When you read this title you probable thought “how are these three things related?” It’s common in people not to thing before acting. Those few who usually stop to think, do so only lightly, not pausing to consider the real implications of what their actions are going to have. This post deals with the problem that has in the long term, no on the person, but on the world around it. The title has to do with this problem. However, before dealing with that, first I have to explain a concept many might find new, Memetics.
We are taught that life sustains itself by adapting of the environment. That a process, called Natural Selection, decides that the strongest and fittest survive. But a species doesn’t seek change, so an external factor is needed to provide it: mutation. There are certain events that randomly modify a subjects DNA, giving results different from what was expected. Change, however, doesn’t occur with the best interests of the specie in mind. A mutation creates a subject different from its predecessor, not better or worse. But lets assume the change gives the subject an advantage over the rest in his environment. This advantage increase his possibilities of survival, and so his possibilities of reproducing. Then, the probabilities that this mutation will spread increase. Given enough time, said mutation will pass into the DNA main stream and become common to the entire species. Meanwhile, those individuals whose mutations gives them a disadvantage in his environment will have fewer possibilities to survive, and so reproduce, so their mutation will eventually disappear. That’s the essence of the natural selection process. Remember, however, that natural selection doesn’t occur for the good of the specie, it occurs because balance is the ultimate goal.
Given this process, there will be more and more species competing between them as they become increasingly more adept for survival. But what is it that’s being refined? It won’t limit itself to the physical realms. It will also contain some coded basic responses, instinct. Instincts are a set of predefined behaviours that activate to preconditioned events. But this can be refined even more. If a subject’s able to create a model of his environment then he can be able to prepare himself to respond to certain events his instincts don’t cover. What does this imply? If a model is generated for an environment, then a model of a subject is also needed. Thus, the subject becomes self-aware and becomes an individual.
When he acquires a consciousness and becomes self-aware, an individual can place himself in his model and prepare to face the real enviorment. This, in turn, allows him to gather more data from the world around him, and so make his model richer, which allows him to experiment with more complex and precise scenarios, effectively making cycling feedback process in which the model feeds the individual and vice versa. But this is not all. In becoming self-aware, the individual discovers others like him in a whole new dimension. Not in a basic level, like a pack of dogs, but on a higher level. He recognizes that like him, there are others who can also be self-aware. He, however, has no way to prove it. At this moment it’s common for an individual to see common elements between himself and others like him. The individual develops empathy. But as said, its impossible for him to know with certainty that the others are like him. He can’t know if they think, feel, or do any of their inner processes in the same way he does. The only thing he can do is assume they do. From this assumption that a group of individuals share the same characteristics a new group of emotions are born, like compassion and a desire to protect the group in a higher level than that of the purely genetic one. Before continuing entertain this idea: What would happen if the process of natural selection were to be manipulated or discarded? What would happen if people who were supposed to have died because of illness or weakness were allowed not only to live, but to reproduce-and so adding their genetic characteristics to the genetic pool? Then the pool of genetic information would become corrupted with defective mutations. It’s a cold and unpleasant thought, but one worth considering.
But what does this have to do with memetics? Genes are the replicating unit of life in our planet, but that does not imply they are of the entire universe. Its not too farfetched to think there can be planets were life is not based on carbon. What could prevent that in a thousand years, when astronauts land on other planets, they find life forms not based on carbon and water? What if they found a life form based on metal and electronic circuits instead of flesh and blood? Would there still be a universal characteristic of life? Obviously I don’t know the answer, but if I had to bet, I would say there is. And that’s the law that every life form is based in some type of replicator unit that maintains and spreads it. The gene, the DNA, happens to be the replicator unit of our planet. But there’s nothing that prevents other replicator units from existing in other distant places of the universe. In his book “The selfish gene”, Richard Dawkins says you don’t have to look so far into space to find a new life form based on a different replicator, it already exists here in our world, even though it’s still taking its first evolutionary steps in its “primordial soup”; but that these evolutionary steps are so big that they leave genetics way behind in evolutionary speed.
This new primordial soup is the soup of human culture. But a new name was needed for this new replicator. Richard Dawkins took the name “Mimeme” from Greek, but wanting something that resembled more the word gene he changed it to “Meme”. The meme, then, is the new replicator in this soup of human culture. A meme is a unit of information. A song, melody, language, idea, word, quote, poem, theory, law, way of constructing a bridge, even this post, they are all examples of memes. And just like genes, memes also pass through a discriminating system. A system Dawkins calls Cultural Selection.
In genetics, a gene is born from another gene, but the copy isn’t perfect, there’s always a mutation. As it’s been said before, if the mutation gives the individual an advantage, this makes him stronger, and so survives. The same happens with memetics. A meme jumps from brain to brain. If the meme is strong, the host retains it (the meme, like a gene, survives and reproduces), then this new meme shapes and is shaped by the already resident memes.
How do blogs enter in all this? Remember that I told you above to consider what would happen if non apt individuals were allowed to live and reproduce? Then the process of natural selection would be discarded, and every gene would be included without discrimination into the genetic pool, weakening it. The same can apply to memes. Memes are filtered by jumping from brain to brain, mind to mind, and proving strong enough for the individual to retain them. But what would happen if instead of jumping from brain to brain, the meme instead jumped from brain to an intermediary source before jumping to anotehr brain? Even more, what would happen if this source were able to hold indefinitely and share indiscriminately every meme it receives with everyone who comes into contact with it? This new source is the internet, and being the blogs the main channel through which people deposit their thoughts in the internet, it’s the main factor in preventing the process of cultural selection from happening. There are more and more blogs every time that instead of sharing useful memes, share memes that only serve to stupidize people.
And it's here where what I said in the beginning fits. People don’t stop to think about what they’re doing. And the few who do, do so only superficially. Most people only think about the fun or calm or whatever it is they seek when they put a new post online, without stopping to consider what they’re really doing. A gene is born from another gene, but its modified by all the information of its predecessors. The same happens with memes. According to Freud, every experience is absorbed by the human mind. Those with a stronger impact stay in the conscious level of the mind, but the great majority is taken to the subconscious, the main source that dictates our behaviour. So, when a person receives a meme from a stupid blog, this meme corrupts, even if it’s discarded immediately, every other meme the individual has. But discarding it doesn’t kill the meme. The internet keeps the meme and continues to share it with every individual who crosses it.
How to solve this? The answer isn’t as simple as saying “no one post anything”. That would be wrong for two reasons. First, because there are useful memes in the Internet. Second, because it would go against a persons freedom and freedom of speech. Besides, stupid blogs have purpose, they help establish a person’s individuality and identity. The problem is people use them excessively. So, in one side you have the macro good, the one in the society and species level, which requires a fascist bloquade of posts. And on the other side you have the individual good. As it’s been observed throughout history, what is good for the individual isn’t good for society, and vice versa. The solution, I think, is in finding a balance and start thinking before acting, opening our mouths, or writing. In accordance to that, don’t take this post as an immediate truth. Think about it and reach your own conclusions, only like this can people stop being stupidized.
We are taught that life sustains itself by adapting of the environment. That a process, called Natural Selection, decides that the strongest and fittest survive. But a species doesn’t seek change, so an external factor is needed to provide it: mutation. There are certain events that randomly modify a subjects DNA, giving results different from what was expected. Change, however, doesn’t occur with the best interests of the specie in mind. A mutation creates a subject different from its predecessor, not better or worse. But lets assume the change gives the subject an advantage over the rest in his environment. This advantage increase his possibilities of survival, and so his possibilities of reproducing. Then, the probabilities that this mutation will spread increase. Given enough time, said mutation will pass into the DNA main stream and become common to the entire species. Meanwhile, those individuals whose mutations gives them a disadvantage in his environment will have fewer possibilities to survive, and so reproduce, so their mutation will eventually disappear. That’s the essence of the natural selection process. Remember, however, that natural selection doesn’t occur for the good of the specie, it occurs because balance is the ultimate goal.
Given this process, there will be more and more species competing between them as they become increasingly more adept for survival. But what is it that’s being refined? It won’t limit itself to the physical realms. It will also contain some coded basic responses, instinct. Instincts are a set of predefined behaviours that activate to preconditioned events. But this can be refined even more. If a subject’s able to create a model of his environment then he can be able to prepare himself to respond to certain events his instincts don’t cover. What does this imply? If a model is generated for an environment, then a model of a subject is also needed. Thus, the subject becomes self-aware and becomes an individual.
When he acquires a consciousness and becomes self-aware, an individual can place himself in his model and prepare to face the real enviorment. This, in turn, allows him to gather more data from the world around him, and so make his model richer, which allows him to experiment with more complex and precise scenarios, effectively making cycling feedback process in which the model feeds the individual and vice versa. But this is not all. In becoming self-aware, the individual discovers others like him in a whole new dimension. Not in a basic level, like a pack of dogs, but on a higher level. He recognizes that like him, there are others who can also be self-aware. He, however, has no way to prove it. At this moment it’s common for an individual to see common elements between himself and others like him. The individual develops empathy. But as said, its impossible for him to know with certainty that the others are like him. He can’t know if they think, feel, or do any of their inner processes in the same way he does. The only thing he can do is assume they do. From this assumption that a group of individuals share the same characteristics a new group of emotions are born, like compassion and a desire to protect the group in a higher level than that of the purely genetic one. Before continuing entertain this idea: What would happen if the process of natural selection were to be manipulated or discarded? What would happen if people who were supposed to have died because of illness or weakness were allowed not only to live, but to reproduce-and so adding their genetic characteristics to the genetic pool? Then the pool of genetic information would become corrupted with defective mutations. It’s a cold and unpleasant thought, but one worth considering.
But what does this have to do with memetics? Genes are the replicating unit of life in our planet, but that does not imply they are of the entire universe. Its not too farfetched to think there can be planets were life is not based on carbon. What could prevent that in a thousand years, when astronauts land on other planets, they find life forms not based on carbon and water? What if they found a life form based on metal and electronic circuits instead of flesh and blood? Would there still be a universal characteristic of life? Obviously I don’t know the answer, but if I had to bet, I would say there is. And that’s the law that every life form is based in some type of replicator unit that maintains and spreads it. The gene, the DNA, happens to be the replicator unit of our planet. But there’s nothing that prevents other replicator units from existing in other distant places of the universe. In his book “The selfish gene”, Richard Dawkins says you don’t have to look so far into space to find a new life form based on a different replicator, it already exists here in our world, even though it’s still taking its first evolutionary steps in its “primordial soup”; but that these evolutionary steps are so big that they leave genetics way behind in evolutionary speed.
This new primordial soup is the soup of human culture. But a new name was needed for this new replicator. Richard Dawkins took the name “Mimeme” from Greek, but wanting something that resembled more the word gene he changed it to “Meme”. The meme, then, is the new replicator in this soup of human culture. A meme is a unit of information. A song, melody, language, idea, word, quote, poem, theory, law, way of constructing a bridge, even this post, they are all examples of memes. And just like genes, memes also pass through a discriminating system. A system Dawkins calls Cultural Selection.
In genetics, a gene is born from another gene, but the copy isn’t perfect, there’s always a mutation. As it’s been said before, if the mutation gives the individual an advantage, this makes him stronger, and so survives. The same happens with memetics. A meme jumps from brain to brain. If the meme is strong, the host retains it (the meme, like a gene, survives and reproduces), then this new meme shapes and is shaped by the already resident memes.
How do blogs enter in all this? Remember that I told you above to consider what would happen if non apt individuals were allowed to live and reproduce? Then the process of natural selection would be discarded, and every gene would be included without discrimination into the genetic pool, weakening it. The same can apply to memes. Memes are filtered by jumping from brain to brain, mind to mind, and proving strong enough for the individual to retain them. But what would happen if instead of jumping from brain to brain, the meme instead jumped from brain to an intermediary source before jumping to anotehr brain? Even more, what would happen if this source were able to hold indefinitely and share indiscriminately every meme it receives with everyone who comes into contact with it? This new source is the internet, and being the blogs the main channel through which people deposit their thoughts in the internet, it’s the main factor in preventing the process of cultural selection from happening. There are more and more blogs every time that instead of sharing useful memes, share memes that only serve to stupidize people.
And it's here where what I said in the beginning fits. People don’t stop to think about what they’re doing. And the few who do, do so only superficially. Most people only think about the fun or calm or whatever it is they seek when they put a new post online, without stopping to consider what they’re really doing. A gene is born from another gene, but its modified by all the information of its predecessors. The same happens with memes. According to Freud, every experience is absorbed by the human mind. Those with a stronger impact stay in the conscious level of the mind, but the great majority is taken to the subconscious, the main source that dictates our behaviour. So, when a person receives a meme from a stupid blog, this meme corrupts, even if it’s discarded immediately, every other meme the individual has. But discarding it doesn’t kill the meme. The internet keeps the meme and continues to share it with every individual who crosses it.
How to solve this? The answer isn’t as simple as saying “no one post anything”. That would be wrong for two reasons. First, because there are useful memes in the Internet. Second, because it would go against a persons freedom and freedom of speech. Besides, stupid blogs have purpose, they help establish a person’s individuality and identity. The problem is people use them excessively. So, in one side you have the macro good, the one in the society and species level, which requires a fascist bloquade of posts. And on the other side you have the individual good. As it’s been observed throughout history, what is good for the individual isn’t good for society, and vice versa. The solution, I think, is in finding a balance and start thinking before acting, opening our mouths, or writing. In accordance to that, don’t take this post as an immediate truth. Think about it and reach your own conclusions, only like this can people stop being stupidized.
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