Meme
Before it became synonymous with pictures shared on social media, meme was a term coined by Richard Dawkins meant to refer to the way that ideas self-replicate in a way that is similar to genes or a virus. A particularly useful or entertaining idea will spread far and wide, while the vast majority will come and go without a blip on the radar.
In metaculture the term meme will refer to the Richard Dawkins definition, since this is a useful way to describe important ideas, how and why they spread. It also ties into the fractal nature of Universal Darwinism, where the evolution of information becomes the next higher order level of complexity after the emergence of life, using similar rules and generating similar patterns.
Memes, Rituals & Beliefs
Spiritual beliefs and rituals take the form that they do because they have been successful at replicating themselves over long periods of time. Evolution and game theory have shown that this type of genetic learning algorithm is excellent at coming up with novel solutions that are highly effective. You can think of any religion as a collection of doctrines, rituals, and beliefs that have helped their respective cultures survive and grow over many generations.
A huge part of their success in the marketplace of ideas is their ability to inspire people to take collective action by reinforcing in-group identities and promoting a perspective that yields happiness in the believer. If it didn't promote happiness then people would not be motivated to replicate the idea, since happiness is the manifestation of the brain's desire to replicate an idea or action.
Critics will point to the hierarchical and authoritarian aspects of traditional religions and suggest that these beliefs are a conspiracy between the clergy and kings to control and pacify the population. But the genetic algorithm model suggests a more trial-and-error approach, where the stuff that got a good reaction stuck and the stuff that failed to inspire fell by the wayside. The fact that social hierarchies were reinforced was just as much a function of peasants trying to find meaning in a world controlled by kings as it is kings trying to find a way to keep the peasants happy. From this feedback loop a hodgepodge of beliefs and rituals emerges that we call religion.
Modern science has provided a way to systematically test the validity of our memes and ensure only the ones that represent fundamental truth about reality are able to replicate. It is not always possible to test and prove the emotional efficacy of any belief that was produced via genetic algorithm, just as it is not always possible to get an AI to explain how it arrived at a novel solution. But science has made tremendous progress in this regard in the last few decades, and has produced just as much evidence proving the benefits of many core religious beliefs and rituals as it has debunked the pseudoscientific interpretations of their followers. The level of understanding we have is quite robust, and now surpasses the intuitive understanding of human emotional life and society that religion has always had. However, this point was reached after most people alive today completed their education, so a conscious effort to teach and learn these prerequisite concepts will be required to share this understanding with others.
Every Word Evokes a New Idea
The wiki concept highlights the fact that our words are connected a whole world of ideas, and each one evokes not just its definition but all of the concepts associated with the words in that definition, every story we've heard that references it, and every memory we have that relates to it.
This is the power of poetry, especially in scripture. It is not rational, it is an emotional language that plays on our associations and collective memories to create inspiration, wonder, and love of life. Unfortunately, scripture is the only form of poetry that people interpret literally.
The original, hyperlinked Internet that Wikipedia is the embodiment of is the closest we have come to a storytelling medium that actually represents the way humans think. Authors that wish to tackle complex, multidisciplinary subjects would do well to consider the wiki platform over books and blogs.
Four Kinds of Ideas
All ideas, concepts, memes, proposed facts, etc. fall into one of four categories.
- Ideas supported by evidence (good ideas)
- Ideas contradicted by evidence (bad ideas)
- Ideas not subject to evidence (irrelevant ideas)
- Stories, metaphors, metanarratives, perspectives
The current state of scientific advancement may make certainty impossible for highly complex concepts, but they are nonetheless subject to evidence. In these cases we must model them as well as our current theories and technology allows, and then chose the one that is most likely to be true.
Concepts that cannot be proven nor disproven because they exist outside of reality should be ignored. They are the philosophical equivalent of a trick question whose only purpose is confusion, not truth.
The stories we tell ourselves about these ideas are how we turn ideas into meaning, ideology, and shared belief systems.
Humans Think in Aphorisms
Aphorisms are memorable quotes that distill complex ideas into their core takeaways. There is a reason that we tend to gravitate to famous quotes as sources of wisdom. It is not possible to remember all of the contents of a book after you have read it, but a quote that captures the key point that the author is making can be remembered and repeated easily.
This mirrors how the brain stores ideas in neurons. Concepts are represented by patterns of neural activity that fire each time we think about a particular word, idea, or memory. Our brain is constantly trying to generalize knowledge in order to create rule-based understanding from individual examples. The aphorism represents the generalized concept that is retained so that all of the individual examples, anecdotes, research, etc. that contribute to it don't need to be retained or recalled each time we think about it.
Before the invention of the printing press, aphorisms and poetry were the primary way that we had of remembering and passing on important ideas.
In the spirit of meta and self-reference, here are some aphorisms on the subject of aphorisms.[1]
"Life itself is a quotation." -Jorge Luis Borges
"Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it." -Alfred North Whitehead
"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself." -Marlene Dietrich
"A short saying oft contains much wisdom." -Sophocles
"A witty saying proves nothing." -Voltaire
"I never have found the perfect quote. At best I have been able to find a string of quotations which merely circle the ineffable idea I seek to express." -Caldwell O'Keefe
Information Theory, Entropy, Evolution and Universal Bayesianism
In his book The Romance of Reality, Bobby Azarian outlines the latest complexity theories that combine entropy, the genetic algorithms of DNA-based evolution and the idea-based evolution of memes into a general theory called Universal Bayesianism.
There are a number of philosophers, scientists, and theologians who have proposed similar models for universal complexification as an inevitable concept (i.e. god). This book is the most comprehensive look at this holistic perspective available at the time of this edit.
Dawkins on Memes (and that's it)
Richard Dawkins original work on the idea of the meme as a self-replicating cultural concept is by far his best. He has since become more well known for his anti-religion views, which take a very different approach to persuasion than this wiki. But this highlights the importance of a central concept to this wiki--the need to separate ideas from authorship. Everyone has a good idea, and everyone does something that others find reprehensible. If we abandoned every good idea that was thought of by an occasional asshole, we would still be in the stone age.