Loving the Meme

It is so easy to assume that Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is exhausted

Every possible paper written, panel discussion held, adaptation essayed

That is the kind of assumption that individuals with access to all of the information they desire and more make

They are exhausted, oscillating from transfixed fascination to incredulous outrage

They have downloaded everything, put haven't time to read anything

"The Lottery" can be read as a meditation upon meme theory avant la lettre, I think

Evidently, "Dawkins initially defined a meme as a noun that 'conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation' and there have been further attempts to define it more closely." I do not want to read Jackson's work as a meme, rest assured, and I feel uncomfortable citing Dawkins, but he coined the noun. Sometimes, we ought to consult the parent, if only to discover who is to blame

I want to read "The Lottery" as an object lesson in the perils of falling in love with a particular meme. After all, a unit of cultural transmission that is practically designed to stimulate imitation ought to be taken seriously, assessed with care, and then allowed to stick around, or sent away

If only to a safe place where it can be studied rather than obeyed

The characters in the story cannot remember any good reason to keep the meme alive. One doddering elder mumbles about the corn, and there are rumors about other communities abandoning the lottery and suffering for it, but that sort of thing can be easily dismissed as fake news

It even comes to light that the sacred object that is central to the ritual has been replaced, and that the replacement is in questionable shape; therefore, it isn't the sacred object that is crucial, nor is there any text: no scripture can be gravely rehearsed in stentorian tones to justify a primitive horror

All they have is the techne

The episteme is a phantom, a vague memory

They know how to do it, i.e., how to hold a lottery at regular intervals that results in the execution of one of the participants; stoning is the optimal means of execution, and even the members of the "winner's" family take part in the execution; some children will savor the chance with sadistic glee, in fact

They have no idea why they are doing it, save that tradition mandates that they must

Their behavior is not rational, that is, they have not brought this percept under a concept: this is the sort of thing I ought to do, because I can affirm the truth of the premises that lead to that conclusion, and they do lead there logically

They are imitating their ancestors, because they love and revere their ancestors. Powerful voices have told them, with love, that this mode of comportment is vital. If this way of being vanishes, so too will the love of the departed for the living. They won't be proud anymore.

The people of the bucolic, sunny New England community that is the setting of Jackson's story, with the tall corn and the warm smiles, are living out the argumentum ad antiquitatem. They are murdering one of their fellows at regular intervals because they do not need to know why they are doing so. They are content with the idea that someone they love and respect, if only as an image in the gallery of the mournful memory, would be appalled if they did away with this cultural practice; it's ancestor worship, of a kind

So is the gender segregation, and the relegation of women to a subordinate, humiliating role, but that's how they've always done it, and there are rumors about those who dare to do it differently, so letting this change would be dangerous and foolish

The story ends with the execution of a woman, chosen at random, and as was indicated above, her own offspring take part with zeal

There are those who find such stories boring, or irrelevant, or too old to be taken seriously

They are idiots

How are we, after all?

Are we keeping ways of being, cultural practices, imitations of the ancestors, alive for no good reason?

Groundhog Day?

Wrestlemania?

Ayn Rand book clubs?

War?

We've got to get our act together

We ought to let some of this go

When the innocent are sacrificed to our ancestors' bad ideas

It's obvious to anyone that we simply haven't done the reading

We really should have failed the course, but technology has its place in the classroom, and LLMs make essay writing a breeze, so what's the point?