It’s obviously been quite a while since my last update. After talking with the rest of the staff, we decided that the weekly schedule was too demanding and restricting, and each opted to release content when we had something on our minds to discuss and had adequately prepared it for public presentation. Unfortunately, I think that all three of us have become sidetracked and that content never really appeared.
In the past few days, however, I’ve started reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and it has rekindled an old interest I had in a certain investigation of the ideal of capitalism. There has been work in critical theory (notably by Adorno and Horkheimer, if I remember correctly) on the conditions in which capitalism developed and the reason it has had such considerable staying power in light of more humanist socioeconomic systems like socialism and communism. To this end, and in order to work on my curriculum vitae for graduate school admissions, I hope to develop a paper.
The purpose of the paper will be to investigate the concept of capitalism as a meme. According to Dawkins (if my understanding is correct), a meme is a sort of gene of idea. It is passed from one generation to another to make up the Zeitgeist and is incredibly selfish in the same way as Dawkins demonstrates that genes are. I think there may be interesting ties to capitalism in this selfish nature that explain its staying power. I am currently reading The Selfish Gene for only the first time, so it is likely that my thesis will change a bit by the time I finish the book, and possible that my opinion will change enough that the entire project will be abandoned. I already feel a bit under-qualified to discuss what I have said so far, but expect future content to be a bit more solid.
This blog will be updated periodically with notes on the progress of my work. The updates will no longer be released on a schedule each week, but whenever significant work has been made and is presentable for discussion and criticism. Please forgive any errors in the content of this post. Again, my understanding of the subject is incredibly limited at the moment, but I find it fascinating and hope to fix this very soon! I think it is important that I update with this statement of purpose for two reasons, because it has been so long since any updates have been posted and in order to set a sort of scope for both myself and any readers that still follow me.
I am not sure what Ben and Robert plan to do. I am under the impression that both of them still intend to update their columns but have been busy with work and study. I should be in contact with them soon, so you can expect an update on them soon from either them or me.
