Memes; is it a metaphor for the mechanism of how ideas spread (or don't) or can memetics explain more?
The most common and more easily accepted role of the meme is that memetics stand for the process of how ideas are being spread through out the world; does the idea catch on? is it interesting for people to talk about? do the right people talk about it and do they know the right people to spread the meme to larger populations? It is the very mechanism behind Word of Mouth that defines successful WoM.
However memetics is also based on the ideology of why we think the things we think. This goes a step further and this ideology is based on an important insight relevant to
social species like humans. According to Robert Aunger this begins by recognizing that many of our thoughts
are not generated from within our own brains, but are acquired as ideas from
others. What memetics argues is that, once inside us, these thoughts then go to
work for themselves, pursuing goals that may be in conflict with our best
interests. These ideas have their own interests by virtue of having qualities
that make them like biological viruses. Central question here is: do we have thoughts, or do
they have us? At this stage memetics could lead to a good filosophical discussion.
The moment we talk about memes being part of the evolution process - being part of the missing link between primates and us humans - there are more disciplines that would like to participate in the debate.
The process of getting a meme across
requires imitation, Susan Blackmore suggest that imitation requires three
skills: making decisions about what to imitate, complex transformations from
one point of view to another, and the production of matching bodily actions.
These basic skills, or at least the beginnings of them, are available in many
primates and were probably available to our ancestors of 5 million years ago.
Primates have good motor control and hand co-ordination, and good general intelligence,
which would enable them to classify actions and decide what to imitate. To indulge in deception, pretence
and social manipulation you need to be able to put yourself in another’s shoes;
to take the other’s point of view; to imagine what it would be like to be that
other. This is precisely what you
need, to be able to imitate someone else.
These thougths can confirm the suggestion that imitation is an
enormously demanding task, and that it takes a large brain to be able to do it.
It is further predicted that many aspects of language and thought will
turn out to be best understood as by-products of our brains’ ability to select
which aspects of the word to imitate. These are: selection for imitation,
selection for imitating the best imitators, selection for mating with the best
imitators, and (possibly) memetic sexual selection. Once early hominids
achieved imitation, the second replicator (the meme) was born and these processes began to
drive the increase in brain size. The enormous human brain has been created by
the memes.
Memes could only come into existence when the genes had provided brains that were capable of imitation – and the nature of those brains must have influenced which memes took hold and which did not. However, once memes had come into existence they would be expected to take on a life of their own. It could even be suggested that the human brain is an example of memes forcing genes to build ever better and better meme-spreading genes.
Memes having control over genes, with the genes still thinking they are in control?
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