Memetic Lexicon

"A Memetic Lexicon"
Version 3.5
Glenn Grant, Memeticist
"An idea is something
you have;
an ideology, something that has
you."
--Morris Berman

What if ideas were viruses?

Consider the T-phage virus. A T-phage cannot replicate
itself; it reproduces by hijacking the DNA of a bacterium, forcing its
host to make millions of copies of the phage. Similarly, an idea can symbiotically
infect your mind and alter your behavior, causing you to want to tell
your friends about the idea, thus exposing them to the idea-virus. Any
idea which does this is called a "meme" (pronounced meem).

Unlike a virus, which is encoded in DNA molecules,
a meme is nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens
to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern. Typical
memes include individual slogans, ideas, catch-phrases, melodies, icons,
inventions, and fashions. It may sound a bit sinister, this idea that
people are hosts for mind-altering strings of symbols, but in fact this
is what human culture is all about.

As a species, we have co-evolved with our memes. Imagine
a group of early Homo Sapiens in the Late Pleistocene epoch. They've recently
arrived with the latest high-tech hand axes and are trying to show their
Homo Erectus neighbours how to make them. Those who can't get their heads
around the new meme will be at a disadvantage and will be out-evolved
by their smarter cousins.

Meanwhile, the memes themselves are evolving, just
as in the game of "Telephone" (where a message is whispered
from person to person, being slightly mis-replicated each time). Selection
favors the memes which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to
communicate to others. Garbled versions of a useful meme would presumably
be selected out.

So, in theory at least, the ability to understand
and communicate complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection
should favor those who aren't too conservative to understand new memes.
Or does it? In practice, some people are going to be all too ready to
commit any new meme that comes along, even if it should turn out to be
deadly nonsense, like: "Jump off a cliff and the gods will make you
fly."

Such memes do evolve, generated by crazy people, or
through mis-replication. Notice, though, that this "believe-and-you-will-fly"
meme might have a lot of appeal. The idea of magical flight is so tantalizing
-- maybe, if I truly believed, I just might leap off the cliff and...

This is a vital point: people try to infect each other
with those memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the memes'
objective value or truth. Further, the carrier of the cliff-jumping meme
might never actually take the plunge; they may well spend the rest of
their long lives infecting other people with the meme, inducing millions
of gullible fools to leap to their deaths. Historically, this sort of
thing is happening all the time.

Whether memes can be considered true "life forms"
or not is a topic of some debate, but this is irrelevant: they behave
in a way similar to life forms, allowing us to combine the analytical
techniques of epidemiology, evolutionary science, immunology, linguistics,
and semiotics, into an effective system known as "memetics."
Rather than debate the inherent "truth" or lack of "truth"
of an idea, memetics is largely concerned with how that idea gets itself
replicated.

Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies,
and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity
from dangerous information-contagions. You should be aware, for instance,
that you just been exposed to the Meta-meme, the meme about memes...

The lexicon which follows is intended to provide a
language for the analysis of memes, meme-complexes, and the social movements
they spawn. The name of the person who first coined and defined each word
appears in parentheses, although some definitions have been paraphrased
and altered. (NB: in some cases, names in parentheses refer
not to the word's inventor, but to the originator of an addendum to a
definition -- e.g., the definition given for "cult" is my own
[GMG]; additional concepts that follow are paraphrased from Keith Henson.)

*

Sources:

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.

Keith Henson, "Memetics", Whole Earth
Review #57: 50-55.

Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas.

Howard Rheingold, "Untranslatable Words",
Whole Earth Review #57: 3-8.

"GMG" = Glenn M. Grant