Susan Blackmore has recently published a book (_The meme machine_, Oxford
University Press) that sounds very interesting. She has an article in the most
recent _New Scientist_ (March 13, No. 2177). Below, I quote some of the main
points from this article:
"You are nothing more than a creation of genes and memes in a unique
environment. Memes are ideas, skills, habits, stories, songs or inventions that
are passed from person to person by imitation. They have shaped our minds,
leading to the evolution of big brains and language because these served to
spread the memes. But the memes with the cleverest trick are those that
persuade us that our 'selves' really exist. We all live our lives as a lie. The
memes have made us do it--because giving us the illusion of 'self' helps them
to survive and spread." (p. 40)
"While human language is a vast system for transmitting memes with high
fidelity, it took the invention of writing to enable memes to be stored. Now
telephones, fax machines, photocopiers, computers and the Internet all increase
the speed and ease of meme-replication. We may think that we invented all these
machines for our own convenience, but once memes got going, these devices--or
something like them--were inevitable. The real driving force is the
evolutionary algorithm [variation + selection + heredity ----> evolution]. And
the real beneficiaries are not us but the selfish memes." (pp. 42, 44)
"If this memetic analysis is correct, the choices you make are not made by an
inner self who has free will, but are just the consequence of the replicators
playing out their competition in a particular environment. In the process they
create the illusion of a self who is in control." (p. 44)
Some very interesting ideas, regardless of one's own view on such issues. I
definitely am going to read her book on this.
By the way, these ideas are not completely novel in psychology. James Mark
Baldwin (Watson's predecessor at Johns Hopkins) used the concept of "social
heredity" in the 1890's to say something very similar. I don't think that
Baldwin would have rejected the idea of an inner self, but he emphasized the
importance of imitation for the transmission of behaviors, ideas, etc.--a
process that he likened to biological heredity. (There also are some very
important differences: Baldwin was more interested in the development of
individuals than in the selection and evolution of what Blackmore and others
are calling "memes." Also, Baldwin did not think of memes as "replicators," as
Richard Dawkins defined this term.) Baldwin had a lasting influence in
psychology through the work of Jean Piaget--the latter borrowed extensively
from Baldwin's ideas. Baldwin himself became a pariah, however, after being
arrested in a police raid on a house of prostitution in 1908. He eventually
ended up in Paris where he had his influence on Piaget.
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
