Storm on the Sea (artist: Schotel) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 


Today we shall discuss memes and what a model of human culture that employs the meme as its basic unit might imply. (I put a link to the Wikipedia article on memes at the bottom of this post for the keeners in the class.) 

The originator of the meme idea, Richard Dawkins, goes as far in some of his work as to argue that a meme may exist as an identifiable site of activity in a human brain, or in slightly different forms, in all the brains of all the humans who grasp a certain meme's concept or model or idea. 

How many people, for example, get a clear picture in their imaginations of a band of yellow or of a familiar yellow item in the real, sensory world when we say the word yellow? I know I see a band of yellow in a rainbow or a fresh daffodil, depending on the context in which the word occurs. If I am told that I can have the yellow M and M's in a box of those candies, I have no trouble finding them. The meme works. 

In a meme theorists' view, all ideas that we can possibly think can be broken down into collections of memes. Furthermore, memes must fight to survive in the neuro-space, and, more importantly, the cultural space in which they come into existence. All the time. We keep ideas if they prove useful.  

So what makes the idea/meme of a snake or an arrowleaf plant survive when one called pet rock does not? The answer is very plain. The arrowleaf plant is edible in all of its parts and in many parts of the world, all snakes are deadly. A meme/idea survives in the brains of individual humans and in the lore of a culture if it enables its carriers to survive a little more reliably than humans not carrying that meme. 

Every culture is made of thousands of memes kept in circulation by the people of that culture. Like a selfish gene, a selfish meme is one that drives its carriers to behave in ways that enable some of the carriers to survive, but more importantly, behave in ways that make the meme survive. 


   
                           
                                              library of Salamanca (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 



The giant memes are carried by millions down over centuries because they work. Democracy. Human rights. Courage. Wisdom. Freedom. Brotherly love. 

Yes, these giant memes have survival value for their carriers. Especially when they exist in complex equilibria in most of those thousands or millions of human minds that make up the medium in which the culture lives and breeds. 

This is the point of studying mythology. A people's myths contain their memes, and their memes will show you clearly how they lived in their place and time and why. 

Courage and wisdom are presented, in balance, so clearly in Achilles and Chiron, Arthur and Merlin, Glinda and Dorothy, Katniss and Haymitch and so many others that if they were to be any plainer, they would have to leap out and bite someone. 


                     

                                  Thomas Jefferson (artist: R. Peale) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Freedom and love are more recent conceptual experiments, but they are still clear. With these two, however, because they are so recent, we tend to see our examples in figures from history. And by recent, of course, I mean the last couple of thousand years. Courage and wisdom myth figures are much older. Churchill and Gandhi spring to my mind when I think of freedom and love. They are a balanced pair. Jefferson and Lincoln. Socrates and Jesus.  

We can't see memes. We never will see them. But we can't see atoms either. A model, concept, or meme is kept, or more precisely, survives in a culture if it equips its carriers to survive. 


                      

                             Abraham Lincoln (photo by A. Heisler) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 



Courage. Wisdom. Freedom. Love. 

Dynamic balance. 

There is hope, folks. We can understand ourselves and why we do the things we do and we can join together to get rational control of this process we call history that has kicked us around for so long. It is only a matter of will. 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a great day. 


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme