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A meme is a unit of cultural information that is transmitted from one mind to another. Examples of memes are ideas, tunes, catch-phrases, fashion, and ways of building things.
The “idea” of a cultural building block called a meme was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. This is an important and exceptionally easy book for a layman to read on a very complex subject.
According to Dawkins genes replicate themselves from “survival machine” to “survival machine” and Memes, especially “idea-memes” are entities that are capable of transmission from one brain to another. And just as our collective genes, via their very successful duplicating process can be immortal, memes or ideas can be immortal as well. Contributions to the world’s culture can live on long after someone’s individual genes have dissolved in the common pool.
Dawkins refers to genes as “policy” makers and brains as the "executers" of policy. Genes provide us with brains capable of “rapid imitation” and on that basis memes will automatically take over and manifest themselves on our culture. Dawkins offers a compelling argument for man’s capacity, through conscious foresight, to simulate the future in our imagination and save us from the worst excesses of gene and meme replication.
We can avoid such excesses by imagining our minds as fertile gardens that require constant and positive nourishment and by realizing that we have the power to defy the selfish memes of our cultural programming. We can insist on a better world right now and far into the future.
My wife Carolyn has several beautiful flower and leafy plant gardens all around our property. There is one big rock garden on the northern side of the house. Her mom, Hazel, had a thumb so green that it was in direct competition with our house plant’s chlorophyll for the solar energy streaming through our windows. Hazel died in 2007 and her plants are still thriving with Carolyn’s encouragement. My inside and outside gardeners had a way with flowers and plants of every description. They nourished them, tended them, and loved them. They knew when to water and feed and how to keep their enemies at bay. Carolyn will work in her gardens for hours removing weeds and slugs and uprooting and replanting if that’s what is needed.
Our minds, like our gardens, will become beautiful and healthy through attentive and regular maintenance. And just as the well being of gardens can be compromised by inattention and infection so can minds that aren’t fully aware of the sometimes contradictory or detrimental memes that they are cultivating. The cells in human bodies like to duplicate and they excel at it. Our minds work that way too. Memes will restructure our brains in order to make it a great environment for memes to nest in. Today memes spread around the globe at the speed of light, rapidly replicating as they leap from brain to brain. What we should recognize is that our minds are very friendly environments for parasitic, self replicating ideas or information. Memes spread not because they are good ideas but rather because they are good memes. Some are deliberately designed to cause havoc and others are innocently mutated and evolve unconsciously. We need to have the ability to discern and cultivate memes that are beneficial to ourselves and to our culture and to successfully dissolve or negate infectious memes that are not.
We are presently living in vary complex societies and many of us are too busy to realize when simpler and less productive memes successfully compete with better memes that we avoid because they are less appealing. Memes do compete with one another and if a particular one is to dominate our brain it must overcome its rival memes. If we are not paying enough attention to the competing “ideas” our “mind gardens" can become compromised and we may possibly help replicate a mutant meme to other brains. It’s not enough to live consciously; we must also make clear and purposeful choices. We must avoid copying errors and mutations to other brains. By paying attention to what is happening in the world around us, by doubting where there is insufficient evidence, and just by noticing the memes in the first place we can make the right choices. We can consciously select our memes.
Unlike genes, memes can evolve in one lifetime and therefore can provide more effective ways for us to act on our problems. As Richard Dawkins sums it up in The Selfish Gene “we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination”.
The “idea” of a cultural building block called a meme was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. This is an important and exceptionally easy book for a layman to read on a very complex subject.
According to Dawkins genes replicate themselves from “survival machine” to “survival machine” and Memes, especially “idea-memes” are entities that are capable of transmission from one brain to another. And just as our collective genes, via their very successful duplicating process can be immortal, memes or ideas can be immortal as well. Contributions to the world’s culture can live on long after someone’s individual genes have dissolved in the common pool.
Dawkins refers to genes as “policy” makers and brains as the "executers" of policy. Genes provide us with brains capable of “rapid imitation” and on that basis memes will automatically take over and manifest themselves on our culture. Dawkins offers a compelling argument for man’s capacity, through conscious foresight, to simulate the future in our imagination and save us from the worst excesses of gene and meme replication.
We can avoid such excesses by imagining our minds as fertile gardens that require constant and positive nourishment and by realizing that we have the power to defy the selfish memes of our cultural programming. We can insist on a better world right now and far into the future.
My wife Carolyn has several beautiful flower and leafy plant gardens all around our property. There is one big rock garden on the northern side of the house. Her mom, Hazel, had a thumb so green that it was in direct competition with our house plant’s chlorophyll for the solar energy streaming through our windows. Hazel died in 2007 and her plants are still thriving with Carolyn’s encouragement. My inside and outside gardeners had a way with flowers and plants of every description. They nourished them, tended them, and loved them. They knew when to water and feed and how to keep their enemies at bay. Carolyn will work in her gardens for hours removing weeds and slugs and uprooting and replanting if that’s what is needed.
Our minds, like our gardens, will become beautiful and healthy through attentive and regular maintenance. And just as the well being of gardens can be compromised by inattention and infection so can minds that aren’t fully aware of the sometimes contradictory or detrimental memes that they are cultivating. The cells in human bodies like to duplicate and they excel at it. Our minds work that way too. Memes will restructure our brains in order to make it a great environment for memes to nest in. Today memes spread around the globe at the speed of light, rapidly replicating as they leap from brain to brain. What we should recognize is that our minds are very friendly environments for parasitic, self replicating ideas or information. Memes spread not because they are good ideas but rather because they are good memes. Some are deliberately designed to cause havoc and others are innocently mutated and evolve unconsciously. We need to have the ability to discern and cultivate memes that are beneficial to ourselves and to our culture and to successfully dissolve or negate infectious memes that are not.
We are presently living in vary complex societies and many of us are too busy to realize when simpler and less productive memes successfully compete with better memes that we avoid because they are less appealing. Memes do compete with one another and if a particular one is to dominate our brain it must overcome its rival memes. If we are not paying enough attention to the competing “ideas” our “mind gardens" can become compromised and we may possibly help replicate a mutant meme to other brains. It’s not enough to live consciously; we must also make clear and purposeful choices. We must avoid copying errors and mutations to other brains. By paying attention to what is happening in the world around us, by doubting where there is insufficient evidence, and just by noticing the memes in the first place we can make the right choices. We can consciously select our memes.
Unlike genes, memes can evolve in one lifetime and therefore can provide more effective ways for us to act on our problems. As Richard Dawkins sums it up in The Selfish Gene “we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination”.
From my brain to yours … happy gardening.
Here's a link to a site on Memetics
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