Memes

[123everton]

Does anyone hear believe in the memes theory?

[Theland1]

I think that it has some merit, from what I know of it, but as to it being a predictive tool or an asset in psychological studies, well, I confess to not knowing.
What would you say a good recent examples of memes?

[123everton]

Sounds like a load of boll0cks to me.
I'd never come across it until the other night on tele, and I was'nt impressed by it's validity.

[Theland1]

Well I disagree. Whether or not there is a practical application or not, I wouldn't know, but I'm sure that somebody studying societies development may find in them an extra ligh to shine on their particular area of study.
Didn't Dawkins give them the name?

[123everton]

Yes it seems so (but that's not my objection) the notion that I inheried my belefs and that such beliefs are from some sort of organism that compete with one another to succeed, I find rather odd.
Added to that as on the show, if these memes define our concept of reality which ones do we trust, cue "Bohemian Rhapsody"

[jake-the-peg]

Careful about the word inherited here

We're not talking about biologicval inheritance the way you may have inherited your father's nose.

This is cultural

Take what is going on at the moment in the financial world.

We are all exposed through the media, through conversations with friends even through Answerbank to ideas and explanations of it.

Our opinions will crystalise and harden. We like to call this making our minds up but peer pressure is often as important.

We will pass these ideas on in the context of teaching and being around younger people.

Take the miners strike threads in the news topic.

There you see the polarization of these idea - Miners Bad, Thatcher good - or vice versa

The subtlty drops away

Give it 20 years and similar threads will probably be around about the banking crisis and Gordon Brown.

Older examples might include General Hague and the first world war.

It's also at the core of the "History isn't taught properly any more" threads. Older people find that newer history teaching isn't passing on the memes that they were taught and that kids are being taught to question them - Shock Horror!

I'm not sure the idea is really that novel but it's a natty crystalisation of them

[123everton]

I'm still unconvinced.
One can read about something to change one's mind, is that an example of a persuasive meme?
Are we all a martyr to our memes?
Could we develop meme therapy for cruiminals?
Gays even?
Would such ends justify the memes? Sorry, could'nt resist it...

[chakka35]

Don't worry, 123everton, memes don't control you if you don't want them to.
They are ideas and beliefs that are spread intellectually through the population just as genes do biologically.

Religious belief is a good example of a successful meme which has flourished for millennia. As has been pointed out before, all children are born in the default state of atheism after which many of them receive the religious meme from their parents, Sunday School teachers, priests and so on.
Many reject that meme and remain (or later become) atheists.

Memes can flourish or die quickly, they can become extinct or mutate. In any particular case, it's difficult to decide which fate has befallen it. It was once common to believe that the earth was flat. Has that meme become (virtually) extinct or has it mutated to one that says the earth is round?
Some require a particular sort of mind in which to breed, as do the memes of alien abduction, spritualism, autism-from-MMR; other minds are poisonous to such memes.

Enough.

[123everton]

So is it fair to suggest that a meme is just a piece of information that we acquire and digest to our own satisfaction?
If it is, why go to the trouble of giving it a name?
If memes are a unit of reality(?) how does it explain people's religious or supernatural experiences?
It smells like snake oil to me.

[chakka35]

It is a belief, a point of view, which permeates the population, sometimes to flourish for great lengths of time and sometimes to die out very quickly. There is no reason why such phenomena shouldn't be given a name, and because they behave very much like genes, memes is a good one.
But you can dismiss the whole idea if it doesn't appeal to you as an interesting topic.

[123everton]

Fine, but I'm still curious as to how the idea of memes relate to religious or supernatural experience.
If one sees a ghost how do memes account for that?

[123everton]

Ah!
Now that's more like it, that sounds more like traditional atheism to me, the rebranding of old ideas and claiming them as their own.
Only this time it's the same meat with the same gravy with a little garnish...

[chakka35]

123everton, I don't know why you have got memes mixed up with religion. Certainly religious belief in all its different forms comprises a large selection of memes but that is still only a tiny fraction of the whole. A meme is any idea whoich is passed on between individuals and groups.

For example, the association of certain slow music with death or sadness is a meme - a passed-on idea which lots of people automatically accept. The association of red with anger and blue with calmness may have started with fires and blue skies but nowadays those origins are bypassed as the memes dominate.

Oddly, atheism is not a meme. It is not a belief, a tradition, a short-cut to a way of thinking; it is a rejection of the meme of religion. So I don't understand your last.

[123everton]

If a meme is an idea that is passed between groups, then atheism is as much a meme as religion.
Is it not?
It's just nowhere near as successful.

[jake-the-peg]

Yes Atheism is indeed a meme.

Whether or not it is sucessful depends on what you use to judge it by and how you define it.

If you use a broad brush and encompass scientific rational thought then it's massively successful both in those that practice it, it's geographical spread, the respect it has and the tangible benefits it has brought

(I know, I know but I can't resist rising to the bait!)

[123everton]

LOL, that's the spirit JTP.

[chakka35]

But atheism is none of those things listed in the dictionary: it is the rejection of a meme.

If that is considered a meme in itself, then my rejection of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, astrology and tealeaf-reading are all memes. Which means that the word has no worthwhile meaning at all.

I didn't intend to bring atheism into this, merely to explain what a meme is. It was 123 everton (with a hidden agenda, I suspect!) who inexplicably latched onto it.

[123everton]

No hidden agenda, I saw it mentioned for the first time on T.V the other night, and what was said about it was unconvincing.
Which it has to be said was the presenters contention.
It sounds to me like a meme is just a name for a piece of information, the desire to find a name for such a thing strikes me as rather pointless.