Why should we study the concept of memes, and how can it explain human culture?

The concept of memes, proposed in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, is a new replicator theory to explain human culture. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the concept of memes, their necessity, and explore their impact on human society and culture.

 

In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins presents a theory of evolution from a gene perspective. He tells the story of a gene that acts blindly for the sake of its own replication, which is true of all living things, especially animals. This theory should be applicable to all living things, including humans, but humans are special in that they have a unique “culture” compared to other living things. In Chapter 11 of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins cites ‘culture’ as what distinguishes humans from other organisms, and proposes a new concept of self-replicating ‘memes’. This concept has long been debated in its very existence, and can seem unfamiliar and puzzling to the uninitiated. This article explores the concept of memes and why they are so repulsive to us, and discusses why they should nevertheless be studied and how we can uncover their true nature.
Our enormous brains are endowed with extraordinary imitative abilities, and these imitative abilities allow for the birth of replicators, like genes. The emergence of these new replicators, memes, allowed culture to evolve through ‘cultural mutations’, just as genetic evolution did: just as DNA survived in primordial soup as a self-replicator, genes created brains, providing the basis for memes to emerge. For example, the meme of “belief in the existence of God” arose through mutation and has survived through the great spoken and written word because it has such a powerful appeal that it can be easily copied. These “cultural mutations” are sometimes found in other species, but they are special cases, and in humans, Dawkins says, the power of cultural evolution is particularly evident. While Dawkins acknowledges efforts to link human civilization to “biological advantage,” he points out the limitations of similar theories in light of the diversity of human culture. He argues that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to genes to understand the evolution of modern humans.
Memes are parasitic on our brains, traveling through multiple brains to replicate themselves, and so, like genes, memes have the characteristics of “selfish replicators” that survive by longevity, fertility, and accuracy of replication. But there are differences between genes and memes. Unlike genes, memes don’t replicate genetically: they can survive replication intact, or they can be significantly altered. Memes replicate much faster than genes, and in different ways. The relationship between memes and genes can be mutually reinforcing or antagonistic. For example, the widespread spread of a meme in a tribal religion can make the tribe more cohesive, leading to the prosperity of the tribe’s genes. Conversely, clerical celibacy is an example of genes working against it. In medieval European Catholicism, clerical celibacy survived because it was enacted as a doctrine with strong reproductive power within the clerical society.
The concept of memes, introduced by Dawkins to view the evolution of human culture in terms of replicators, is questionable in that its substance is not as clear-cut as genes. The concept of memes can be criticized for being little more than an analogy to explain changes in human culture in a replicator fashion. While the replication of genes has been proven through many experiments and arguments, the same cannot be said for memes, which are only partially proven. Just as the concept of memes is repugnant to the idea that all living things are genetic survival machines, so too is the theory that human culture and intellectual society are under the control of memes. Dawkins suggests that humans have the foresight to rebel against self-replicators, but this leaves us with no way of knowing whether a meme of pure altruism would have been highly adaptive. This rigid definition of memes could lead to skepticism about human society, as the idea that everything is reducible to memes when human free will is in doubt.
Dawkins created a new paradigm by defining genes as another actor outside of the organism. This idea was extended to the concept of memes to define a new replicator. This is significant because it provided another way of looking at the world, especially human culture. Memes are also important because they exist between genetic reductionism and multilevel selectionism. When Dawkins proposed memes, he was introducing another perspective for understanding natural selection. Memes are real as a means to understand natural selection. According to Dawkins, a gene or meme is a progression through evolution that increases in complexity and becomes easier to adapt to a given environment. Since science is also a meme, progress in science is also caused by natural selection driven by memes. While I don’t entirely agree with the idea that evolution is progress, the concept of memes has led to increased complexity and the ability to explain more natural phenomena, so the study of memes is necessary. The study of memes would start with quantifying and creating a database of human culture, which would require analyzing them and developing a theory of memes. The Internet and AI will also help us to uncover the reality of memes, as the transmission of information is the replication of memes in meme theory.