The meme is the latest addition to that old argument about nature versus nurture. To some it is an analogy which doesn’t bear scientific investigation, for others it is the multiplier effect allowing them to expand their work and apply for research support while they consider the broader significance and potential of this idea for a range of purposes.The very fact that the person who first posited the meme is the person providing a foreword for this book, shows how memes can be constructed to be what you want them to be, and therefore what they mean. It is reiteration of both practice and of interpretation which allow memes to exist. Yoko Ono once said: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” By picking up each other’s conversation and spreading it through their respective communities Blackmore and Dawkins are constructing the meme of the meme. They are monitoring whether they have yet created the critical mass for it to take on a life of its own – which genes do not appear to be able to do as they are body-bound, whereas the meme can detach from any specific body, and provided there is a means of communication between it and other bodies, can appear at great distances from the initiating meme producer.This pathway is similar to the practice within neuro-linguistic programming which aids the persistence of conditions by embedding reference to them in their denial, reversal and all manner of repetitions on a theme (notice how that word is so similar to meme?). It is a magician’s trick that creates a vacuum by creating so much attention around the space within which you wish the vacuum to exist, that you can make whatever is in that space seem to disappear.This is the way to deal with opposition. Ask any politician. Denial of great enough proportions in this way can even create a black hole into which all terms other than those one wants to explore disappear from the universe. That Dawkins himself refers to pyramid schemes (oh, there’s another similar word, is there a pattern arising here that might be a hidden meme?) as being dangerous forms of memes, before rapidly correcting himself to the neutrality of memes, as the neutrality of genes, and then saying the interpretation of their meaning is up to us and the use we put them to. All of this is of course the very process he is pointing out with the meme concept to begin with. Having given a name to this thing, I can now make everything I say from this point on reflect back to that concept, and so make that concept appear real until the moment within which others take it on board and confirm my opinion which I want them to carry on my behalf. When I convince enough people to carry it in some way, then it begins to have a momentum (or should that be momentum?) in its own right, and I have birthed the proof of its reality beyond my own individual dream for its existence. I just have to get people talking about it without them begin aware where it originated. I just have to be repetitive and persistent enough that people want to deny what I am saying, and their denial becomes the reinforcer which depersonalises it from my beginning. I just have to irritate and allow the processes of conflict to permeate subconsciously in the far more effective way it operates than consciousness.It helps enormously that there is so much technology out there to support such methods.Even I am now part of it, simply because I have decided to write book reviews about everything I read, whether I find any merit in their central messages or not. I don’t have to have anymore commitment to this particular meme than any other. I merely need my own motivating force to add to the pieces others put out there for me to stumble upon and incorporate into my own flow. I take it with me, and like any virus, it spreads.Interestingly, where genes are considered to be fixed identities in their own right, and replicated by the reversal mode of the formative RNA against which DNA pairs itself, memes are considered to only become memes by combination with enough other ‘like’ components to make them companions introducing each other to not-so-like companions where they can leave trace amounts of their influence, without having to replicate fully each and every time. This ability to act in a variations-on-a-theme (there it is again) way, which includes denial of the theme, refinement of the theme, inclusions and exclusions in specific studies and conversations over a period of time, makes the permeation of a meme into consciousness very appealing.But does that make it any more than a cosmic joke god is playing on us – even if that god is Richard Dawkins? Read this book and you may be able to draw your own conclusions. Or maybe you need to avoid it to do that, and reading this book will only allow you to draw the conclusions Richard Dawkins and his colleagues have lay out for you. You decide. Or not.(did I mention scheme? No, that’s too much like a conspiracy theory…)Enjoy.
If you want to criticise a book you can’t go too far wrong if you call it ‘reductionist’. As Steven Weinberg points out in his book, Dreams of a Final Theory it is odd that people should think that reductionism is the perfect one word put down for a theory – given how incredibly successful reductionism has proven in Physics.My problem is when a theory that might work quite well at one level of explanation is expanded to include other levels of explanation that do not have the same necessity behind them.Take Natural Selection as a case in point. How do we get from single celled organisms to elephants? That is an interesting question and one that is more or less fully answered by natural selection. This is such an incredibly successful answer that only those with their fingers in their ears screaming out ‘I’m not listening’ are unable to avoid it. But its success can also be a problem too.Time for a random image. Imagine you are falling from a plane and you have a parachute which you are going to open when you are a safe distance above the ocean, but not too soon so you miss out on the fun fall. So, you are just going to pull the cord when the ocean is a safe distance under you – right? Well, no. The problem is that the ocean is a fractal – it is identical or rather looks identical on every scale. So, all the way down the ocean actually looks exactly as it does at every other height. It might look the same, but the difference between 10,000 feet and ten feet will become very much more apparent to you if you haven’t opened your parachute before one rather than the other. Not all scales are the same, not all theories work at all scales, even if they look pretty much the same to the casual observer.Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene is one of those seminal books that many people have read and loved. I’ve read it, but didn’t really love it. Like Gould I had a problem with the idea that we are more or less machines fulfilling the wants and needs of our genes. Our genes are ‘replicators’ – things that want to make lots of copies of themselves – and we are forced by them to do stuff to make sure they get replicated. I can accept that this is partly true, although only partly, for as with Gould I don’t think genes are the right scale for an explanation of this kind. It is not genes that have sex, but organisms – and organisms are made up of many, many genes, not just one.At the very end of his book Dawkins comes up with the idea that culture seems to be spread in a way that is analogous to his idea of the spread of genes. The counterpart of the gene in culture is something he calls the meme (rhymes with dream). Blackmore takes this idea and goes a bit mad with it. She is a Buddhist, and that is important too, I think. I believe Buddhism is the religion of choice of many people who know nothing about it – you know, people who say things like, “Well, if I had to be religious I think I would be a Buddhist”. Personally, I would rather be a solipsist, but that might just be me. (Sorry, my attempt at subtle humour)Memes can be songs, ideas like e=mc2 or nursery rhymes. They are always things that get into your head and are hard to get back out again. Blackmore says there is only a certain amount of space in our heads, so there is competition for that space and successful memes are those that win out in the battle for that space. So, House is watched by millions, but some other show is not watched at all. Blackmore’s argument becomes an extreme version of Dawkins’s argument in The Selfish Gene. In the end she concludes that we are just a collection of memes, a memeplex, and our ‘self’ is an illusion created as much by these memes working together as anything else. This is pretty much straight Buddhism – 99% of everything we do is directed at the self, and there isn’t one. This negation of the self is seen by Blackmore as a liberation. I really like the idea of memes – I love it as a metaphor and I think it has much to say about how we live and learn in the world. But it is only a metaphor. Stretching it beyond this is pure (and not very helpful) reductionism. Culture is not Darwinian – you might be able to get it into that straight-jacket for a time, but force is what is needed to keep it there. Anyway, just because natural selection is wonderfully successful at explaining elephants is no reason why it should explain circuses. This is dull reductionism – not illuminating reductionism. As Searle says somewhere, if your theory makes you say something that is clearly silly, it might be time to look seriously at your theory. Saying ‘there is no self’ is a big statement – you are either going to have to really go out of your way to justify it, or really you shouldn’t be saying stuff like that in the first place.I really don’t think memetics will ever be a science of culture – but it will always be an interesting prism to glance through.
What do You think about The Meme Machine (2000)?
All of our brains for an environment where Memes (basically ideas) reproduce by being copied from person to person. Memes evolve and compete. Some dwindle (go out of fashion) some rapidly spread across the globe. This book is a solid introduction to Memes (which I believe are a useful way to think about human thought). I had high hopes based on a brilliant TED video by Susan Blackmore, but I enjoyed this book less than I expected.Early on the book makes many statements to counter arguments made by various critics of the theory of Memes. It seems overly defensive without actually countering the arguments very effectively (in my opinion). Also there are so many references to Meme explanations by Dawkins and Dennett that I almost wished I was reading one of their books.Later on Blackmore made various claims that (in my opinion) I felt might be true, but were not supported convincingly and explained well enough to be useful to me.For example, the whole idea of Memes rests on human's unique and powerful ability to pickup behavior through imitation. Blackmore talks a lot about our sense of "self" being a large "memeplex" (collection of mutually re-enforcing memes). How can I perceive (and hence "imitate") another person's sense of "self"? I was unconvinced.I do agree with the author that many, perhaps nearly all, of our thought processes are built on the huge collection of memes we've picked up throughout our lives. I also agree with the idea that some memes can be harmful (for example those that result in group suicide or group celibacy). But, I believed in those before reading the book, and I felt like the book could have done more to illustrate them with powerful examples and follow through with the implications.
—Bryan Jacobson
An incredibly insightful book on memetic theory. While it can be a bit dry at times, it is worth plodding through those parts to get to the really thought provoking parts. The author provides memetic theories for everything from the origins of language and our large brains to religion and the concept of self. I should note that many of these are her own theories, but she makes a convincing case for many. The two final chapters, regarding the existence of self, really make one ask the questions: What am I really? Do I really think the things I think I think? It is somewhat disturbing but enlightening and freeing at the same time. Good read!
—Amanda
The book helped me to understand memes and to think about cultures as meme-plexes. Blackmore defines a replicator as anything that can reproduce itself with random variations. She contends that science has proven that evolution of ever more complex organisms will always result once a replicator exists.Once humans evolved the the ability to remember and communicate ideas (memes), we became replicators. the carriers of memes. The plasticity of memory and the impossibility of perfect communication provides random variation and the necessary result of the evolution of memeplexes.If her contentions are correct, viewing cultures as evolutionary super-organisms, competing for survival, becomes a helpful and illuminating perspective in my curiosity about the evolution of human nature. I have found this to as an interesting perspective to think about simple processes such as teaching fly tying, to the much more the complex, such as and how to structure my IRA, Christianity vs. Islamism, and the organizational processes among guides and members of Humanist and Unitarian groups.
—Bill
