By Benjamin Marshan
“Now
that’s an interesting meme!” I said to myself.
“What's
a meme?” my friend asked me.
“It’s
a replicating unit, like a gene is a replicating unit.”
“Oh,
how do they work?”
“Well,
ummm, they work on imitation, everything we do or say, or write that gets copied
or imitated by someone else is a meme.”
“Oh,
I see, so if they are like genes, where are they? I’ve never seen a meme!”
“They
are in our brains, in music, in books, and on the internet!” I replied.
“What,
everything I think, and read and listen to is a meme?”
“Yeah,
as long as you take it in, and then spread it to someone else, they basically
control us!”
“I
don’t get it, everything I do is controlled by memes, and no one has found
them yet?”
“That’s
what they are trying to tell us!” I said.
“Well
your going to have to show me some proof before I start believing in memes! Do
you believe in them?” he asked me.
“That’s
the 64million dollar question!” I replied.
So where are the meme’s? If memetic theories have been around for 20 years, why don’t more people know about memes? And why when people know about meme theories, can they still not believe in them? These questions may be the ones that need to be answered before memes start to be accepted by the general public as being a true theory.
Memetics has become a science in its own right, with many social psychologists, scientists, theorists and philosophers subscribing to the theory. Memetics even has its own research institute, The Institute for Memetic Research, its own journal, “Journal of Memetics”, and many books and web sites on the Internet dedicated to it (Yahoo, 2000, index.html). Even the dictionary has an entry under memes, but why still do so few people know about them? (Dictionary.com, 2000, dict.pl?term=meme) One possibility is that there is no strong or clear theory of memetics.
Memetics was first proposed in 1976 when Richard Dawkins coined the term in his book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins used the word meme to describe how ideas such as tunes, catch phrases and clothing fashion seem to have a life of their own in the population. He believed that we could follow the evolution of each of these ideas as they changed slightly every time they were passed on from brain to brain. Thus he deduced that they must be a second form of replicator that was working on humans. Like genes, memes are selfish. They are only interested in replicating, i.e. getting copied, and don’t take into consideration anything else. Therefore the most successful memes are those that have lasted the longest, and will go on lasting far into the future (Abraham, 2000, meme.html).
Dawkins later went on to make the point that memes may not really be like genes at all, because memes act like phenotypes. A given meme will have a set characteristic or function, but cannot be broken down into smaller common units. The phenotypes of genes however can be broken down into proteins, which can be broken down into coding amino acids, which can be broken down into the nucleic acids which form the code in the DNA strands. As it is always possible to find the chain of nucleic acids at a certain loci on a chromosome, it is always possible to find the gene of the phenotype. This difference has caused a lot of confusion over exactly what memes are and how they function, because when people start saying that they are similar to genes, it is impossible not to think they have some sort of code like DNA (Brown, 1999, 159-162).
Now if each meme or idea is a phenotype, then they combine together to form memeplexes, which are the memetic organisms. A memeplex can be described as a whole series of memes that travel together to allow better understanding of the idea. They can be as small as 2 memes together, or as large and complex as religious and political memes. If people are infected by memes, as it has been suggested, then it is more likely that they are infected by memeplexes rather than purely just memes. For example, a meme for religion would be “Believe in God!” but unless you obtained the memes for the entire religion, you would not know whom or what God is, what their function is, or even how to believe in them. But if you read the whole Bible or Koran, you would have a much better idea of whom God is and why you should believe in him and what believing him will do for you (Blackmore, 1999, 187-203).
Going back to the point about memes being like parasites, this explains a lot about the reasons humans are always talking and thinking. The memes have taken over our brains and are always competing among themselves for supremacy. For this reason they keep our brains in constant motion trying to get themselves replicated. To do this they must draw the most amount of attention they can to themselves by appealing to our desires, or fitting in with current situation that is affecting their host. If the memetic host is talking with someone they will try and jump out so that the other person can have a chance to take them in so that a replication is completed. Therefore the most successful memes are going to be memes that appeal to the host’s sense of survival, i.e. food, shelter and sex. This is obvious when looking at the memes we are bombarded by on TV, radio, on the sides of buildings and buses, and on the Internet. The majority of advertisements that can be seen deal with this sense of host survival, and contain continually more elaborate ways of drawing our attention to them. This is the power of the meme (Blackmore, 1999, 18-23; 38-42).
But if humans are such independent spirits, why do the memes have such a control over us? Is it possible that we are in fact partly created by memes? Are they really a second replicator that has worked on us? Susan Blackmore believes this is true. Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine describes the probable method by which our brains developed through natural selection due to memes. Blackmore suggests that imitation became an important tool for early hominids to survive. Originally it would have started with imitation of what kinds of food to eat, or where to make shelters, or the best protective clothing. The hominid that was able to imitate someone else’s good idea would survive better. Therefore there was an early selection pressure on imitation that got more and more complicated. Blackmore believes this is why our large brains developed, as an ever-increasing way to improve our imitation skill. This development she believes is due to the driving force of memetic selection, those who imitate best are the ones who are going to survive better (Blackmore, 1999, 67-81).
Though if this occurred in humans, why has it not occurred in other species of animal? Other animals do show the abilities of being able to imitate each other as well as to innovate. Birds are known to have complex songs that are copied from each other into the desired form, as well as certain amounts of mimicry shown in some species such as the lyrebird. Many cats can be seen to have complex hunting patterns that can be learnt from other individuals, as well as the ability to form hunting strategies in groups. Dolphins and whales are known to have complicated vocal (as well as possibly other forms) patterns used to communicate to each other. And certain primates have been able to learn human sign language. All these are examples of animals being able to pass on ideas to each other. It is true however that (with the exception of possibly dolphins) no other species on earth have been able to develop such a complicated and diverse ability to pass on their ideas to each other. This seems to be a common enough skill, however we are the only ones who have been obtained such abilities (Blackmore, 1999, 88).
It is certainly feasible to accept that this is one explanation of why our brains got so out of proportionally big, but does it have to be the reason as Blackmore states? Anthropologists suggest that the evolution to humans from chimps may have occurred by neoteny. Neoteny is the retention of juvenile form in an adult state, including sexual maturity. This occurs in some species of amphibians such as axolotls, which is the neotenous form of salamanders. However due to mutation of genes, this may have started to occur in early hominids. There is a marked resemblance between baby chimps and humans. Such characteristics as a reduction in snout, reduction in body hair, paler in colour, large heads and facial features, and a slow development to maturity are some characteristics we have in common with baby chimps, but our features are even more exaggerated. Another fact is that when human and chimp babies are born, they have similar comparative brain sizes, but human brains just keep growing up to an age of approximately 10-12, whereas chimp brains stop much earlier than this. This is also a neotenous trait. Therefore it has been speculated that the large human brain is just a continuation of this process. A more likely theory however is that while continued brain growth was at first a gene mutation, it may have become a selective advantage for humans allowing a greater chance of survival due to innovation (a memetic driving force).
An interesting area to look at is the development of language. Why is it that only now the number of languages is slowly starting to be reduced to a few common languages? Why even within languages have there been marked differences in dialects and accents and terminology? Languages appear to have gone through a process similar to genetic drift, where a language has been developed and spread among large numbers of people, but as they have spread out, the languages have slowly changed over time, from slight subtle differences, to the strongly different languages. When you hear a foreign language, if you have had enough experience, you can generally pick where the language is from to a fairly small group of languages (i.e. the person is Scandinavian, or Arabic or Asian, etc). However if memes have been as successful as Blackmore suggests, why has there been such a shift? Why is it only now that the world is getting “smaller” that we are starting to get a reduction in languages with a handful of dominant languages becoming apparent? (Blackmore, 1999, 82-93)
Memes seem to have found a strong argument for their existence in the behaviour of altruism. Altruism is the helping of other individuals with no apparent benefit to you. This appears to be a very perplexing trait by many people studying behaviour, as it goes against everything that Darwin suggested in survival of the fittest. Altruistic behaviour is helping an individual in an unfit state, and allowing them to survive to possibly compete with you for resources and spreading of your genes. Blackmore suggested that memes use altruistic behaviour as a method of getting their host noticed in an effort to spread more of his memes. Again however, many animal species show altruistic behaviour towards other individuals even if they are not genetically related in any way. Many species employ baby sitters, lookouts and workers who are constantly put at risk in an effort to allow the group profit. These individuals are often put at much more risk of death because of their jobs, and yet they do the job anyway in the hope of helping the group. Therefore it seems that altruism may have more of a genetic advantage than a memetic advantage (Blackmore, 1999, 162-174).
So where does this leave us? We have seen how the current theory of memetics has come about, how memes work, how they possibly explain the development of our brain but such development has not occurred in other species, and how language development and altruism may be due to memetics, but how these all have arguments against them. Is it possible that there really is some connection between all of these things and memes? It is definitely a possibility. One thing I haven't taken into consideration is the possibility that memes have actually been around for a long time, and that in humans, genes and memes have co-evolved.
As I previously stated, other species do show the ability to imitate and innovate as well as we do. It is possible that memes have been around for millennia in a primitive form. This would explain the abilities of other species at a lesser level than ourselves to communicate and copy each other. Also altruism, while having a genetic advantage for the species, does not appear to have a mode of developing purely from genes due to the fact that genes of the individual are more important to them than genes of the species. Could an early form of memetics be responsible for both of these? Could the reason there are so many human languages be due to memetic drift? Memes appear to have a strong argument for being involved in all of this.
So why did we become such advanced memetic machines? The explanation is probably due to meme/gene coevolution. When early hominids split off from the common ancestor we had with chimpanzees, we probably both had a similar level of memes already working in our brains. With the enlargement of our brains through genetic mutation, the memes were able to have a larger influence over us than our close relative species. Being able to imitate more successfully became a genetic advantage driving the evolution of both memes and our genes until we came to our current level of genetic development. We can see from human history the effects that memes have had on humans (religion, politics, etc.) and the ways in which we have developed technology to help them be passed on from generation to generation more successfully. We have developed language to aid in the passing on of memes, writing to allow them to be passed on accurately, printing presses, TV, radio and the Internet to allow many copies to be made, and libraries to allow them to last a long time. This has allowed memes to become successful replicators (Blackmore, 1999, 204-218).
Memes are still evolving, and this is where the confusion possibly lies. Memes are possibly still in the primordial memetic swamp, and have not discovered the most successful way for them to be passed on and become dominant. Genes found DNA and chromosomes allowing successful methods for copying and high levels of fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Memes are starting to develop these traits, but probably still have a long way to go before they find the most successful and preferred mechanism. In the mean time they are developing new and more sophisticated methods by which to be copied, as well as developing ways to influence us more and more. We can see through the recombination of memes how quickly our technology and knowledge is advancing, and it may not be too long until the meme memes finally surface to allow the whole world to know about them. This is a trait of the memes; they can’t wait to be spread, but require the right environment to be successful.
So where are the memes? They are all around us, in everything that has been created by the human mind through recombination of memes. In everything we require and find desirable, in everything we enjoy, in everything human. Why don’t more people know about memes and why don’t people believe in it when they hear about them? This is a more difficult question, however it is probably due to the lack of a conclusive or complete theory of memetics, and that there has not been much main stream acknowledge of memetics. It has currently been mainly confined to the social scientists and evolutionists who are trying to answer the questions of why and how we got to where we are, and are trying to find theories to cover it all. In the same way that Darwin's theory of evolution eventually became the dominant and generally accepted theory of evolution, memetics will eventually gain such a theory and be accepted as a major influence on human development. Once this has occurred more people will listen and accept the meme theory. Then again, just as Darwin's theory of evolution still has critics and opponents, it may be a long time till we get a clear theory on memetics as well.
“So does that make a bit more sense now?” I asked my friend.
“Kind of, it makes more sense when you explain it in more detail.”
“Good!” I replied, “Any other questions?”
“Well, if memes are competing for attention in our brain, and everything we think and do is because of memes wanting to get copied, who is in our brains deciding which memes to listen to?”
“That’s a whole other essay my friend!”
Reference:
· Abraham, Chris, ‘Memes.org’, Memespace, Washington USA. <http://www.memes.org/>, 2000.
·
Blackmore, Susan, ‘The Meme Machine’, Oxford University
Press, New York USA, 1999.
·
Brown, Andrew, ‘The Darwin Wars: The Scientific Battle For
The Soul Of Man’, Touchstone; Simon and Schuster, London UK, 1999.
·
Dennett, Daniel C, ‘Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and
the Meaning of Life’, Penguin Books, London UK, 1995.
·
Dictionary.com, ‘Dictionary.com/meme’, Lexico LLC, Los
Angeles California. <http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=meme>,
2000.
·
Think Quest 2000, ’Replicators: Evolutionary Powerhouses’, Thinkquest
Inc. New York USA. <http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/>,
2000.