its popular meaning. In a legal discussion, no one means to suggest that a court decision having the force of law implies anything about the mass or acceleration of it. Libertarianism borrows the term “coercion”, and gives it a specific meaning as well.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It is useful because it makes it easier to introduce the term to those who are outside the discipline. All they have to do is add to their list of known meanings instead of learning a whole new word, like “muxmomp” or something. English is a robust language, and a term can have many different definitions — sometimes so far-ranging that two of them contradict each other! Take, for example, the word “sanction”. In one context, it conveys something good, but in another, something bad. His work is sanctioned (protected and recommended) by the High Holy Review Board, but he has been sanctioned (rebuked and disciplined) by the High Holy Review Board.
Seldom is there a problem with borrowed words within the disciplines. Two physicists talking about the force of an object in motion will never become confused that they are talking about the object’s political ethics. The problem arises when the general public uses such terms in more than one way. In other words, the enemy is equivocation. If I know, you know, and everybody knows what we mean by the term when we use it, then no harm no foul. But if we use a term for one of its meanings in the same argument that we use it for another, then we’ve fouled out big time.
For example, let’s say you’re introducing me to libertarian philosophy, and you explain to me that coercion is initial force, and that libertarianism is defined as opposition to coercion. If I then attack your philosophy by saying that suppression of coercion renders everyone defenseless, I am either misunderstanding you or deliberately equivocating. You have explained clearly what you mean by the term “coercion”, but I am using it in the sense of responsive, rather than initial, force.
The problem with meme is that it went the other way: coined in the discipline, and borrowed for common usage. Equivocal usage of it is positively rampant. Even within its discipline, it is often necessary to explain exactly what you mean — whether the original Dawkinsian meaning or something else. Words like that are susceptible, through descriptive erosion, to becoming practically useless. What started out as something intended to convey the mechanism by which social ideas spread becomes something intended to convey the laziness and unscrupulousness of people who spread ideas. It then becomes impossible to use it in its right sense because equivocation has destroyed it.
If the same thing had happened to, say, “phenomenon”, we might be seeing such statements as “The weakness of faith is that there’s nothing phenomenal about it.” Or, “This latest discovery is yet another phenomenon of science and technology.”
Meme, to me, does indeed imply, if not falsehood, at least subterfuge. And I’m pissed off that it does. But not enough people are going to stop and go, “Hey, we’re ruining a perfectly good word here,” and so the debacle is going to continue. There’s no way to stop it, so I choose simply not to use the term at all. And if someone else uses it in a discussion with me, I am forced to ask them what they mean by it. That makes me look ignorant, and that pisses me off too.
) though and merely associate meme with projects like memepool and with fleeting trends/pieces of cultural flotsam passing through the collective consciousness.