How can we use our knowledge of memes? There are several applications for memetics. First, it can be used as an explanatory tool. Thinkers have been looking to aspects of human behavior and have been using memetics to offer explanations for why such behavior exists. Memetics can also be used explain human creations such as technology, music, and literature. Memeticists look at an aspect of human creativity and then construct a memetic history that may have resulted in that aspect of creativity. Of course, constructing historical accounts of any sort of evolutionary process is a dangerous business. Evidence is fragmentary, and it is impossible to determine the truth from the "just so" stories.
Another approach is to deconstruct a human creation -- such as a piece of music -- and discover the components that brought the creation together. By doing this, memeticists may eventually come to understand why it is that certain memes manage to attach to each other for mutual survival in a memeplex.
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