jmo,

To understand some answers to your question, you might want to check into memetics.

Meme~a self replicating idea~ was a word coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins,
MEME: (pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. (Wheelis, quoted in Hofstadter.) (See meme-complex).

http://www.rubinghscience.org/memeti...kinsmemes.html
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/

I'm presently struggling through this book on the subject:
http://www.churchofvirus.org/book_ddi.html
the link has some lexicon pages that define a number of pertanent ideas.

Hope you're well, luv yah babe~Down