memetics.txt

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since it increases mortality among these individuals, reduces the survival
and reproduction of human genes.  If we are to make headway in the war on
drugs, we must understand the characteristics of the drug-abuse meme;
clearly identify its vectors; and find ways to immunize those populations
at risk of infection.

Later in this essay I will return to examining some of these
epidemiological analogies, including issues of susceptibility and resistance
to infection; possibilities of immunization against particularly nasty
memes; and some of the strategies used by memes to increase their infectivity.
Now, however, I would like to discuss the concept of competition among memes.

If memes are only ideas in our heads, and our minds can hold unbelievably
large quantities of information, why would memes have to compete?  Simply
because the amount of time and attention a human can spend on efforts to
propagate memes is limited.  Most of the external channels used to spread
memes are also limited resources, whether they be air time on radio or
television, shelf space in a book store or library, or column inches in a
magazine or newspaper.  Moreover, some memes by their very nature attempt
to discredit other memes; still other groups of memes are self-reinforcing.
Thus we should expect that most competitive strategies used by genes in the
biosphere will also be observed in use by memes as they compete in the
ideosphere.

How does a new gene initially become sufficiently common, even if it is
still in the minority among genes competing for a particular niche in the
gene pool, to survive over many generations?  If the gene is dominant
over its immediate alternatives, then the traits of the survival machine
which it encodes will promptly be subjected to selective pressures.  If the
new gene has a competitive advantage, it will likely spread steadily through
its gene pool.  If, on the other hand, it is a recessive gene, it can spread
easily in the early stages, free of selective pressures until enough bodies
carry the gene that some offspring will inherit the recessive gene from both
parents, and the new genetic trait is actually expressed in the body of the
offspring, becoming subject to selective pressures.  If the new gene is
harmful, selection will keep a ceiling on the fraction of the living
population carrying that gene.

But a seriously harmful gene can become prevalent under certain specialized
conditions, namely, if a small gene pool (that is, a small population of
survival machines carrying a group of genes) is isolated from most of the
competitive forces which would hinder that gene's propagation through the
gene pool.  Then in a modest number of generations the new gene could become
endemic.  If this population carrying the deleterious gene is now brought
back into contact with the larger population from which it originally
splintered, the results can be disastrous.

Such as been the case several times in recent history with some extreme
religious cults.  Jim Jones' People's Temple cult was such a case.  A basic
meme for Christianity mixed together with the meme for Marxism ricocheted
around among a small group of people who deliberately isolated themselves
>from the general meme pool of American culture.  Social and intellectual
contact with the outside was discouraged; other memes were attacked and
discredited by the leadership of the cult.  Lacking competitive pressures
>from more standard religious and cultural memes, the People's Temple meme
evolved into ever more bizarre forms.  Fleeing to Guyana, the cult became
still more ingrown and bizarre, until renewed contact from outside led to
the collapse both of the meme itself and of the genes carried by 911
members of the cult and by four outsiders, including Congressman Ryan of
San Francisco.  The Rajneesh cult is another more recent and somewhat less
extreme example of this pattern.

Lest I give you the impression that all memes are dangerous to the
genetic survival of humans and other gentlebeings, let me give a few quick
examples of benign and beneficial memes.  Many commercial products are
tangible embodiments of memes; most of these are benign, since the most
virulent are quickly eliminated by regulatory agencies or civil lawsuits.
Hula hoops, pet rocks, and frisbees were memes deliberately designed by
their inventors to propagate rapidly.  Like many genetically engineered
microbes (such as those used today to produce insulin and other
pharmaceutical products), these memes are reasonably successful in a
tailored environment, but do not have great longevity in the "wild."  Pet
rocks were highly successful as long as they were highly advertised and
promoted, and as long as a large population which had not read the Owner's
Instruction Manual could be found.  After that, the meme lost its vigor.
Other benign to slightly harmful memes include rumors about media starts,
superstitions, and chain letters.

Beneficial memes include the taming of fire; the ideas of cultivating food
plants and of herding animals; the notion of antisepis in medicine and
surgery; and writing and reading.  One important meme in American culture
(to which we shall return a little later) is the idea of tolerance.  During
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the United States was a country of
immigration.  Immigrants came from every country in Europe as well as from
parts of Africa, Asia, and South America, all speaking different languages;
observing different customs of dress, behavior, and diet; practicing different
religions; and using different styles of non-verbal communication.  While
conflict was at times inevitable among these groups, in a surprisingly short
time, it became apparent that the notion of live and let live required less
energy and effort than did the competing meme of forced conversion.  Not only
was this approach more beneficial in terms of personal effort, but it proved
to be economically productive as well, to accept and adopt individual memes
>from the meme-complexes of other immigrant groups and combine them with
elements of one's own ethnic meme-complex.  By the end of the nineteenth
century, tolerance was publicly recognized as an important civic virtue in
America.

To be sure, the meme of tolerance is still in competition with the memes of
racial supremacy and jingoism.  But a number of memes active in the legal
system strongly support the meme of tolerance and inhibit its competitors.
(Note how paradoxical this is: the meme of tolerance accepts help from
certain intolerant memes!)

Let me turn now to the category of memes or meme-complexes commonly known
as religious beliefs or creeds.  No one knows how the meme of belief in
God originated; indeed, it probably arose independently many times.  Why
should such a meme arise and flourish in human meme pools?  To answer this
question by saying that God revealed Himself to us in various times and ways
does not really suffice.  Even a believer can see that that is circular
reasoning:  the only out is to recognize that a leap of faith is required to
accept that God exists.  That leap transcends pure reason, but it is not
incompatible with reason.  Just as it is possible and reasonable to accept
both the meme of biological evolution and the meme of an initial act of
creation by a Creator who built the laws of mathematics and physics in such
a way as to make the appearance of life inevitable, so is it possible to
accept the idea that human brains and minds have evolved structures or
programs for belief in things unseen and unprovable.

In fact, some evidence that just such a structure exists in our brains comes
>from split-brain research.  Michael Gazzaniga describes one such experiment
in his book The Social Brain.  Because part of each eyeball's visual field
is connected to the brain hemisphere on the same side as the eyeball, and
part is connected to the opposite hemisphere, it is possible to direct
visual images exclusively to one or the other hemisphere of the brain.  Some
brain lesions destroy the neurological connections between the two
hemispheres, so the two halves of the brain act essentially independently.
Since the speech center is located almost exclusively in the left hemisphere,
such a patient can report verbally on activities in the left hemisphere, but
not in the right side.  Gazzaniga presented each side of the brain in some of
his patients with a simple conceptual problem.  Special viewing equipment
projected a picture of a claw to the left side and a snow scene to the right
side.  A variety of cards were then placed in front of the subject who was
asked verbally (via the ears, which feed each hemisphere directly) to point
with each hand at a card matching what he had seen.  The correct response for
the claw was a picture of a chicken; for the snow scene, a shovel.  Gazzaniga
writes:

	"After the two pictures are flashed to each half-brain, the subjects
	are required to point to the answers.  A typical response is that of
	P.S., who pointed to the chicken with his right hand and the shovel
	with his left.  After his response, I asked him, 'Paul, why did
	you do that?' Paul looked up and without a moment's hesitation said
	from his left hemisphere, 'Oh, that's easy.  The chicken claw goes
	with the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.'"

Here was the left half-brain having to explain why the left hand was pointing
to the shovel when the only picture (the left half-brain) saw was a claw.
The left half-brain is not privy to what the right half-brain saw because of
the brain's disconnection.  Yet the patient's body was doing something.  Why
was the left hand pointing to the shovel?  The left-brain's cognitive system
needed a theory and instantly supplied one that made sense given the
information it had on this particular task...

This mechanism in the brain, which appears to overlap the speech center, may
be called an "inference engine:" given limited information, it leaps to some
sort of initially plausible explanation for phenomena the brain must handle.
Such a mechanism has obvious survival value if it can suggest that the
rustling in the bushes behind you might be a large predator.

On the other hand, as Gazzaniga's example shows, the inference engine will
wring blood from a stone:  you can count on it to manufacture causal
relations whether or not they exist.  Nor does it seem to be able to tell
when it doesn't have enough data.  Given an increasingly complex world, the
inference engine is more and more likely to generate stuff having the quality
of National Enquirer headlines.  Memes originating in this way can be weeded
out by exercise of a fairly modern meme complex, the meme complex forming the
foundation of modern science, a healthy degree of skepticism.  "What's the
evidence?"  this meme complex asks.  Actually, we should call this a metameme,
since it is a meme about memes.

Thus the human mind has a need for explanations or theories about its
perceived reality.  Given the complexity of mind which has extensive and
detailed memory and vivid imagination, the ability to conceive of times past
and future as well as present, and to foresee the death of the self,
explanations are called for.  Given the existence of evil and death, the
inference engine seeks meaning.  Religious meme complexes (frequently
including such memes as belief in God, belief in an after-life and an
immortal soul, belief in rewards or punishments in the here-after) satisfy
the need for explanations or theories about these cosmic issues, which may
be sufficient explanation for the prevalence and persistence of these memes
in human culture.

Related meme complexes are those of political belief systems.  To some
extent, these overlap some or all of the meme-space occupied by religious
meme complexes insofar as they, too, attempt to explain good and evil
within human affairs and give meaning and purpose to activities in the human
sphere.  For people who have little power or influence, political theories
can explain why they are so unfortunate.

Let me return now to some issues I mentioned in passing.  Can we predict
what sorts of brains will be more or less susceptible to infection by a
particular meme"  Can we immunize people against infection by more
pernicious memes?  Can particular memes be modified to make them more