MEMETICS by Jack Hardy (c) Copyright 1985 Jack Hardy A meme is basically an idea with cultural baggage onboard. Just as a genetic creation, a meme can be said to grow, remain much the same, mutate out of recognition or even disappear. A common reaction to the word 'meme', is to suggest simply using the word 'idea'. However, there is a difference. A meme seems to have a life of it's own for one thing. It appears to act as if independent of ourselves. A meme has an arc of existence, that once formed, is easily resurrected and rests upon our vast psyche as a plate resting upon a table. Only a few disparate and apparently unconnected minds are required to support a meme, similar to just a few table molecules actually supporting a plate. Only a few are in direct contact, whilst a bazillion others are in it's shadow and amenable to it. Should one mind, or molecule, be removed, another will readily support it. In sociological terms, this is why a gang can't be suppressed by taking known members out. Or a church for that matter. Memetics postulates that roles and even unwitting allegiances to memes, are transferable. Let's take an idea such as 'sunflowers'. Our idea matches the reality, much as a word acts as a verbal sign for an object. Then, along comes a Van Gogh, and he gives us another interpretation of sunflowers, which adds to our cultural store, if not our understanding. Suppose further, that sunflowers become associated with certain religious ceremonies, or general stories, or become mass packaged as edible seeds. The meme is growing. The basic idea is accruing layers of cultural meaning and significance. It is a snowball rolling down the hill of human experience and belief. When a meme has a range of connotation and mental significance, it can be said to have a `body' of meaning. It has started to mean much the same to many people, and this minimum of consensus allows it to be conveyed to others. The meme can be likened to the appearance of a crystal, whose first crystallization proceeds slowly, but once complete can seem to act as a template for future examples. The new example is a blueprint for future clones. Thus, subsequent crystals form more rapidly, and in the world of memes, new ones are more easily accepted. A rat learns a maze and an unrelated rat almost seems to be guided by it. A child can adopt a parent's mannerisms or a profession so completely as to assume the mantle, but they don't have to be geographically or even genetically related. Any apprentice can be said to be memetically related. The astounding thing about memetics, is that some skills and beliefs don't have to be learned, but can be achieved simply by the existence of other or prior examples. Just as with the meme of `greatness', some people are born with one, some achieve it and some find it thrust upon them. The infamous 100th Monkey Effect, whereby a critical mass of people are needed to power an idea into the wider community, has some relevance here. Although this may help explain why some ideas catch hold and spread like wildfire, in memetics, it isn't necessary that all ideas, fads or beliefs must grow continuously. Not everyone has to be an adherent of the meme. Indeed, a truly successful meme requires it's polar opposite. I'll come back to this shortly. I first came across the term `meme' in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book, 'The Selfish Gene'. This was a hypothesis linking concepts to genetics, in order to explain evolutionary progression. I've since run across this word in an occasional article, so aren't completely sure who first coined the term. Though I'm assured it has a relevant linguistic pedigree from Greek or Latin roots, and possibly from Hebrew. A fashion is a good example of a short-lived meme, such as `Punk'. Initially, it may have meant green hair, safety pins in the nose and general obnoxiousness. A growing catalogue of music and slogans and behavior, allows other characteristics to become prominent such as mohair sweaters or sniffing glue. There is no verbal definition of what is or isn't punk, but over the years, a common consensus develops. Almost everyone can then describe a particular style or action as punk without necessarily being able to pin it down beforehand. We can't always fully describe something, but we know it when we run across it. The points where this new meme is created are PXF nodes, usually only findable in retrospect. In the example of `punk', we could probably pinpoint the London club scene and the wider field of unemployed, bored teenagers. When we examine the past, the ironies clustered around these PXF nodes then seem obvious, though only artists are usually conscious of any memetic gestation. A fashion shows the arc of existence, whereby an optimum or numeric peak of adherents are reached. As that meme then declines into unfashionability, another style arises. The meme still exists for ready resurrection, and the existence of examples in books and film and other arts, ensure that the meme does not have to be grown as a crystal, all over again. There are always a few living examples that bodily encapsulate the memes, much as a few wandering priests of a long gone religion incorporate druidism. The high water mark of all fashions leaves a few victims forever beached. Memetics is about more than charting the heyday of a certain fashion or belief. It is able to explain evolutionary jumps as the action of psyche upon genetic material. This seems to be an incredible claim of metaphysical Lamarckianism, but examples are all around us. A very basic one would be dog breeding, in which certain characteristics are brought to the fore, by willful manipulation of the breeder. To a lesser extent, any pet reflecting the characteristics of it's owner shows this. A more esoteric example would be a simple housefly that sits on a door. Though it may simply be attracted to a certain smell, it anticipates the opening of the door, and sits there waiting for the door to be opened, so as to fly quickly inside. These are rather banal examples of how our mental processes impinge upon other life. If we as humans had our consciousness, but the body of a fly, our wants and desires would create an evolutionary jump to give us the physical attributes to open that door. More than other life forms being amenable to memetic manipulation, inanimate objects can also be imbued with certain characteristics. This may seem to be verging upon the realm of magic and the fantastic, but we do it all the time. We don't have to use a primitive fetish object as an example; think of the American flag. Although non-living, many people would value it above that of life itself. Burn one in public, and you risk an attack from innumerable patriots, many who value your existence as less worthy than that of your own personally owned flag. Think also of a symbol such as a swastika, and the emotionally charged reactions that can conjure up. When a meme devolves upon a newly created inanimate object, it is attended by irony and coincidence. This is the mark of a PXF node, a creative flux that could be a simple interference pattern from memetic resonances. An artist is a living embodiment of a PXF node who accrues irony and coincidence as if singled out for a special mission. An inanimate object can so impinge upon our experience, that it can be said to have taken on a life of it's own. An Egyptian mummy and a curse would be an example here. A more modern one would be the abortion pill, `RU486' in that it's pronunciation is a homonymal coincidence of the phrase, "Are you for eighty-six?" The term eighty-six here, has a cultural connotation of banishment or nixing, as in being 'eighty-sixed'. These are tantalizing glimpses into memetic theory. To accept irony and coincidence as indicators of memetic PXF nodes, almost requires a leap of faith that no amount of verbiage can prove. Unless you personally have a daily procession of `connectedness' in your own experience, it will ever be dubious for you as to how memetics can explain everything. Memetics itself, is the subject of a self-reflexive paradox, in that it's own existence as an intellectual theory, will not be accepted, and then almost overnight everyone will understand it. You either get it or you won't. However, it does explain how discoveries can happen simultaneously, and are to be expected. Because of the paraplane of the human psyche, even widely separated geographical locations exhibit similar cross cultural parallels. Thus, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Central Americans may have had widely differing cultures and justifications, but all built pyramids nonetheless. Cultural evolution may have to follow rigidly defined tracks because of our biological similarity, but some of the similarity in the details are truly astounding. Last century, researchers in Mexico such as Edward Kingsborough believed he had found the lost tribes of Israel not just for the similar rites of purification, sacrifice and circumcision etc., but for the linguistic echoes, a shared invocation. This commonality of phrasing seemed too close to be merely a coincidence, and spurred research into deducing an old testament exodus and exile. Under memetics, such coincidences are to be simply expected. Unfortunately, memetic leaps often seem to be tied to a cost of human life. Death garners a quota that may empower or may simply be a concurrence of human activity. It isn't too hard to parallel stone-age cultures on this model, and consider that a blood sacrifice propitiates the success of a new venture. Take the notion of air travel, for instance. How many lives have been lost before we have reached the relative safety of scheduled departures? Or think of space travel as a notion that requires the death of several astronauts before accomplishing an attainable reality. There is an ongoing cost of any endeavor, though it may appear that the spread of a meme can be linked to a fuel that consumes. The proponents of a new meme, be it drug consciousness, fashion lifestyle or exploration are putting themselves at great personal risk, whereas acceptors of an already established meme seem to muddle on in blissful ignorance as a long forgotten stone age tribe. The encapsulators of an old meme continue as ever until something as severe as a famine forces their demise. Have you ever noticed how someone can almost accidentally back into what then becomes a lifetime career or hobby? It is an example of a meme taking hold of the organic. A guy helps a friend fix a car, and soon finds himself a mechanic for life, or on the flimsiest chance of a meeting, two people find each other. Ideas can put a spin on reality. There's a memetic resonance that brings people and things together, a destiny. The customs officer and the smuggler are thrust together in ways that each can pick the other out of a crowd, without knowing exactly how. Someone once said that great men sit on the shoulders of others It is surely true also of simpler types, of criminals and craftspeople. An artisan of the past helps fashion the tools of the future. These actions of the future are like acting out roles, not too different from wearing an old set of clothes. An actor would be the first to admit that they literally become somebody else for a time. Our efforts are empowered by previous efforts along the same lines. This can be noticeably felt, with the memes of `good' and `evil'. Once embarked upon, our paths seem accelerated by forces outside of us. It can seem as if a random bullet will hit an innocent target, and we find ourselves propelled along a route that we had no conscious intent of following. This isn't intended to be a religious explication, though heaven and hell have a memetic reality. Only memetics can explain how a wolf could lie down with a lamb. There's someone for everyone in this world. Each town is a microcosm of the whole, and each holds your memetic equivalent. You will find echoes of your friends and relatives, and even enemies all across this globe. This memetic world has irony for a governor. So it is, that that which we strive for, can become ever more distant. The irony of everything, is what frustrates some of our endeavors, and prevents a meme from ever being controllable. This irony is what bounds together opposites. It wraps one entwined with another as a kernel contains the nut. Thus it is, that a terrible murder can erupt from the most placid community. Or that some unintended good will be the consequence of a horribly evil act. This is how memes inoculate themselves and are preserved though in the midst of their contrary goals. You know the saying that `It's the exception which proves the rule'? Same thing with memes. A meme needs a few counterexamples to play off against the whole. Without them, a meme would grow and burst as a bubble, leaving no chance of a resurrection. All memes must have a chance to grow or decline, or else a totally static state would ensue. Even an absolutely monolithic society such as under Stalinism or National Fascism will still have the seedbeds of change. No matter how uniform a group may seem, there's always a few dissenters ready to seek dominance. Memetically, these few are always present, no matter how many purges are enacted. The meme might not even be embodied by a living rebel, but at the right moment, one will step forward and the revolution is on. Examples and counterexamples are almost a law of creation. Our roles are allotted to us by the roles already extant, and we reinforce or counter them as best we feel. Destiny may be better grasped on this model. You can accept memetics without exploring it's outer limits, but not if you wish to understand the ironies of our lives. Each generation has to act out it's triumphs and tragedies. That is why art from centuries ago, such as a Greek play, can still have relevance today. Our basic types and motivations affect human nature as much as they ever did. Every large family has one fit to be president, and one fit for the gallows. For every son or daughter that wears a parent's shoes, there to another that is a dire opposite. Memetics and irony stir this genetic mix of ours. My own genetic impinged by the memetic is my own living example of this theory. I can best explain it by using my own life to illuminate the lives of others. Though such a wild diary is far from a scientific paper, this will have to do for now. ************************************************