Hello - I hope you find some of the speculation in the metaphysics section of this essay challenging. Enjoy!
A note on the history of this essay: it originally appeared on the classics-L listserve.
This is the third revised version and a printout would be about 6 A4 pages long. (Copyright 2000 - 6)!
The meme as a concept was first suggested and developed by Richard Dawkins. He derived the term meme from a neologism - mimeme, a unit of imitation, shortening it to a monosyllable, parallel to the formation of the word gene, because he felt that memes like genes are replicators. However what they copy and convey is not information about the patterns and formation of proteins into lifeforms but data itself - IDEAS! They are units of cultural transmission.
A meme is a "living" structure in that it propagates itself via the medium of a human, or any other sufficiently complex, brain, such as those of primates like chimpanzees or gorillas, cetaceans, octopoids, or other species such as canids? I have observed larger younger dogs studying an older smaller female dachshund's human domination ... er manipulation ... mmm interfacing ...skill or perhaps memetic pattern with an intensity that suggested they were hoping to acquire or enhance their own grasp of the human interfacing meme by observation and proximity! A meme is also an information pattern such as a slogan, catch phrase, melody, icon, invention, or concept, like making fire. Language and writing could be said to be examples of memes, as could whale or bird song, even if the information conveyed is simply - this is my territory! In the case of a certain local corvid species, the Australian Magpie, bird song and body language appears to be conveying a wide variety of information such as "This is my Tree!" "Look the humans are having a outdoors meal!" "Watch this kids! If I use the following memes, making signs by flying past the window, and carolling, and then use the eye contact meme, the human will feed me toast !" Memetics infection or alteration can be a survival value like recombination producing a useful new genetic adaption that enhances function and replication. And yes Magpie behaviour can be that purposeful and intelligent so please forgive the anthropomorhpizing!
There are many parallels to genetics. Genes and DNA allow biological life-forms to reproduce or replicate themselves. Memes encourage the replication of ideas and information.!
Dawkins has stated that a stable meme has these characteristics -
Some people have objected that memes change using the example of a folk song whose lyrics change into different versions over the centuries. Dawkins points out that there could exist co-adapted stable sets of mutually assisting memes, and that like genes, as replicators, memes can bond together to create systems. Memes can also be arranged into meme complex called schemes, symmemes, or co-memes, depending on which author you're reading. Memecomplexes can include languages, dogmas, belief systems, philosophies and perhaps certain metaphysical entities?
Negamemes promote destruction of self or other, examples being martyrdom, suicide bombers, mass hysteria, witch hunts and trials, war, nazism, purges, inquisitions, etc. These memes like some viruses have a strategy of short periods of intense reproduction alternating with varying lengths of dormancy. Chaos and Violence appear to be their transmission vectors.
As well as these negamemes there are positive co-memes that benefit human symbionts by promoting cultural transmission. Some of these are so stable they can survive long periods of dormancy, protected by other mediums (see end-note) and artifacts, such as books, computer discs, or buried inscriptions. Note how Gnostic texts are replicating since their rediscovery, propagating from handwritten scrolls to printed books and back into their original host - humans.
End-note - MEMES can be protected by their medium. A striking feature of this protection is that the meme is often "embedded" within a shell or coating of other material - like a virus hiding in a shell. Memes can be arranged in linear patterns - ie lines of argument in a dialogue or geometric patterns. Can memes also reproduce in multiple modes? - arithmetical geometric bisexual asexual copying?
It may be argued that the concept of "classics" is a successful meme or meme-complex since it promotes the replication of information. The idea of Classics protects knowledge, and suupports the concept of the maintenance and revival of language standards slwoing down changes, mutations in the lexicon and syntax? (N.B. "Classical" Chinese Hebrew Latin Greek Sanskrit etc.,)
The question has been raised of whether there is any connection betwen the Platonic Ideas and Forms, Jungian Archetypes, and Memes. I would like to suggest these are all memes, or at least expressions of memes. Memes promote abstract thought since this can lead to new storage and transmission media such as poems or essays promoting concepts.
Further I would like to suggest that there are memetic life-forms, metaphysical beings, that have evolved in what might be called the noosphere or ideosphere, paralleling the evolution of sentient life forms and using biological lifeforms to interface with our physical, biochemical reality. (limited consensus reality) Humans and memetic lifeforms alike are expressions of energy interactions at a quantum level? Patterns arising from waves and particles.
What if the concept Dawkins calls the God meme may be the ultimate memetic life form?
The Muses are lesser examples - they have evolved from being guardian spirits of mountains, then onwards to the idea that it is easier to contact gods and be inspired by them in places of solitude, and finally into symbols of cultural transmission, images alomst archetypical?
Books can also be memetic lifeforms, in that they are the physical interface of the memes within, connecting them with a potential host. The original pattern of memes was transferred to paper, and when read again by the host/reader, if they are part of a sufficiently stable commeme, the host will reproduce those memes by the process of copying the book or recommending the book to others! Books allow cultural documents developed within an oral tradition of public recitation, in the case of epics and song cycles, or of discussion, in the case of philosophy (Platonic dialogues or Buddhist Sutras?) to survive when hosts are no longer able to interface directly. Consider the fact that Catullus' poems were reduced to one manuscript in a Veronese monastery sitting neglected on a shelf. Copying and printing allowed the memes within to reproduce and spread. Note also how the idea of copying has evolved and the invention of printing and photocopiers and other devices has contributed to the revival of the classics in Europe and the general promotion of literacy.
It would be fascinating if we could compare the rates of literacy in China and Japan AFTER the introduction of printed books to the rates BEFORE printing was widespread. Bearing in mind the ideograms used in East Asia one wishes it was possible also to compare literacy rates there - POST printing - with literacy rates in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Printing itself seems to be an infective meme?
Now for wilder questions - what if some of these memetic life forms or entities are self-aware? Certain science writers are fond of using the new cliche of "the mindless dance of DNA"? What if there is a Mind within the Dance? Could there be some awareness separate yet parallel to our own that evolved in parallel symbiosis with us or even pre-existed humans? Can memes can transmitted from species to species. Remember the recent discoveries of genetic transposition in nature - admittedly plants not humans but ... considering the number of parallels between genetics and memetics - is transfer and fusion possible in any complex system? Is the realm of memes a metaphysical reality or an essential dimension of our own contiunuum? Personally I have never been one to discount metaphysical "realities". Just because the Muses are metaphysical entities doesnt mean they are not real. I just wish that particular memetic commeme, divine or not, had more power over submission editors. Is awareness simply an accident? How can we so mindfully seek to reduce the importance of mindfulness when describing reality? Forgive the continual paradoxs but I want to end by asking you to consider first a certain Zen teaching.
MIND IS BUDDHA NATURE
Also the Christian concept of LOGOS meaning not just word but idea and spirit being divine?
Memes and Humans are both part of a greater reality. Let us continue to study their interactions within the divine dance of diversity.
December 2000 postscript - for theists with a knowledge of science who are not comfortable with the atheism of Dawkins and others. Perhaps a study of both memetics and quantum theory may reveal how the interface of divinity and humanity evolved? Davies has written of a self-organizing principle and implied it may have a personality. An alliance of memetics and theology may possibly allow for renewed insights into the God meme and a balance of experiences of faith with the patternings of reason?
August 2006 Note - Please note my use of the word interface. I do not support intelligent design theory. Evolution is a natural process. Neither do I support the use of evolutionary theory to support atheism. I consider that both sides are asking the wrong questions! Logic and science do not have to be anti-"faith".
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