by Glenn Grant, Memeticist
"An idea is something you have;
an ideology is something that has you."
--Morris Berman
What if ideas were viruses?
Consider the T-phage virus. A T-phage cannot replicate itself; it
reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium, forcing its host to make
millions of copies of the phage. Similarly, an idea can parasitically
infect your mind and alter your behavior, causing you to want to tell your
friends about the idea, thus exposing them to the idea-virus. Any idea
which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced `meem').
Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules, a meme is nothing
more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form
which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical memes include
individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and
fashions. It may sound a bit sinister, this idea that people are hosts for
mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this is what human culture is
all about.
As a species, we have co-evolved with our memes. Imagine a group of
early Homo Sapiens in the Late Pleistocene epoch. They've recently arrived
with the latest high-tech hand axes and are trying to show their Homo
Erectus neighbours how to make them. Those who can't get their heads around
the new meme will be at a disadvantage and will be out-evolved by their
smarter cousins.
Meanwhile, the memes themselves are evolving, just as in the game of
"Telephone" (where a message is whispered from person to person, being
slightly mis-replicated each time). Selection favors the memes which are
easiest to understand, to remember, and to communicate to others. Garbled
versions of a useful meme would presumably be selected out.
So, in theory at least, the ability to understand and communicate
complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection should favor those
who aren't too conservative to understand new memes. Or does it? In
practice, some people are going to be all too ready to commit any new meme
that comes along, even if it should turn out to be deadly nonsense, like:
"Jump off a cliff and the gods will make you fly."
Such memes do evolve, generated by crazy people, or through
mis-replication. Notice, though, that this meme might have a lot of appeal.
The idea of magical flight is so tantalizing -- maybe, if I truly believed,
I just might leap off the cliff and...
This is a vital point: people try to infect each other with those
memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the memes' objective
value or truth. Further, the carrier of the cliff-jumping meme might never
actually take the plunge; they may spend the rest of their long lives
infecting other people with the meme, inducing millions of gullible fools
to leap to their deaths. Historically, this sort of thing is happening all
the time.
Whether memes can be considered true "life forms" or not is a topic of
some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave in a way similar to life
forms, allowing us to combine the analytical techniques of epidemiology,
evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics, and semiotics, into an
effective system known as "memetics." Rather than debate the inherent
"truth" or lack of "truth" of an idea, memetics is largely concerned with
how that idea gets itself replicated.
Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies, and
marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity from
dangerous information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance, that
you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...
The lexicon which follows is intended to provide a language for the
analysis of memes, meme-complexes, and the social movements they spawn. The
name of the person who first coined and defined each word appears in
parentheses, although some definitions have been paraphrased and altered.
Sources
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
Keith Henson, "Memetics", Whole Earth Review #57: 50-55.
Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas.
Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable Words", Whole Earth Review #57: 3-8.
For a fictional treatment of these ideas, see my short story, "Memetic
Drift," in Interzone #34 (March/April 1990).
+++**
Share-Right (S), 1990, by Glenn Grant, PO Box 36 Station H, Montreal,
Quebec, H3C 2K5. (You may reproduce this material, only if your recipients
may also reproduce it, you do not change it, and you include this notice
[see: threat]. If you publish it, send me a copy, okay?)
