The power of infectious ideas
"An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you." --Morris Berman Any idea that parasitically infects your mind and alters your behavior causes you to want to tell your friends about the idea. Any idea which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced `meem', rhymes with 'theme'). Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules, a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical memes include individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions. It may sound a bit sinister; this idea that people are hosts for mindaltering strings of symbols, but in fact this is what human culture is all about.
Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in his 1976 book 'The Selfish Gene. (Incidentally Richard Dawkins is also the author of the recent controversial bestseller, 'The God Delusion'.). A meme is a piece of information that exists inside the minds of individuals. It can be a single word, a string of words, or even an image or an action. It has an effect by residing in the brain of its host, and causing its behavior to alter both to accommodate the meme, and to further propagate it. If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense of `rival' memes. Other commodities for which memes compete are radio and television time, billboard space, newspaper column-inches, and library shelf-space.
"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, and ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate them selves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain." Sound familiar? It did to me and hence I borrowed the title of "Cultural Software" from J.M Balkin. In essence Richard Dawkins in one stroke provided a supporting argument for Darwinism i.e. the theory of Evolution and simultaneously provided answers to questions of religion, science, personality etc. If you have still not understood the power of memes, try the following examples:
Type of Meme
Short term
Consistent
Powerful
Coffee drinking/Cafe's Habits/Customs Fear of solar and lunar eclipse Male dominated society English as the universal language
Frankly my dear..I dont Film scenes/Dialogues give a damn (Gone with the wind)
May the force be with you (Star Wars)
The name's bond..James Bond
Wrist bands like Livestrong Khadi Clothes Fashion/Accessories Body piercing i.e. nose rings, tongue, belly button and tattoos The Bikini Aids Ribbon Blue Jeans
Politics and Society
Emperor Worship
Suicide Bombings
Democracy
Hippie Culture
Blogs and Forums
Racism
Letters of Indulgence Religion
Christmas, Santa Claus Rebirth, Reincarnation, Hell, Heaven etc GOD
From the above table you can realize that "Meme" is close to "idea," but not all ideas are memes. An idea which fails to propagate beyond the person who first thinks of it is not a meme. If you're trying to put together a one-size-fits-all explanation of human cognition -- or just come up with an easy way to dismiss your opponent's ideas as brainwashed delusions -memetics looks like a very nice hammer and other peoples' ideas look very much like nails. The idea that any thought they have, any belief, any argument, any practice, is just the behavioral equivalent of natural selection leads to a certain smug certainty. "Well, sure, you believe that cows are sacred -- that's because eating them would be unsustainable in your region, thus the sacred-cow meme evolved and survived..." And so on and so on. The idea of 'memes' is in and of itself a meme, of course, making for a nice snake-eats-its-tail sort of rhetorical scenario. It can be used to critique any idea but it seems to me that practitioners rarely look that deeply. Dawkins' original formulation ("memes" as units of cultural transmission or imitation) is broad enough that it really just provides a convenient handle for something slippery. Religions are, in fact, big collections of memes. so is science, so is grammar, so are things like "consciousness" and "natural selection" itself. Having said that, it is quite a common fallacy that if an idea is shown to be a meme that it is somehow either devalued or discredited. Ideas spread, if they continue to spread they can be seen as memes and analyzed in such a way. Memes can be wrong or right, they can be helpful or harmful. In the main memes are probably more beneficial than harmful. For a meme to spread it must be very powerful and tap into our hopes, fears or desires in a powerful way. Take for example: Books like 'Lady Chatterly's Lover', 'The Da Vinci Code' or 'The Satanic Verses'. Social issues like patriotism, homosexuality, and abortion. Symbols/icons like Star of David, Swastika, even something as common as color coding of hot/cold water faucets and Vegetarian/Non Vegetarian food items.
To say that Religion is a meme is not to say that it is an evil manipulation, it is just to acknowledge that it spreads in ways that are memetic. Seeing value judgments where there should be none is a very common human weakness. Memes offer us a way to understand our psychology and the evolution of our thoughts, technology, artifacts, music, and art. They can be defined as small sets of instructions that produce behavior. When enough of these instructions get together in a brain, a mind develops. Such a mind can be understood and predicted by looking at its composite memes. With its explanatory power, and its potential to make behavioral predictions, memetics will become an essential addition to a psychologist's tool kit. As its success increases, memetics will take over where psychology has left off, and will become a driving force in the study of human behavior.