SHEsaysWITHaSMILE.blogspot.com

THE MIND'S I fantasies and reflections on self & soul

ORIGINAL POST 04/28/2006: ** composed and arranged by douglas hofstadter and daniel dennett

pg 142/143: richard dawkins/selfish genes and selfish memes

examples of memes (rhymes w/cream) are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves 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 articles and his lectures. if the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. as my colleague n.k. humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: "... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. when you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. and this isn't just a way of talking -the meme for, say, "belief in life after death," is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.

(skip forward)... i have been a bit negative about memes, but they have their cheerful side as well. when we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. we were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. but that aspect of us will be forgotton in three generations. your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblence to you, perhaps facial features, in a talent for music, in the colour of her hair. but as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. it does not take long to reach negligible proportions. our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes which is any one of us is bound to crumble away.

(skip forward) ... BUT IF YOU CONTRIBUTE to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a spark plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool.

posted by SHE @ 5:37 PM