>From This Is London http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/lifestyle/review.html?in_review_id=121 967&in_review_text_id=98429 Infection of the meme machine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Truth, beauty and all we know ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reviewed by Anthony O'Hear If what the Meme Machine says is true, then there is no reason to believe it. For what it says is that things are believed only because they succeed in installing themselves in our brains through various tricks in order to get themselves reproduced. Today in Books Infection of the meme machine The things in question are the memes of the title of this book (which develops an idea originally floated by Richard Dawkins). Memes are beliefs, thoughts, ideas, slogans, tunes, types of behaviour and other elements of culture which can be transmitted from one person to another. Theorists of memes, such as Susan Blackmore, see memes as the equivalent in the cultural and social sphere of the gene in the biological. Biologically the basic unit is the gene. Genes replicate themselves in and through larger organisms, the whole creatures whose bodily development and behaviour they drive. In the extreme forms of evolutionary theory fashionable today an animal or even a person is regarded as simply the servant of the "selfish" genes which inhabit and use its body in order to fulfil their aim of surviving and reproducing themselves. However, there is a lot in human life and behaviour which is not easily explained or accounted for in terms of the survival and reproduction either of oneself or of one's genes. Examples given by Dr Blackmore include genuine disinterested altruism, celibacy, kindness to animals, small families, perhaps the size of our brains and language itself. It seems that we at least are not just the prisoners of our genes. This is where memes come in. At the human level, as well as our genes striving to reproduce themselves in and through us, there are also memes. Big brains are useful for storing and imitating the memes we encounter in social life in our dealings with other people, and language is useful for transmitting them. Particular memes spread beyond the brains of those who have invented them to the extent that others imitate their creators. For example, disinterested kindness to others or to animals are traits people generally find attractive. Hence these memes spread through the community. In spreading, others will also imitate other memes (ideas and beliefs) which kind people have. This is one of the tricks of memery. People with small families do not spread so many genes as those with big families, but they will have time to spread their memes as well as their genes. Celibacy is helpful to the spreading of religious memes, because it means that priests and nuns will spend all their time and effort preaching religion rather than having children and bringing them up. Religions which preach war are also good from the point of view of memetic replication, because they are spread through the self-sacrifice of the warriors and the conquests they make. But make no mistake. We are not in control of our memes any more than, according to the reductive biological account, we are in control of our genes. We are, in Blackmore's phrase, "infected" with memes. What we like to think of as our minds and selves are just shifting collections of memes. This entirely begs the question of just who or what it is which perceives the memes and thinks about them. Blackmore handwaves in the direction of Buddhist spirituality at this point, but that simply avoids the problem. According to Blackmore, the theory of memes entails that we have no free will; nor, it seems, do we have rationality in the sense of the ability to appraise the memes we encounter in the light of any ultimate logic, truth or beauty. For any conceptions of logic, truth or beauty which we operate with will themselves be determined by other memes controlling us. According to Blackmore we are not " magical " autonomous agents in charge of our destinies or our beliefs. Typical, that, of this sort of writing. You rubbish a perfectly sensible idea, which just happens to be the basis of our moral life and which has been defended by some of the most philosophical minds in history, by calling it magical. The contrast is presumably with your hard-nosed science. But why should we believe Dr Blackmore's science? After all, on its own terms, The Meme Machine is no more than a collection of memes striving to infect our minds. In Blackmore's account, our minds are nothing but habitats for imperialistic memes, which capture and control us not because they are actually reasonable or scientific, but because we are memetically conned into dubbing them reasonable or scientific. In the final analysis, if memetics is true, then we have no more reason to accept it as true or beautiful or valuable, than we have to accept an annoying slogan or jingle we can't get out of our minds - which is an analogy much traded on by meme theorists. But of course our profounder theories, beliefs or values are not like slogans or jingles, but things we accept in the light of reflection and reason. But it is just the conception of genuine reason which the meme analysis leaves no room for. So we should reject it. As The Meme Machine is not well written, with any luck this particular meme will find few imitators and quickly become an evolutionary dead end. � Associated Newspapers Ltd., 01 March 1999 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
