Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA07476 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 18 May 2000 12:09:55 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1A9@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: The Darwin Awards as evidence of memes? Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 12:07:56 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi everyone,
Some of you may be familiar with the so-called 'Darwin awards', which are
posted on the web, and I think they offer an interesting proposition for the
viability of memetics as a theory of cultural evolution.
The Darwin awards, are a humourous (although some might say in poor taste)
set of supposedly true stories (some are, some haven't been verified) about
people who have managed to kill themselves by doing incredibly stupid
things. The Darwin award can only be achieved, however, if the victim dies
without having left any offspring, the joke being that this is evidence of
natural selection at work as the stupid die before they can reproduce.
There are some famous examples (although not all of them strictly fit the
award criteria), such as the man who attached himself to a rocket and
launched it because he wanted to fly, or another man who was crushed to
death under a coke machine, which he accidently pulled on top of him as he
tried to get a can without paying, despite having lots of money on him.
Now, jokes aside, the relevance of this to memetics, it seems to me, is that
the stories about such people spread and persist regardless of the person
being dead or, for that matter, of whether or not the stories are true (some
definitely are).
Now there has been much discussion about why memes spread, and the degree to
which genes drive our behaviour, and thus the degree to which memes conform
to genetic driving. This is all well and good, but isn't the point about
how memes spread central to discussions of memetics?
It is very clear indeed, that through language, writing, art and other
cultural artefacts, memes (as a short hand term for a wide range of things)
spread regardless of what happens to their originators.
What the analogy to genes offers, is a way of thinking about how memes
spread, by asking basic questions about how genes spread. So, like genes,
memes must, to borrow Blackmore's phrasing (that should put some of you off
:-)!), have fecundity, fidelity and longevity.
A key difference though, IMHO, is that the reasons why memes persist, may be
different to the reasons why genes persist. Genes persist for reasons of
utility, their effects on their organisms offer better chances of survival
in the environment in which those organisms exist (or don't inhibit
survival). Memes, however, may and I want to stress may, not require
utility, at least in part because they have a much higher rate, and many
more avenues, of replication than genes. So memes might be able to spread
and persist regardless of usefulness to humans, who are but one site in
which memes can reside. To give an example, memes can spread beyond family,
so a family need not survive for its memes to persist while its genes die
out. If that's the case then why does the meme have to have utility value?
It's necessary for genes, but is it really necessary for memes? Or rather
does utility for memes mean the same thing as utility for genes?
Indeed, one could arguably go even further, and say that memes can survive
even when the society in which they emerged, has disappeared. The
mythologies, and broad (if not the detailed) histories of civilisations such
as that of ancient Eygypt, or the Maya, for example have survived through
their architecture and writing. The memes of civilisations without writing
are less well know to us, such as the people who built Teotichuan, or the
Nazca, who left those famous lines on the barren ground- in neither of these
cases do we know the name of the peoples who left their monuments behind
(the names we do have come from much later).
Comments anyone?
Vincent
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