Memetics – From Whence it Comes
The term “meme” was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. The
primary motivation for the book though was to defend Darwinian evolution…a fact which explains
why “Memes: the new replicators” took up only 12 pages…less than one/tenth of the whole. To its
primary task (again, defending Darwinian evolution) the book does a very good (if not exceptional)
job laying out the case for how, acting in an individualistically selfish manner to promote their own
“lineage,” simple organisms learned to gather into collectives for their own defense. Millions of
years later, through countless trial and-error combinations we find ourselves, examples of what
Dawkins called winning “survival machines,” discussing how it all came together to “our” benefit.
The reality is that “our” benefit was only the by-product of what was best for the survival and
propagation of those individual strands of protein we call DNA -- an idea further illustrated in
exquisite detail in Howard Bloom’s Global Brain. (Bloom 2000.) In the grand scheme of The
Selfish Gene memes are merely a distraction – an example of how non-biological things can (and
do) also replicate. The establishment of memetics as a “school of study” would not come until
years later and, while he is happy that others have taken his idea and run with it, would not be
furthered by Dawkins himself.
For the sake of this paper, we will define a “meme” (m m – from the Greek word for
“something imitated”) by using Dawkins’ original definition -- a singular unit of cultural
information (e.g. a religious practice, political belief or popular song) transferred from one person
to another. To date, there has been considerable discussion in the field about whether this is
enough. Our song example, for instance, could carry more than one meaning in the mind of both
transmitter and recipient, and therefore it may be more useful to refer to these types as “memetic
packages” or “vehicles” (Blackmore 1999). Personally, I find little value in this line of discussion.
What we should really be focused on is the transfer of ideas and beliefs rather than separating the
“idea” from the “vehicle” delivering it. The fallacy of the importance of this distinction (i.e. idea
vs. vehicle) will become much more clear when we review Douglas Rushkoff’s mass media
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Convention