MEMETICS; THE NASCENT SCIENCE OF IDEAS AND THEIR TRANSMISSION<\/p>\n
J. Peter Vajk<\/p>\n
An Essay Presented to the Outlook Club
\n Berkeley, California
\n January 19, 1989<\/p>\n
In April 1917, a 47-year old lawyer-turned-journalist and a handful of
\ncompanions enter Russia by train. By November, they take control of
\nthe government of Russia. Within another four years, a devastating
\ncivil war kills some 10 million Russians.<\/p>\n
In 1924, a 34-year old handyman and would-be artist and architect is
\narrested for starting a brawl in a tavern in southern Germany. In
\njail over the next nine months, he writes a book expressing his
\ndissatisfactions with life and the world in which he lives, and lays
\nout a blueprint of what he plans to do to change it. Within nine years
\nhe has total and sole control of the entire national government. Over
\nthe ensuing thirteen years, his exercise of that power leads to the
\ndeaths of some thirty million people across two continents and three
\nseas.<\/p>\n
In the early 1970’s, two young men, both of them Vietnam War veterans,
\ngo camping in the Sierra Nevada in California, about a mile from a Girl
\nScout campground. The second afternoon of their stay, one of the men
\nbreaks out in chills, sweats, and violent shivering, like he had
\nexperienced a few times in Vietnam. About a week later, in the
\nSan Francisco Bay area, six Girl Scouts become ill, with high fevers,
\nsevere headaches, and violent shivering.<\/p>\n
In the mid-1970’s, a charismatic minister attracts a large following
\namong the poor and disaffected population of a Northern California urban
\ncenter. After their activities draw increasing attention from the press,
\nthe minister and nearly a thousand of his adherent move en masse to an
\nobscure village in the jungles of a small South American country. By
\nNovember 1978, he and 910 others, including children, lie dead in the
\njungle, having drunk KoolAid which they knew was laced with cyanide.<\/p>\n
In the late 1970’s, a handsome young French Canadian steward working for
\nAir Canada begins to make regular visits (using his free airline passes)
\nto New York’s Greenwich Village, Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip, and San
\nFrancisco’s Castro, Polk, and Mission Street areas. He has no trouble
\npicking up dates with dozens of gay men over a period of two or three
\nyears. By 1980, over a hundred men from coast to coast are dead of dying
\n>from a strange form of cancer or from a rare form of pneumonia.<\/p>\n
In the fall, of 1988, a graduate student loads a short program into a few
\nmainframe computers. Within two days, dozens of mainframe computers all
\nacross North America and Great Britain come to a halt: each computer is
\nrepetitively doing nonsense copying of files, leaving no time at all for
\nproductive computing. It takes as much as a week to get some of the
\ncomputer centers back to normal activity.<\/p>\n
These six episodes, from the disparate fields of politics, human disease,
\nreligion, and computer technology, have a great deal in common. It is my
\naim tonight to explore memetics, a science in the early stages of birth.
\n“Meme” (pronounced to rhyme with “cream”) is a neologism, coined by
\nanalogy to “gene,” by the writer-zoologist Richard Dawkins in his book
\n_The Selfish Gene_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). By the end
\nof this essay, the deep similarities (as well as some of the vital
\ndifferences) among these six episodes will, I hope, become clear. I will
\nalso engage in some speculation about the implications of this nascent
\nscience for current affairs.<\/p>\n
The roots of the idea of memetics as a science lie in the study of
\nbiological evolution, in genetics, in modern information theory, in
\nartificial intelligence research, in epidemiology, and in studies of
\npatients with split brains. To set the stage for my discussion of memetics,
\nlet me briefly recapitulate the modern understanding of biological evolution
\nand the role genes play in evolution.<\/p>\n
We now know that life originated on Earth about four billion years ago.
\nThe earliest things we might consider to be on the threshhold of living
\nbeings were in all probability complex organic molecules capable of
\nreplication, that is, able to make identical copies of themselves from
\nless complex molecules in their environment. Complex molecules of this
\nsort, given a few hundred million years, could arise by chance at the
\nedges of the young oceans out of the primordial broth of substances like
\nwater, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, which were
\nall abundant in the original atmosphere of the Earth. This broth was
\nstimulated by ultraviolet light from the Sun (more intense since the Earth
\nhad as yet no ozone layer); by lightning and tidal action (both of which
\nwere more intense because the Moon was considerably closer and the day was
\nshorter); and volcanism (also more intense since the Earth’s crust was newly
\nformed and thinner). Such stimuli, acting for a period of just a few weeks
\non such a primordial broth, have been demonstrated in laboratory experiments
\nto produce molecules of intermediate complexity such as amino acids from
\nwhich all proteins are made. These amino acids, in turn, give rise in the
\nsame laboratory experiments within a few months to nucleic acids, from which
\nthe DNA in all living viruses, plants, and animals on Earth are made.<\/p>\n
Once even one self-replicating molecule had come together, evolution toward
\ndiversity and greater complexity was inevitable. Once in a while, a copying
\nmistake would happen; if the new copy could still make copies of itself, a
\nnew “species” would have emerged. Soon (speaking in geological time scales)
\nthere would be a number of species of self-replicating molecules competing for
\nthe shrinking supply of raw materials in the broth at the edge of the sea.
\nThe populations of these different species would depend to a large extent
\non three characteristics of the molecules: longevity, fecundity, and
\ncopying-fidelity.<\/p>\n
If a particular type of molecule were only moderately stable against
\ndisruption by ultraviolet light or by the acidity of the broth, for
\nexample, it would not have much time available to make copies of itself.
\nOn the other hand, even a short-lived molecule could come to outnumber a
\nvery stable molecule if it can make new copies of itself very quickly. A
\nmolecule which is not very selective about which bits of raw materials it
\nuses for a particular part of a copy may have numerous offspring, but they
\nwill be of different species, so that the numbers of molecules which do not
\nhave high fidelity replication will not grow; the species may, in fact,
\nbecome extinct fairly rapidly.<\/p>\n
As the numbers of self-replicating molecules increased, their food supply
\ndeclined, since the food was increasingly embodied in the replicators
\nthemselves. Any molecule which accidentally had the capability of
\nbreaking other species of molecules apart would then have access to more
\nraw materials, and predation appeared on the scene. In turn, molecules
\nresistant to being eaten in this way (perhaps by carrying around a coat of
\nproteins like modern viruses) would then increase in numbers relative to
\nthose which molecules which could be eaten easily. At some unknown stage
\nin this process, the class of self-replicating molecules we know as DNA,
\nappeared on the scene. We do not know whether or not DNA was the original
\nreplicating molecule, or whether it evolved from some earlier class of
\nmolecules. In any case, it has been highly successful, since no other
\nclass of self-replicating molecules survives on Earth today.<\/p>\n
At some later point in time, by processes which are still unknown, simple
\nsingle-celled organisms which we would clearly recognize as “living” arose.
\nThese early creatures were still dependent on physical processes (lightning,
\nultraviolet light, etc.) for the production of foodstuffs, on predation, or
\non scavenging. Finally, about two billion years ago, a new molecule was
\n“invented” which changed the whole picture. That molecule was chlorophyll,
\nwhich enabled its inventors, the blue-green algae, to make complex foodstuffs
\n(sugars and starches) directly and rapidly from two of the simplest and most
\nabundant molecules in the environment, namely, water and carbon dioxide, with
\na little help from the sunlight. This made it possible for several different
\ntypes of simple primitive cells to fuse together into the more complicated
\nmodern cell in a mutually helpful, symbiotic relationship. The more complex
\ncell could now form multi-cellular entities, and higher plants and animals
\nappeared on the scene, creating the sort or biosphere we know today.<\/p>\n
But underneath it all, the self-replicating DNA molecule, the gene, is the
\nvery essence of life. Trees, dogs, mosquitos, robins, earthworms, and human
\nbeings are from a certain perspective nothing more than huge, elaborate robots
\nwhose only function is to enhance the ability of the minute genes inside to
\nreplicate themselves. In other words, a chicken is merely an egg’s way of
\nmaking more eggs.<\/p>\n
While individual chickens or salmon or human beings have fairly short
\nlifespans, a particular gene, that is, a particular pattern of amino acids
\nin a DNA chain, may survive through many generations. Ignoring some of the
\nfiner points of the way in which chromosomes are scrambled during the
\nformation of sperm cells and egg cells in sexual reproduction, a given gene
\nmay actually survive for millions of years, although the survival machine,
\nthe body it wears, is replaced frequently.<\/p>\n
Any particular body reflects the particular collection of genes it carries;
\nnatural selection operates, not on species or on particular populations, but
\non individual genes. As environments change, the survival probabilities for
\na particular gene may be enhanced by tagging along with a different collection
\nof genes. Thus it is not surprising that the gene for Rh factor in human
\nblood is virtually identical to that in chimpanzees, and just a little bit
\ndifferent in rhesus monkeys in which the expression of the gene was first
\ndiscovered. Each gene, like its distant ancestors, the primitive self-
\nreplicating molecules of four billion years ago, is “selfish:” the survival
\nof that gene depends on making its survival machine (its body) act or grow in
\na way that increases the changes that more copies of that gene (rather than
\nsome other competing gene in the gene pool) will be made in new survival
\nmachines.<\/p>\n
Let us turn now to human beings. It has been observed frequently that
\ncultural evolution has, by and large, become more important for humans than
\nbiological evolution. It is, in any case, far faster: a new cultural idea
\nor mutation can spread through all the individuals in the same generation
\nwhich invented the new idea. A genetic mutation, on the other hand, can
\nonly begin to spread when the next generation is born, and it will take many
\ngenerations before the mutation has any chance of being expressed in a
\nsignificant fraction of the population. It is thus of much more than passing
\ninterest to consider how ideas are transmitted; whether and how they compete;
\nand what effects they have on the survival machines, originally built to help
\ngenes propagate, which house the minds in which ideas are born and live.<\/p>\n
An early hint at some of these issues is in an article by neuro-physiologist
\nRoger W. Sperry titled _Mind, Brain, and Humanist Values_ (In John R. Platt,
\ned., New Views on the Nature of Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
\n1965.) Sperry writes,<\/p>\n
\tIdeas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each
\n\tother and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring
\n\tbrains, and, thanks to global communications, in far distant, foreign
\n\tbrains. And they also interact with the external surroundings to
\n\tproduce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far behind
\n\tanything to hit the evolutionary scene yet, including the emergence
\n\tof the living cell.<\/p>\n
Molecular biologist Jacques Monod in the last chapter of _Chance and Necessity:
\n An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology_ began to explore the
\nevolution of ideas.<\/p>\n
For a biologist it is tempting to draw a parallel between the evolution of
\nideas and that of the biosphere. For while the abstract kingdom stands at
\na yet greater distance above the biosphere than the latter does above the
\nnonliving universe, ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms.
\nLike them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can
\nfuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in
\nthis evolution selection must surely play an important role. I shall not
\nhazard a theory of the selection of ideas. But one may at least try to define
\nsome of the principal factors involved in it. This selection must necessarily
\noperate at two levels: that of the mind itself and that of performance.<\/p>\n
The performance value of an idea depends upon the change it brings to the
\nbehavior of the person or the group that adopts it. The human group upon
\nwhich a given idea confers greater cohesiveness, greater ambition, and
\ngreater self-confidence thereby receives from (the idea) an added power to
\nexpand which will insure the promotion of the idea itself. Its capacity to
\n‘take,” the extent to which it can be ‘put over’ has little to do with the
\namount of objective truth the idea may contain. The important thing about
\nthe stout armature a religious ideology constitutes for a society is not what
\ngoes into its structure, but the fact that this structure is accepted, that it
\ngains sway. So one cannot well separate such an idea’s power to spread from
\nits power to perform.<\/p>\n
The ‘spreading power’ — the infectivity, as it were, — of ideas is much
\nmore difficult to analyze. Let us say that it depends upon preexisting
\nstructures in the mind, among them ideas already implanted by culture, but
\nalso undoubtedly upon certain innate structure which we are hard put to
\nidentify. What is very plain, however, is that the ideas having the highest
\ninvading potential are those that explain man by assigning him his place in
\nan immanent destiny, in whose bosom his anxiety dissolves.<\/p>\n
Monod refers here to the pool of ideas present in human culture as “the
\nabstract kingdom. Douglas R. Hofstadter in his book _Metamagical Themas:
\nQuesting for the Essence of Mind and Pattern_ (New York: Basic Books,
\n1985; New York: Bantam Books, 1986) suggests the word “ideosphere” instead,
\nin closer analogy to “biosphere.”<\/p>\n
In the last chapter of his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins further develops
\nthis notion. He defines a meme as a replicating information pattern that
\nuses minds to get itself copies into other minds; it is the basic unit of
\nreplication and selection in the ideosphere. The word meme is taken from
\nthe same Greek root as the word memory; a memory is a more-or-less organized
\ncollection of memes and other things. Memes float about in the soup of human
\nculture where they grow, replicate, mutate, compete, or become extinct.
\nDawkins writes:<\/p>\n
\t“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions,
\n\tways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate
\n\tthemselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm
\n\tor eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping
\n\tfrom brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be
\n\tcalled imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea,
\n\the passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his
\n\tarticles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to
\n\tpropagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.”<\/p>\n
Dawkins then quotes the comments of a colleague, N. K. Humphrey, on a
\ndraft by Dawkins:<\/p>\n
\t“…memes should be regarded as living structures, not just
\n\tmetaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in
\n\tmy mind, you literally parasitize by brain, turning it into a
\n\tvehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus
\n\tmay parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t
\n\tjust a way of talking — the meme for, say, ‘belief in life after
\n\tdeath’ is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as
\n\ta structure in the nervous systems of individual (people) the world
\n\tover.”<\/p>\n
It is important to note here that, in contrast to genes, memes are not
\nencoded in any universal code within our brains or in human culture. The
\nmeme for vanishing point perspective in two-dimensional art, for example,
\nwhich first appeared in the sixteenth century, can be encoded and
\ntransmitted in German, English or Chinese; it can be described in words, or
\nin algebraic equations, or in line drawings. Nonetheless, in any of these
\nforms, the meme can be transmitted, resulting in a certain recognizable
\nelement of realism which appears only in art works executed by artists
\ninfected with this meme.<\/p>\n
Jokes are an interesting group of memes. Because the recipient of a joke can
\ncollect nearly as much reward each time he passes the joke on to yet another
\nrecipient as he received when first hearing the joke, jokes are very fecund
\nmemes, and very infective as well.<\/p>\n
Given that memes are encoded in many different ways, it is not surprising
\nthat memes also occur in species other than Homo sapiens. Some species of
\nbirds learn a neighborhood repertoire of songs, rather than inheriting
\nthem. Such birds, raised from hatchlings with other species, will sing only
\nin the foreign throat. Humpback whales learn songs from one another, and
\nchimpanzees pass on the art of fishing termites from their nests with long
\ntwigs or reeds from generation to generation.<\/p>\n
Of course, not all ideas are memes. A passing thought which you never
\nmention to anyone else, or an idea which no one else ever takes an
\ninterest in, is not self-replicating. On the other hand, I first
\nencountered the meme about memes four or five years ago, and that meme
\nis tonight attempting to infect each of you as well. In a science article
\nin ANALOG magazine appearing in August 1987, space activist Keith Henson
\nwrote:<\/p>\n
\t“The important part of the “meme about memes” is that memes are
\n\tsubject to adaptive evolutionary forces very similar to hose that
\n\tselect for genes. That is, their variation is subject to selection
\n\tin the environment provided by human minds, communications channels,
\n\tand the vast collection of cooperating and competing memes that make
\n\tup human culture. The analogy is remarkably close. For example,
\n\tgenes in cold viruses that cause sneezes by irritating noses spread
\n\tthemselves by this route to new hosts and become more common in the
\n\tgene pool of a cold virus. Memes cause those they have successfully
\n\tinfected to spread the meme by both direct methods (proselytizing)
\n\tand indirect methods (writing). Such memes become more common in the
\n\tmeme pool.”<\/p>\n
In the title of this essay, I referred to memetics as a science, albeit one
\nin a very early and poorly developed stage. What does it take for a field
\nof study to deserve the name “science?” Without getting too rigorous about
\nthis question, two factors are of major importance here. First, does the
\nputative “science” explain a diversity of phenomena by a small number of
\nunderlying principles or laws or theories? In other words, a science is not
\nmerely a vast catalog of facts or case histories, although most sciences,
\nespecially the natural sciences, have gone through a stage of amassing such
\ndata before any patterns emerged with sufficient clarity to permit the
\nformulation of theories which would account for large portions of those data.
\nSecond, are these laws or theories testable? To be testable, a theory must
\nmake predictions about phenomena which have not previously been considered in
\ndevising the theory. If observations match the predictions, then the theory
\nstands. If the observations differ from the predictions, then the theory
\nmust be either modified until it fits both the old data and the new, or
\ndiscarded.<\/p>\n
The science of information theory, which has developed during the past half
\ncentury as an outgrowth of the needs of the telecommunications industries;
\nthe cryptographic needs of military services; and the burgeoning field of
\nartificial intelligence research, basically says that, regardless of the
\nspecific content of information a message may have, and regardless of the
\nparticular method of encoding that message, certain universal laws apply to
\nthe copying and transmission of the information. If memetics has any
\nsubstance, then, we should expect that phenomena observed among genes should
\nhave analogs among memes. Let us consider briefly then a few of the things
\nwe understand in the biosphere and see if there are analogs in the
\nideosphere. Consider first epidemiology, the study of the transmission of
\npathogens, disease-causing microorganisms.<\/p>\n
It is fairly easy to find phenomena in the propagation of memes in the
\nideosphere analogous to the spread of pathogens. While some pathogens can
\ninfect only by direct contact (such as most sexually transmitted diseases),
\nothers are usually transmitted by intermediaries, usually called “vectors.”
\nThe Girl Scouts in my earlier example were infected with malaria transmitted
\nby mosquitos which had previously bitten the Vietnam veteran while he as in
\nthe throes of a malarial relapse.<\/p>\n
Similarly, some religious memes are very difficult to transmit except by the
\nforce of personal example at close quarters. Other memes, particularly those
\nof a commercial nature, like “Things go better with Coke,” are very
\neffectively transmitted by the vectors of modern electronic media.<\/p>\n
Occasionally, a pathogen may be successfully suppressed in most places, but
\nsurvive in a few tiny pockets or reservoirs until the large environment is
\nonce more susceptible to infection. Tuberculosis is one such disease;
\nreservoirs of the bacillus can survive among the fringes of society or even
\nin tiny calcified spots within a particular person, who will show no
\nsymptoms of the disease until his or her immunological resistance is
\nweakened by malnutrition or another disease. Most of the intellectual and
\nesthetic memes of classical Greece were “lost” for a millennium, surviving
\nonly in tiny reservoirs in the monastic communities of Ireland until the
\nRenaissance made it possible for these memes to again infect significant
\nnumbers of people.<\/p>\n
A correct understanding of some of the mechanisms involved can be very
\nimportant to survival of human genes. Thus, for example, human cultures
\nhad little or no success in combatting epidemics of the plague, smallpox,
\nor malaria, to name a few, while the dominant meme (which survived for over
\nfive centuries in Western civilization) of the miasma theory of diseases
\nheld sway. With the advent of the germ theory (a meme which corresponds
\nmore closely to reality), quarantine measures, innoculation and immunization,
\nand suppression of vectors (like rates, mosquitos, or contaminated water
\nsupplies) finally enabled human genes to compete more successfully against
\nthe genes of the germs.<\/p>\n
A major problem in the United States today is drug abuse among teenagers
\nand young adults. The growth curves for numbers of drug abusers have the
\nsame shape as the curves for influenza epidemics or for AIDS, and efforts
\nup to now in the war against drugs have been about as successful as were
\npublic health measures based on the miasma theory. The drug-abuse meme,
\nsince it is particularly prevalent among teenagers and young adults and
\nsince it increases mortality among these individuals, reduces the survival
\nand reproduction of human genes. If we are to make headway in the war on
\ndrugs, we must understand the characteristics of the drug-abuse meme;
\nclearly identify its vectors; and find ways to immunize those populations
\nat risk of infection.<\/p>\n
Later in this essay I will return to examining some of these
\nepidemiological analogies, including issues of susceptibility and resistance
\nto infection; possibilities of immunization against particularly nasty
\nmemes; and some of the strategies used by memes to increase their infectivity.
\nNow, however, I would like to discuss the concept of competition among memes.<\/p>\n
If memes are only ideas in our heads, and our minds can hold unbelievably
\nlarge quantities of information, why would memes have to compete? Simply
\nbecause the amount of time and attention a human can spend on efforts to
\npropagate memes is limited. Most of the external channels used to spread
\nmemes are also limited resources, whether they be air time on radio or
\ntelevision, shelf space in a book store or library, or column inches in a
\nmagazine or newspaper. Moreover, some memes by their very nature attempt
\nto discredit other memes; still other groups of memes are self-reinforcing.
\nThus we should expect that most competitive strategies used by genes in the
\nbiosphere will also be observed in use by memes as they compete in the
\nideosphere.<\/p>\n
How does a new gene initially become sufficiently common, even if it is
\nstill in the minority among genes competing for a particular niche in the
\ngene pool, to survive over many generations? If the gene is dominant
\nover its immediate alternatives, then the traits of the survival machine
\nwhich it encodes will promptly be subjected to selective pressures. If the
\nnew gene has a competitive advantage, it will likely spread steadily through
\nits gene pool. If, on the other hand, it is a recessive gene, it can spread
\neasily in the early stages, free of selective pressures until enough bodies
\ncarry the gene that some offspring will inherit the recessive gene from both
\nparents, and the new genetic trait is actually expressed in the body of the
\noffspring, becoming subject to selective pressures. If the new gene is
\nharmful, selection will keep a ceiling on the fraction of the living
\npopulation carrying that gene.<\/p>\n
But a seriously harmful gene can become prevalent under certain specialized
\nconditions, namely, if a small gene pool (that is, a small population of
\nsurvival machines carrying a group of genes) is isolated from most of the
\ncompetitive forces which would hinder that gene’s propagation through the
\ngene pool. Then in a modest number of generations the new gene could become
\nendemic. If this population carrying the deleterious gene is now brought
\nback into contact with the larger population from which it originally
\nsplintered, the results can be disastrous.<\/p>\n
Such as been the case several times in recent history with some extreme
\nreligious cults. Jim Jones’ People’s Temple cult was such a case. A basic
\nmeme for Christianity mixed together with the meme for Marxism ricocheted
\naround among a small group of people who deliberately isolated themselves
\n>from the general meme pool of American culture. Social and intellectual
\ncontact with the outside was discouraged; other memes were attacked and
\ndiscredited by the leadership of the cult. Lacking competitive pressures
\n>from more standard religious and cultural memes, the People’s Temple meme
\nevolved into ever more bizarre forms. Fleeing to Guyana, the cult became
\nstill more ingrown and bizarre, until renewed contact from outside led to
\nthe collapse both of the meme itself and of the genes carried by 911
\nmembers of the cult and by four outsiders, including Congressman Ryan of
\nSan Francisco. The Rajneesh cult is another more recent and somewhat less
\nextreme example of this pattern.<\/p>\n
Lest I give you the impression that all memes are dangerous to the
\ngenetic survival of humans and other gentlebeings, let me give a few quick
\nexamples of benign and beneficial memes. Many commercial products are
\ntangible embodiments of memes; most of these are benign, since the most
\nvirulent are quickly eliminated by regulatory agencies or civil lawsuits.
\nHula hoops, pet rocks, and frisbees were memes deliberately designed by
\ntheir inventors to propagate rapidly. Like many genetically engineered
\nmicrobes (such as those used today to produce insulin and other
\npharmaceutical products), these memes are reasonably successful in a
\ntailored environment, but do not have great longevity in the “wild.” Pet
\nrocks were highly successful as long as they were highly advertised and
\npromoted, and as long as a large population which had not read the Owner’s
\nInstruction Manual could be found. After that, the meme lost its vigor.
\nOther benign to slightly harmful memes include rumors about media starts,
\nsuperstitions, and chain letters.<\/p>\n
Beneficial memes include the taming of fire; the ideas of cultivating food
\nplants and of herding animals; the notion of antisepis in medicine and
\nsurgery; and writing and reading. One important meme in American culture
\n(to which we shall return a little later) is the idea of tolerance. During
\nthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the United States was a country of
\nimmigration. Immigrants came from every country in Europe as well as from
\nparts of Africa, Asia, and South America, all speaking different languages;
\nobserving different customs of dress, behavior, and diet; practicing different
\nreligions; and using different styles of non-verbal communication. While
\nconflict was at times inevitable among these groups, in a surprisingly short
\ntime, it became apparent that the notion of live and let live required less
\nenergy and effort than did the competing meme of forced conversion. Not only
\nwas this approach more beneficial in terms of personal effort, but it proved
\nto be economically productive as well, to accept and adopt individual memes
\n>from the meme-complexes of other immigrant groups and combine them with
\nelements of one’s own ethnic meme-complex. By the end of the nineteenth
\ncentury, tolerance was publicly recognized as an important civic virtue in
\nAmerica.<\/p>\n
To be sure, the meme of tolerance is still in competition with the memes of
\nracial supremacy and jingoism. But a number of memes active in the legal
\nsystem strongly support the meme of tolerance and inhibit its competitors.
\n(Note how paradoxical this is: the meme of tolerance accepts help from
\ncertain intolerant memes!)<\/p>\n
Let me turn now to the category of memes or meme-complexes commonly known
\nas religious beliefs or creeds. No one knows how the meme of belief in
\nGod originated; indeed, it probably arose independently many times. Why
\nshould such a meme arise and flourish in human meme pools? To answer this
\nquestion by saying that God revealed Himself to us in various times and ways
\ndoes not really suffice. Even a believer can see that that is circular
\nreasoning: the only out is to recognize that a leap of faith is required to
\naccept that God exists. That leap transcends pure reason, but it is not
\nincompatible with reason. Just as it is possible and reasonable to accept
\nboth the meme of biological evolution and the meme of an initial act of
\ncreation by a Creator who built the laws of mathematics and physics in such
\na way as to make the appearance of life inevitable, so is it possible to
\naccept the idea that human brains and minds have evolved structures or
\nprograms for belief in things unseen and unprovable.<\/p>\n
In fact, some evidence that just such a structure exists in our brains comes
\n>from split-brain research. Michael Gazzaniga describes one such experiment
\nin his book The Social Brain. Because part of each eyeball’s visual field
\nis connected to the brain hemisphere on the same side as the eyeball, and
\npart is connected to the opposite hemisphere, it is possible to direct
\nvisual images exclusively to one or the other hemisphere of the brain. Some
\nbrain lesions destroy the neurological connections between the two
\nhemispheres, so the two halves of the brain act essentially independently.
\nSince the speech center is located almost exclusively in the left hemisphere,
\nsuch a patient can report verbally on activities in the left hemisphere, but
\nnot in the right side. Gazzaniga presented each side of the brain in some of
\nhis patients with a simple conceptual problem. Special viewing equipment
\nprojected a picture of a claw to the left side and a snow scene to the right
\nside. A variety of cards were then placed in front of the subject who was
\nasked verbally (via the ears, which feed each hemisphere directly) to point
\nwith each hand at a card matching what he had seen. The correct response for
\nthe claw was a picture of a chicken; for the snow scene, a shovel. Gazzaniga
\nwrites:<\/p>\n
\t“After the two pictures are flashed to each half-brain, the subjects
\n\tare required to point to the answers. A typical response is that of
\n\tP.S., who pointed to the chicken with his right hand and the shovel
\n\twith his left. After his response, I asked him, ‘Paul, why did
\n\tyou do that?’ Paul looked up and without a moment’s hesitation said
\n\tfrom his left hemisphere, ‘Oh, that’s easy. The chicken claw goes
\n\twith the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.'”<\/p>\n
Here was the left half-brain having to explain why the left hand was pointing
\nto the shovel when the only picture (the left half-brain) saw was a claw.
\nThe left half-brain is not privy to what the right half-brain saw because of
\nthe brain’s disconnection. Yet the patient’s body was doing something. Why
\nwas the left hand pointing to the shovel? The left-brain’s cognitive system
\nneeded a theory and instantly supplied one that made sense given the
\ninformation it had on this particular task…<\/p>\n
This mechanism in the brain, which appears to overlap the speech center, may
\nbe called an “inference engine:” given limited information, it leaps to some
\nsort of initially plausible explanation for phenomena the brain must handle.
\nSuch a mechanism has obvious survival value if it can suggest that the
\nrustling in the bushes behind you might be a large predator.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, as Gazzaniga’s example shows, the inference engine will
\nwring blood from a stone: you can count on it to manufacture causal
\nrelations whether or not they exist. Nor does it seem to be able to tell
\nwhen it doesn’t have enough data. Given an increasingly complex world, the
\ninference engine is more and more likely to generate stuff having the quality
\nof National Enquirer headlines. Memes originating in this way can be weeded
\nout by exercise of a fairly modern meme complex, the meme complex forming the
\nfoundation of modern science, a healthy degree of skepticism. “What’s the
\nevidence?” this meme complex asks. Actually, we should call this a metameme,
\nsince it is a meme about memes.<\/p>\n
Thus the human mind has a need for explanations or theories about its
\nperceived reality. Given the complexity of mind which has extensive and
\ndetailed memory and vivid imagination, the ability to conceive of times past
\nand future as well as present, and to foresee the death of the self,
\nexplanations are called for. Given the existence of evil and death, the
\ninference engine seeks meaning. Religious meme complexes (frequently
\nincluding such memes as belief in God, belief in an after-life and an
\nimmortal soul, belief in rewards or punishments in the here-after) satisfy
\nthe need for explanations or theories about these cosmic issues, which may
\nbe sufficient explanation for the prevalence and persistence of these memes
\nin human culture.<\/p>\n
Related meme complexes are those of political belief systems. To some
\nextent, these overlap some or all of the meme-space occupied by religious
\nmeme complexes insofar as they, too, attempt to explain good and evil
\nwithin human affairs and give meaning and purpose to activities in the human
\nsphere. For people who have little power or influence, political theories
\ncan explain why they are so unfortunate.<\/p>\n
Let me return now to some issues I mentioned in passing. Can we predict
\nwhat sorts of brains will be more or less susceptible to infection by a
\nparticular meme” Can we immunize people against infection by more
\npernicious memes? Can particular memes be modified to make them more
\ninfective? A few observations suggest some lines of inquiry and
\ninvestigation. Although the gene itself was unknown until Gregor Mendel’s
\nexperiments on sweet peas near the end of the last century, farmers and
\nanimal breeders had a practical, intuitive grasp of genetics and evolution
\nby selection thousands of years ago. Similarly, advertising agencies and
\npolitical propagandists have been putting analogous concepts into practice
\nfor a long time, despite lack of the meme metameme.<\/p>\n
Infection by the memes of television advertising is more likely among
\ninexperienced, uneducated, or unsophisticated individuals. Children are more
\nlikely to catch these infections than adults; highly educated individuals who
\nhave previously been infected to some degree by the skepticism meme are much
\nmore resistant. A strongly developed sense of humor also appears to confer a
\nhigh degree of resistance, perhaps because humor and skepticism are related
\nby way of irony.<\/p>\n
What about religious or political memes? Note first that most religious
\nmeme complexes are mutually exclusive: one cannot simultaneously adhere to
\nGreek Orthodoxy and to polytheistic Hinduism, albeit hybridization between
\nseveral seemingly incompatible religions is possible. (On the other hand,
\nit is possible to subscribe to several of the Asian religions simultaneously:
\nit is possible to be a Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist at once, for
\nexample.) Political meme complexes, as I mentioned before, seem to occupy
\nsimilar locations in our mental landscapes. Patty Hearst, who had been
\nexposed only superficially to either Christianity or to the American civic
\nreligion, had a near-vacuum in that space. So we should not be surprised
\nthat intense personal exposure to the far-fringe political belief system
\nof the Symbionese Liberation Army successfully infected her with a rather
\nbizarre meme complex, one which had very little genetic survivability, since
\nmost of that group died in a firefight and conflagration in Los Angeles
\nabout a year after she was initially kidnapped.<\/p>\n
During the Korean War, American prisoners of war in North Korean prison
\ncamps were subjected to intense brainwashing procedures. Many prisoners
\ncracked; others did not. The only consistent difference between those
\nwho did and those who did not succumb was the degree to which they had been
\ninfected with the traditional religious beliefs and\/or traditional American
\nvalues, i.e., belief in the American civic religion. An important exception
\nwas POW’s who were “True Believers” in Eric Hoffer’s sense. Most of the
\nPOW’s who actually defected to North Korea had such a personality. It is
\ninteresting to note, however, that the True Believer personality usually has
\na poorly developed sense of humor.<\/p>\n
In the present century, two major meme complexes in the political sphere
\nare in active competition. Make no mistake: the conflict between the West
\nand the Sino-Soviet bloc is not over physical resources such as land
\nor petroleum; neither is it about weapons systems or trade items. It is a
\nbattle between competing memes for survival and replication in the minds of
\nhuman beings. At the cores of the respective meme complexed lie Western
\ndemocracy and Marxist-Leninism, respectively, and it is these memes which I
\nwish to discuss now.<\/p>\n
The Marxist-Leninist meme complex has to date been highly successful when
\nviewed from the perspective of memetics rather than economics, I have already
\nreferred to the role of Lenin and a handful of his companions who arrived at
\nthe Finland Station in St. Petersburg in April 1917 and successfully captured
\ncontrol of the government within eight months. It is worth looking at some
\nof the competitive strategies the Marxist-Leninist meme (MLM for short) has
\nused to achieve this success.<\/p>\n
Many of these techniques are directly analogous to techniques in the
\nbiosphere. Like the common cold virus and the AIDS virus, the MLM frequently
\nchanges its outer appearance to prevent immunological systems from immediately
\nrecognizing it and combatting it. Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega, for
\nexample, pretended to be patriotic liberators; once in power, they shed their
\nsheep’s clothing to pursue the original purposes of the MLM. Like the
\npenicillin bacterium, the MLM emits toxins that impede the replication of
\ncompeting memes: secret police or Red Guards harass, imprison, or kill
\ncarriers of competing memes: secret police or Red Guards harass, imprison,
\nor kill carriers of competing memes. Like the AIDS virus, the MLM improves
\nits chances of success by weakening the immunological systems of its targets
\nby an extensive disinformation and propaganda machine. (In the Winter 1989
\nissue of GLOBAL AFFAIRS, John Lenczowski, _The Soviet Union and the United
\nStates: Myths, Realities, Maxims_ makes a strong case that the current era
\nof glasnost and perestroika is one more cycle of deliberate strategic
\ndeception.)<\/p>\n
Like retroviruses which coopt the genes of their hosts to make copies of
\nthe retroviruses themselves instead of whatever proteins those genes were
\nintended to manufacture, the MLM seizes control of the machinery for
\ntransmission and replication of memes: radio, television, and the press are
\ntotally coopted, and other channels (such as mimeograph machines and
\ntelephones) are restricted or closely monitored. Lenin was so successful in
\nsuch a short time because the German Foreign Ministry secretly funded his
\npropaganda campaign to the tune of some 50 million gold marks or more,
\nequivalent to a few hundred million dollars today. (See Michael Pearson,
\n_The Sealed Train: Lenin’s Eight-Month Journey from Exile to Power_,
\nNew York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1975.)<\/p>\n
In order to lodge itself more firmly in the mental space occupied by
\nreligious meme complexes, not only does the MLM actively suppress standard
\nreligions, but it takes on some of the trappings of such religions, endowing
\nthe Party leaders with godlike attributes and offering a Marxist-Leninist
\nvision of the future colored by a Heaven-like mystical aura.<\/p>\n
Let me turn now to the meme complex of the West. Democratic institutions,
\nsome variation of capitalism, and significant personal liberty are the
\ntraditional values attributed to the West, but one other piece of the complex
\nis especially important in this discussion, namely, the meme of tolerance.<\/p>\n
The meme of tolerance evolved in America under conditions of partial
\nisolation: relatively small doses of outside memes kept coming in, and
\ncould be absorbed and assimilated into a larger, fairly stable, meme pool.
\nBut the American meme pool was not being tested overseas against other large
\nand fairly stable meme pools. Thus the tolerance meme was not exposed to
\ncompetitive pressures in the global ideosphere until the middle of this
\ncentury; it is not clear whether or not it is a “dominant” or a “recessive”
\nmeme; and it is not clear what its effect on the competitive survivability of
\nthe meme complex of American culture will be in this larger arena.<\/p>\n
Note that in its nineteenth century form, the meme of tolerance did not
\nassert that all meme complexes were created equal. To allow other memes to
\ncompete freely in the American ideosphere was all the tolerance meme stood
\nfor; it did not in any way inhibit the meme that the American political
\nsystem was preferable to any other. In recent decades, a mutated version of
\nthe tolerance meme seems to have become more prevalent in the United States.
\nIn this form, the meme asserts that cultural and political meme complexes are
\nof equal worth; in particular, the Soviet MLM complex and the Western
\ndemocracy meme complex are held to be “morally equivalent.” Judged by the
\nvalues of the American cultural meme complex, however, a meme complex such
\nas the MLM in which intolerance is inextricably embedded is clearly NOT of
\nequal worth.<\/p>\n
It would seem at the very least that the mutated version of the American
\ntolerance meme weakens the immunological capacity of American culture to
\nresist the MLM. It is even possible that the political-cultural meme
\ncomplex of the Western democracies contains the seeds of its own destruction,
\nnot in the sense in which Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted, but in the sense
\nof memetics.<\/p>\n
Can anything be done to immunize our populations against infection by the
\nMLM? Simple anti-Communist hysteria is inadequate and, given the tolerance
\nmeme (either in its conventional or mutated forms), is even counterproductive.
\nGreater education in the metameme of skepticism would certainly help. Renewed
\nemphasis in the schools on the benefits of traditional American values would
\nbe expected to help, as would cultivation of adherence to traditional,
\nmainline religions. (How the latter can be achieved with the framework of
\nthe American cultural system is difficult to see.)<\/p>\n
The outcome of this competition between the meme complexes of the East and
\nthe West is of vital concern for the next few generations of the survival
\nmachines in which human genes are carried.<\/p>\n
Is there any substance to memetics? Can it be placed on a sound scientific
\nfooting, able to make predictions? If so, applied memetics raises important
\nethical questions within the framework of the Western meme complex, as the
\ndangers of deliberate manipulation of the general meme pool for personal
\npower would be very real. Moreover, adherents of the Soviet MLM would
\nhave no hesitation about using such a science to further the spread of the
\nMLM at the expense of the Western democratic meme.<\/p>\n
Memetics is still at a very primitive stage. Like biology in the eighteenth
\ncentury, the emphasis is necessarily on gathering reams of data and forming
\nvery tentative hypotheses. The formulation of universal principles may yet
\nbe years away. Indeed, it is possible that the entire concept may be
\nintellectually and scientifically bankrupt. But in the meanwhile, it
\nnonetheless provides an interesting framework for looking at social and
\npolitical movements. Join the fun!<\/p>\n
========================================================<\/p>\n
Brin, David, “The Dogma of Otherness,” Analog Science
\nFiction\/Science Fact, April 1986.<\/p>\n
Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford
\nUniversity Press, 1976.<\/p>\n
Gazzaniga, Michael, The Social Brain.<\/p>\n
Hofstadter, Douglas R., Metamagical Themas: Questing
\nfor the Essence of Mind and Pattern. New York: Basic
\nBooks, 1985; New York: Bantam Books, 1986. Chapter 3,
\n“On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures.”<\/p>\n
Henson, Keith, “Memetics: The Science of Information
\nViruses,” Analog Science Fiction\/Science Fact, August
\n1987; reprinted in Whole Earth Review, Winter 1987.<\/p>\n
Minsky, Marvin, The Society of Mind. New York: Simon
\nand Schuster, 1985, 1986.<\/p>\n
Monod, Jacques, Chance and Necessity: An essay on the
\nnatural philosophy of modern biology. Translated by
\nAustryn Wainhouse. New York: Vintage Books, i971.<\/p>\n
Pearson, Michael, The Sealed Train: Lenin’s Eight Month
\nJourney From Exile to Power. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
\nSons, 1975.<\/p>\n
