From: Nick Rose <Nicholas.Rose@uwe.ac.uk>
To: JOM-EMIT Discussion List <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: HEA report on religion and mental health
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:19:55 -0400 (EDT)
Hi Derek,
>>Nick:
>>For me that would point
>>towards social psychological and community support rather
>>than any intrinsic psychological reward of belief...
>Derek:
>So yes you're right, there is no way that one can
>immediately separate social from intrinsic factors. I
>suppose one could look at people who are religious but do
>not belong to a religious group. That sort of thing
>is supposedly increasingly common nowadays, so it moight
>be possible to repeat the classic method on that group as
>compared to, say, parish-oriented Anglicans.
Hmm.. Even new age groups - who typically have religiousy
beliefs but reject orthadox practices - tend to band
together. A couple of our third year project students are
looking at healing circles and, from what they describe, it
sounds like community plays a strong part. If you went for
a group selection argument (ala Wilson and Sober) you might
see such cultural practices as a way of reducing within-
group fitness differences.
An alternative group to try would be humanist societies. If
the benefits of religion are a purely social function -
then we should find those benefits in the absence of
belief. Still, by now the HEA report is looking a little
feeble! Between cause and effect and the composition of
the control group's wrt social context, I think there is
very little we can conclude from their findings - does
anyone disagree?
>>Nick:
>>I haven't noticed a sudden decay in scientology, for
>>instance. Surely, the horizontally transmitted memes will
>>survive so long as they can gain as many or more hosts
>>than they lose. Like a viral infection perhaps ;)
>Derek:
>Well, Scientology is still quite young. I'd predict
>however, that if it's still with us in 200 years time, it
>will have become a more normal vertically transmitted
>religion.
A nice clear prediction - too bad we won't live long enough
to test it ;) Can you think of a prediction across a
smaller time frame?
This appears to be a co-evolutionary stance - ala Durham.
He suggests that whilst memes may have the capability to go
astray for a while - gene selection will always root them
out for oblivion. Your suggestion appears to be that whilst
memes may be churned out regardless of whether or not they
are biologically adaptive - the only ones that survive for
any time are the ones which *are* biologically adaptive.
I think a lot of sociobiologists would agree with that - as
Dawkin's puts it - they always want to go back to genetic
fitness. I too have a lot of sympathy for that view.
However, so long as the biological pros and cons of a
behaviour broadly balance out many neutral or mildly
biologically maladaptive memes could survive?
Alternatively, what if a predominantly horizontally spread
meme happened to be biologically adaptive - would *that*
kind of meme inevitably end up vertically transmitted?
Basically, the only way I see vertical transmission
regaining it's dominance as the vector for cultural
practices is if civilisation collapses and we lose the
telecommunication infra-structure (Cloak would say
M-Culture) which has allowed horizontal transmission to
take off.
>For instance Bah'ai-ism is mostly horizontal in
>the West but very much vertical in
>Iran
In short: Is this because memes inevitably end up being
vertically transmitted? Or because the m-culture here in
the West supports horizontal transmission so much better?
----------------------------------------
Nick Rose
Email: Nicholas.Rose@uwe.ac.uk
"University of the West of England"
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