What is a Meme ?

A meme (pron. `meem') is a contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically 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.

{excerpted from http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMLEX.html}

Memetic Ecology - The study of memes, their creation, propagation and particularly their interaction with and response to other memes.

Metaphysical Memes - Memes that carry metaphysical information or metaphysical descriptions of reality. Religeous memes such as Christianity and Islam are metaphysical memes.

A memetic conflict occurs when two memes "actively" compete for the same space.

If we carry the analogy further, the best way to resolve memetic conflict in a memetic ecological sense within a "closed" system where both memes survive occurs through the development of a symbiotic, i.e a mutually beneficial memetic relationship. One where a memetic predator/prey correspondence no longer applies.