Memes

Dear reader,

in his book “The Egoistic Gene“ evolution biologist Richard Dawkins describes that genes aren't the only particles, which a person can pass on to another person. Genes are only particles on a biological level of a human. Culture can be passed on as well. Songs, stories, dances, traditions, ideas and much more is passed on in one culture. Unlike genes, culture particles can not only be passed on from older people to youngsters and don't necessarily stay in just one family. A song for example can also be passed on from a student to a teacher and a boy can tell his girlfriend a joke. Of course parents also pass on loads of things to their kids as well. With books and especially the internet ideas and thoughts can go anywhere. But not every song, joke, story, traditions or ideas are a culture particle as such. Two things are important:

1. A person has to remember something.
2. What is remembered by that person must be passed on to another person.

Only then this culture particle is interesting for scientists. Only then this particle that was remembered and passed on is truly a culture particle. Dawkins thought about how he could name this culture particle, in order to not call it for example culture particle all the time. He wanted a shot word, much like “gene” effectively is a short word for a biology particle.To remember something is the key: memory. Culture is something active, to mime something. So that's how Dawkins came up with “meme” for the culture particles. Somewhat resembling the spelling of “genes”.

The author Daniel Quinn follows that idea of memes and writes in his book “Beyond Civilization” that memes aren't all positive. There are deadly memes, too. Much like some combination of genes can lead to a shorter life of a creature. As an example he mentions the “Heaven's Gate” cult, which was based on the idea that suicide would get its members into heaven. Sad for the people killing themselves, but this deadly idea is only limited to the members of the cult. According to Daniel Quinn civilisation is based on two main ideas:

1. that the way of living of its members is the only one right way for all humans of the whole world to live
2. that food has to be under lock and key and only be given to those who work.

This way of life is unknown in the animal world and also unknown in any other society among humans, other than those calling themselves civilised. We can see the result of these two ideas combined on a daily basis. More on Daniel Quinn's ideas in following blog entries.

To those of you, who are interested in memes, you might want to check out “The Meme Machine” by Susan Blackmore. In this book she describes different aspects of memes, their relevance and how they are passed on.

Until next blog,
sarah