MEMETICS: How Mind Viruses Influence Our Choices and the Way We Think

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MEMETICS

 

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/Memetics.html

 

 

How Mind Viruses Influence Our Choices and the Way We Think

 

 

 

By Jack Hardy

The word ‘meme’ was first popularly used by Richard Dawkins in his book, The

Selfish Gene. The word ‘meme’ has come to mean a cultural accretion of

knowledge, a package of several ideas that can be passed onto others. It’s

usually more complex than a single idea, and can represent a

fashion/music/lifestyle or a belief. It is the mental equivalent of a gene

whereby a package of many attributes is passed on.

 

The science or study of memes in action has come to be called

memetics.

 

A meme has been regarded too narrowly I believe, and I am interested

in broadening the definition of a meme. No matter how narrow a definition

you give to a meme, sooner or later you have to consider more nebulous or

abstract ideas as having acquired enough cultural accretion to have become

memes. It’s easy to conceive of a visual fad such as the hula-hoop as having

a chartable spread through society and calling it a meme, but surely

socialism, futurism or a new political idea are also memes that spread

through society.

 

Memes like these, just as in any fad or fashion, have a zenith before

arcing into decline. There will always be a few adherents of any ‘ism’ who

may be the actual carriers of the meme, but eventually they may find

themselves beached upon a shore that has no tides.

 

Someone new to the idea of memes might say: why don’t we just call

them ideas? The answer is that memes act as if they have a life of their

own. Whether they do or not is not the relevant point, but they do replicate

and have a dynamism absent from our common notion of a simple idea.

 

Memes seem to have an arc of existence defying simple replicative

models. Indeed, I daresay many memes lie dormant awaiting resurgence, as

might forgotten gods that can spread like wildfire. Let’s say a meme like

Nazism could be re-established which is why many are so keen to quash it.

 

On this model, some memes could be likened to a huge bull waiting to

be let out the gate and into a china shop.

 

I suspect memes act as living entities with strategies for survival

and aren’t simply replicators. As I use the word meme, I mean it to be an

accretion of mental energy that acts as if it has a life of its own. This

mental energy can spread through many minds or maybe it resides someplace as

yet unidentified. Whether or not this is strictly true is less important to

me than the fact this definition allows for insights and explanations

previously unavailable.

 

Once you allow a meme to escape the unimaginative straitjacket that

has kept meme theory bound for the last twenty-five years, you can accept

new explanations. In human affairs and parapsychology, as well as in

ordinary life, we finally have a tool to crack the nut, to explain which was

once considered unexplainable.

 

Memes as I use them are for the most part something that appears

independent of self, and shared by several minds. However, we all have a

sense of self, an ego or superego that we create as we grow, which could be

considered our individual meme.

 

Many thinkers have a problem with the idea of a ‘group mind’ which

is understandable, or that memes can be anthropomorphised as having

characteristics to enable their survival. One approach to deflect this

criticism is to state they don’t have to be actually like this, but they act

as if they do. Same as flocking birds might not actually have a group mind

but they act as if they do.

 

There are experiments that seem to indicate the existence of group

minds. I’ll mention Richard Restak’s experiments with bees. His work can be

found in the journal Mind (No. 249), and has also been featured in Howard

Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle (page 140). Basically Restak showed that bees

can anticipate future sources of food despite quite complex mathematical

computations. What he did was position food at increasing distances away

from the first site according to a mathematical formula. The bees all went

to the area they next expected food to be at, but who or what was doing the

calculations for them?

 

Basically a meme is a concept. It can be shared or held alone. Memes

can have favoured attachments just like molecules. Certain pairings can be

more probable than others. Memes are not just an explanation for the

workings of human affairs, but a way for things to find each other. With

memes, man can find God, a woman can find her mate, a customs officer can

find a smuggler, and a hunter can find his prey.

 

Another area memes make themselves problematic to academia is we can

use them to explain phenomena usually of a non-repeatable type. I think it

was Arthur Koestler who postulated the existence of the library angel. What

he meant by this was how he often was looking for some information and he’d

open a book to the very page with the information he needed. Or he found a

useful book shelved wrongly but placed right where he happened to look.

People are known to open the Bible at a passage unusually apt to their

interest. I’m sure we’ve all had these coincidental experiences, and I doubt

we could repeat them for the sake of a scientific study, but memes can

explain them.

 

Building Memes

 

How do memes work? Conscious and unconscious processes build memes.

They aren’t something you can usually identify, and to devolve them (or use

them) seems to work best when they happen unconsciously.

 

Let’s take a meme building activity like a new fashion. Pioneers will

wear and parade the new fashion, and the media acts as a platform for others

to espouse it. Everyone quickly becomes aware of it, but not everyone adopts

it unless it fits in with the zeitgeist. Instead of a fashion we can view,

imagine this applying to a new philosophy or belief. The longer this meme is

built, the more it accretes levels of meaning and spreads to include

lifestyles, food, clothes and outlooks, all of which can indicate a

particular meme.

 

For example, consider the meme of an artist, or what it would mean to

be a beatnik, hippy or a rasta. A meme that started as a fashion can soon be

taken to include preferred foods or political viewpoints and philosophy. The

views held by a person can now be deduced, simply by looking at the hat they

wear.

 

Like a plate resting upon a table where there are only a few disparate

molecules in direct contact, or a brain where an idea can lodge in one of

several areas, a meme could be said to lodge in some of many possible minds.

It may change minds often and doesn’t have a constant localisation.

 

Transmission of Memes

 

When I first read Richard Dawkin’s book a quarter of a century ago, I

had already formed a nebulous theory of mental energy. Living in what seemed

to be a vast population of like-minded people, where everyone similarly

reacted or used the same expressions, I envisaged a gigantic group mind.

Similar to ants or bees or flocks of birds, it seemed to me we all acted in

a predictable manner linked to the group. I’d started to consider this a

gigantic psychic generator that could be tapped in some way.

 

Another thought was there would be nodes where you could find certain

phenomena like a very lucky person or someone that could do no wrong. When I

discovered the word ‘meme’, I realised this was a descriptive term I could

utilise. It took a couple of years to simmer before I knew how to use it,

and about 15 years before I suddenly realised the further implications of

memetics. The mechanistic model of building and devolving memes wasn’t the

crux of the matter, though undoubtedly this is what hooked people in the

first place.

 

Consciousness seems to be a factor in the transmission process, though

not an absolute. It’s just that memes seem to operate better the less aware

we are of their operation.

 

Unaware as well as conscious effort build memes so they can have a

growth period, and once built, are able to be devolved by others often

unconnected to the building process. This devolvement works best by

unconscious effort and is a process for knowledge to become distributed in

ways once thought to be science fiction. The potential of telepathy,

although fantastic, can be explained in memetic terms. Similarly, memetics

enables unconnected people to have a shared knowledge or belief system.

Thousands of years ago, when scattered cultures on different continents

built pyramid structures, there was a memetic diffusion of similar goals.

This is exemplified by the phenomenon known as the 100th monkey effect, to

which I’ll come back to later in this article.

 

Animals can share memes. As their consciousness is taken as being more

simplistic, they act alike. When flocks of birds and schools of fish turn,

feed, or flee all at the same time, it is difficult to explain this as a

totality of separate, independent decision making. Are they all plugged into

a group mind or acting in an identical way just for being biologically

similar? And it’s not just animals that act identically. Human children can

act and react in the same way. Are they similar for being closer to the

mould? Are they more telepathic for being more similar?

 

This is the real advance of memetics. By looking at memes as a

potential indicator of both group and individual consciousness, we can

unseal some previously closed mysteries.

 

Devolving Memes

 

In the last section I mentioned nodes as a place where memes could be

better able to be devolved. To posit such nodes is only helpful to explain

why some people are vastly better in attracting phenomena than others. Like

a very lucky person or vice-versa. Another illustration would be a really

good artist. Many people assume a successful artist simply has the right

idea at the right time, but world class artists appear to have more than

this simple formula working for them. A good artist tells us something we

recognise as truth in an original way, and a great artist draws on something

that makes their work and originality speak to other times. They draw on a

muse with many strands and are often at a loss themselves to explain how

they weave it into art. They are distilling the essence of the zeitgeist.

Somehow, they are devolving the spirit of the age and telling us something

we recognise as a truth. Something we knew all along without having

enunciated it. When this happens, we call it a masterpiece.

 

Could it be the artist has positioned themselves on a node that

devolves this creative energy? Their brains are a receiving medium for

something they have unconsciously sought. It certainly seems there have been

geographical distilleries of genius like in Athens or Paris in the past.

 

I’ve noticed a similar thing happen with music. I know the success of

one local band can fuel the aspirations of others, and certain places seem

to throw up on occasion not just a singular bloom but a whole bouquet. Most

bands, unlike artists, seem to make a handful of distinctive rousing music

and then atrophy. They never better their first original work, and plough

the same furrow making their later compositions just variations on a theme.

Yet there are rare artists who define an era, and their work both embodies

and propagates memes.

 

Bubba Sparxx once rapped, “Rhyming chose me”.

 

As with art, science and theory leaps forward from singular people or

places that seem truly inspired. There are often people working on similar

things but only one gets the credit and is remembered. If it could ever be

shown radical ideas and advances come from on high, it must be a scattergun

approach where several people are simultaneously trying to establish it, and

it doesn’t really matter who will win the race – just that one will.

 

Passing on Learned Behaviour Via Memes

 

The above are speculative asides. My main thrust is that ideas, fads

or philosophies can be transmitted without local contact. These are memes

that can be devolved and spread within limitations or throughout all

society.

 

Consider personal experience. Haven’t we all done something for the fi

rst time and then discovered how natural it seems? Like riding a bicycle, it

can take a few moments and then seems like we always could do it.

 

Don’t we all know someone who did something by chance and then it

became a life’s work or career? Let’s consider a body of knowledge, a

recently evolved meme such as ‘heart surgery’.

 

A new or trainee heart surgeon consciously learns the craft, but

he/she is also memetically guided by the prior experience of others. Like

acting or any trade, this memetic devolvement is best felt to be working

when the subject is relaxed and has ‘let themselves go’. The examples of

those that did it before us are like invisible spirit guides once we are ‘in

the groove’.

 

Great men are said to sit on the shoulders of others before them, and

so it is with all activity, whether it be carpentry, mothering, lying or

fighting. No matter how harmful or mundane, others have built tramlines of

the mind. In careers, apprentices or trainees can experience this as an

arbitrary choice ‘fitting like a glove’. They have discovered an aptitude or

somehow ‘picked it up’ without really being able to explain how. In animals

of lesser consciousness, this becomes a pure instinct in which all eat,

fight and sleep in practically identical ways.

 

Is there evidence learned behaviour is carried to others? One example

would be when a rat finds its way through a maze. A second rat seems to find

its way through the maze even quicker. In experiments, rats have been killed

(to prevent telepathy) or identical new mazes substituted (to prevent scent

trails), yet despite this, rats are progressively able to get through these

mazes faster than the earlier ones. Where does this knowledge reside? They

are accessing a meme that is being built, a meme of knowledge about the

maze.

 

I doubt a meme is entirely independent of living things, but the

crucial thing is that it acts as if it is. A meme has an arc of existence

that, like the life of a living organism, is a self-contained pocket of

energy.

 

Perhaps the best analogy of memes in the world is they are akin to

numbers. The fantastic science of mathematics has enabled us to go to the

moon and inspire computers. But we wouldn’t be able to point to a number or

say, “this is a six”, we could just say there are six of something. Like

memes, we use the concept of number to find linking commonalities and to

make something have sense for us. To grasp that which has no obvious handle.

 

One of my favourite examples of memetics in action is that referred to

as the 100th monkey effect, which is the result of studies from 1952-1958 of

monkeys living on a string of Japanese islands.

 

What happened was that one monkey started washing the sand off sweet

potatoes, and then others started doing it. At some point, a critical mass

was reached and monkeys on other islands, though there was no obvious

contact, started washing their food to remove the sand. This is almost a

perfect example of a meme growing and then becoming accessible to all. A way

for knowledge or learning to transmit to others not in physical contact. In

human affairs, this is best seen in fashion, whereby there seems to be

zeitgeist (spirit of the age) sweeping through disparate and otherwise

unconnected populations.

 

The 100th monkey effect was first popularised in Lyall Watson’s book

Lifetides. Another book by Ken Keyes simply called The Hundredth Monkey

further propagated this novel idea. There have been a few articles that

‘revisit’ these experiments (e.g. one from Elaine Myers) but they miss the

point.

 

Pseudo rebuttals to this theory usually harp on that not all monkeys

adopted this new way of washing sand off potatoes. Ken Keyes clearly says in

his foreword this phenomenon included “almost all” the monkeys, so he wasn’t

claiming a universal spread.

 

Furthermore, the 100th monkey mechanism isn’t negated by this. The

sceptics are confusing a hundred monkeys as somehow meaning 100%. Think of a

meme such as a fashion. A few people adopt it, perhaps to widespread

ridicule, but at some threshold point it becomes widely accepted. Now

obviously, not every single person adopts the exact same fashion, but does

this detract from the mechanism causing its explosive growth? Of course not.

Indeed, there will always be adherents to memes of other fashions or the

antithesis of the one currently in vogue. It’s a bit like the scene in the

sci-fi movie ‘Fahrenheight 451’ where in a book burning society individuals

each keep a certain book alive by reciting it and memorising it.

 

Similarly, fashions might be kept alive by adherents. Victims of

fashion are the one’s gripped by a meme that has no hold on other people.

 

Critics of memetics similarly miss the point about statistics. I am

not asserting twins will all have the same experiences or that coincidences

can be statistically explained or expected, like the likelihood of two

people at a gathering sharing the same birthday. In fact, memes explain why

not everything will be the same in every case and every time.

 

What interests me are the astronomically improbable coincidences that

can’t be configured. The one in a billion chance. The events that deserve

some consideration instead of being dismissed as a one-off. These incredible

coincidences are amenable to memetic explanation. I’m not claiming

fantastical coincidences are the rule. Indeed, they are the exceptions that

prove the rule, but these exceptions have underlying mechanisms making them

exceptional.

 

There are other examples of mass learning within species if you don’t buy

the 100th monkey theory.

 

In particular, one was the study done on blue tits pecking at foil on

milk bottles to get at the milk. Once one or two started doing it, within a

short time, blue tits everywhere were doing it.

 

Stigmata

 

Another form of memetics in action would be the phenomenon known as

stigmata. In my model, the conscious dwelling on Christ’s wounds by

Catholics or other Christians creates a meme which grows like clouds

gathering moisture. When it has reached optimum size, then like lightning,

the meme devolves or is discharged upon some unwitting subject. This

explains why the stigmata phenomenon can appear on people who aren’t

religious or even Christian.

 

Padre Pio, made a saint by the Pope in 2002, displayed the stigmata.

Church enquiries couldn’t find any evidence of fraud or deception. Indeed,

the profuse bleeding was deemed of unknown origination. The padre was

especially venerated as being one of the clergy who rarely display the

phenomenon.

 

Phenomena described as paranormal, unexplainable or baffling in human

affairs could have a memetic explanation. Reincarnation can be explained as

people devolving memes built up by others. This is akin to the parable of

reaping that which others sow.

 

The reason some people think they are Cleopatra or some famous

character is a meme built by people thinking about these ‘larger than life’

historical personages. I suspect the person claiming to be a reincarnation

has taken onboard several cultural connotations that were embedded into the

personage when the meme was being built.

 

Because of our memetic nature, whatever mental paths we follow, it

will always be amenable to memes. Some memeticists treat memes as an

infective virus and although some are devolved unwillingly and

unconsciously, I don’t find it helpful to use this model of contagion. Even

when we have a meme we identify and get rid of, we still have others at work

albeit unidentified.

 

Whether memes use individuals as entry points or rain down en masse

upon numerous subjects, there always seem to be loci, some nodal points of

focus.

 

Correspondence and Echoes

 

As I claimed earlier, all coincidence is a form of memetic

correspondence. We can see this correspondence in things that aren’t

especially coincidental. I’ll give you an example from when I lived in Ocean

Park, California, in the mid 80’s. There was a lot of ‘street people’ in the

area and especially in the evening you would come across several grubbed out

people mumbling, talking and outright ranting to themselves. They were in

their own private world that excluded passers by.

 

Now fast forward several years beyond the gentrification and

yuppiefication of the area, where property prices had soared. Visiting Main

Street, I was surprised to find numerous people walking and talking on

mobile phones in their own little world. Most staggeringly, I saw someone

yelling (though with a mobile ear piece) at the very same spot a notorious

street alcoholic had once staked out as his patch. It’s not really a

coincidence, but an echo.

 

Perhaps certain places can attract or devolve a meme that recurs in

certain actions? Perhaps certain places are much more amenable to holiness

or criminality so that there is an architecture shaping behaviour? Going up

a mountain and coming down with a changed memetic reality may have truth. A

sense of place may very well be necessary for certain memes to be devolved.

These are certain areas that need consideration.

 

The cycles of life are rarely viewed as something recurring in all

generations and times. Love is an emotion intensely experienced by each

generation as if for the first time. Only those that can take a step back

through wisdom or age may see the constantly recurring tides.

 

This is where memetics is able to provide explanations for the puzzle.

This tide, this governing of life, the recurring of events, is a

correspondence echoing through all generations. For instance, we think we

might have left the bacchanalian rites of village festivals behind, but all

we have done is supplanted them. Package holidays of booze and sex are just

an evolved echo of what was and always will be.

 

Anytime we see an echo or correspondence, especially in things or

events that we normally would not consider related, we are seeing the action

of a meme.

 

When the lifestyle aggregation of music, fashion and outlook called

‘punk’ started, it really seemed to spread during 1978. I went to the USA

that summer and hitchhiked about. One thing which puzzled me was I kept

running into people who seemed to be ‘punk’ yet had not yet heard of the

term. They had the philosophy, torn or bound clothing and sometimes the

spiky hairstyle, yet they hadn’t yet heard of the ‘Sex Pistols’. I suspected

some kind of cosmic con especially when I met one guy almost a clone of Sid

Vicious who insisted he’d never heard of him.

 

How was it possible people had adopted a fashion in advance of

widespread media attention? With this phenomena to ponder, I started

developing my ‘one in every town’ theory. I postulated that every small town

has a drunk, a real redneck, a punk kid etc. As the towns get larger, the

cast of characters increase.

 

Added to this was the strange sense of déjà vu when I met someone who

was 90% of somebody else I’d met or the spitting image of someone from my

hometown. I was regularly surprised to find a Dave who liked wrangler

clothes, drank hard and had a girlfriend called Sue just like someone else I

’d already met. I started to make boyfriend/girlfriend name pairings that

seemed to recur often enough to seem a standard. If I met a ‘Carl’, I’d

guess he had a girlfriend called Sarah before he told me he did. In life,

there are all manner of possible permutations or simple juxtapositions, but

memes can make them into regular pairing, a temporary bondage.

 

Each bar I went in had its resident lush (alcoholic) and a ‘Mr can get

it’. Each place I went had the same types of people. I’d talk about this

phenomenon with friends and claim “there’s one in every town”. Like a hen’s

pecking order, I’ve come to realise human types are similarly governed. You

remove one and another will take up that role.

 

Magic, Mystics and Memes

 

Would be devolvers of memes who don’t really understand how they work

are laying themselves open to be used by an amoral force. I’m thinking of

occultists who use ceremonies and other inducements as a way to devolve

power and affect the universe. Like the energy attributed to a poltergeist,

these memetic energies aren’t readily controllable and attempts to do so can

result in the demise of the attempter. The inherent contradictions of a meme

will disrupt any attempted containment.

 

Having had some experience at meetings of occultists for my own

curious quest for knowledge, I was struck by the disproportionate share of

cripples and generally unhealthy appearances at such gatherings. I can only

assume those that chant or wave wands to attract a river of universal energy

are merely inviting a dissipation of their own. Now I do think you can focus

this river of universal energy and you can use memes to power your

activities, but this inculcation is subtle and diffuse.

 

A practical aspect of advanced memetics is divination. The memetic

ripples that percolate through our universe are readable to the adept.

Astrology operates not by the commonly supposed causal connection but is

supposed to indicate a correspondence. Memetics can operate a corresponding

system that involves looking for potential ironies. Linguistic irony and

fictional foreshadowing are all tools for a memetic prophet. Random and

trivial events are all grist for the mill with which to grind out a

prognosis and read the signs.

 

Memetics for Today

 

This system of memetics, regardless of its origins and outer limits,

can be used to explicate all kinds of esoteric phenomena. It can also make

sense of some of today’s baffling events. For instance, the spectacular

terrorist success in destroying the World Trade Centre towers can be

explained by operating on an auspicious date (for them) of 9/11. The meme of

calling 911 emergency empowered their goals. I’m sure they hadn’t picked the

date for any numeric quality, but just because a Tuesday flight would have

less passengers to subdue than a Monday or a Friday. Their bold plan was

correspondingly enabled by memetic forces, which they weren’t conscious of.

The unconscious energy in the meme of 911 empowered them, but now that

everyone is conscious of the date, it won’t work again.

 

Yet the mental energy, the meme generated by that event, will empower

another date and as long as there is no conscious focus upon it, a terrorist

or some such could easily find his unselfconscious action empowered. I

predict something could happen in September 2011, as it has a 9/11 link

which isn’t immediately obvious to most people.

 

Memetics suggest there are auspicious and inauspicious dates or days

for various activities.

 

The above points show memetics is a unique and universal theory of

explanation. Surely more research can develop this potential and make all

phenomena, even that once considered esoteric and occult, into an

understandable paradigm.

 

Memetics holds the promise of the philosopher’s stone. By explaining

all things, it can be the key to the secrets of the universe. For the

philosopher, the theologian, the parapsychologist, it could be the dawn of a

golden age.

 

_________________________

Jack Hardy is a world traveller and non-academic philosopher. He has written

articles and produced celebrity interviews for numerous small magazines and

newspapers. The above is abridged from an e-book by the author called

Memetics. The book covers other aspects of memes and more detail on the

subject matter discussed above, including how memetics theory helps explain

unexplained phenomena and the process by which we can predict societal

trends. To obtain

the complete text of the book, email the author at jakkoooo.