The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment

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Chandler, Daniel & Rod Munday. 2011. A dictionary of communication. Oxford: Oxford Reference. 10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001 Search in Google Scholar The main differences between memetics and other theories of cultural evolution depend on this point. For memetics, memes sustain a new evolutionary process operating on top of the old. They ‘should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.’ (Humphrey in Dawkins 1976 p 192). Christiansen and Chater (2008) disagree. They note that language is akin to an “organism” but they reject memetics and put “organism” in scare quotes, writing, ‘Following Darwin (1900), we argue that it is useful metaphorically to view languages as “organisms,”’ (p 2).

Heylighen, Francis (1992). "Selfish Memes and the Evolution of Cooperation". Journal of Ideas. 2 (4): 77–84.Let me start by explaining what memetics is and where it comes from. Memetics is one possible way of using Darwinian evolutionary ideas to study culture. As I shall explain below, it is not the only way of doing this. According to memetics, the essence of culture is constituted by memes and the essence of cultural change is constituted by changes in meme frequencies. Memes are mental states that embody discrete chunks of socially transmissible information. To say that the information that memes embody is socially transmissible is to say that memes can give rise to other memes through social learning. To say that memes embody a discrete chunk of information is to say that, when the information present in a meme is socially transmitted, such information does not usually blend with the information present in other memes. On this view, social transmission is (at least at its most fundamental level) a copying process in which memes generate copies of themselves. Memes are thought to be socially transmissible beliefs, desires, values, and mental representations of tunes, stories, myths, rituals, ways of doing (or saying, or thinking about) things, etc. According to some versions of memetics, it is not just socially transmissible mental states that deserve to be classified as memes, but also those artefacts and activities (including those of a linguistic and textual nature) that can be copied and that can result in the existence of similar artefacts or activities. According to the author, the solution is to be found in the theory of mental content: mental content is cultural DNA. On her view, while the best way of identifying genes is in terms of DNA sequences, the best way of identifying memes is in terms of mental contents. As a consequence, the theory of mental content can advance our understanding of cultural evolution in the same way that the theory of DNA has advanced our understanding of genetic evolution. Fracchia, Joseph; Lewontin, Richard (February 2005). "The price of metaphor". History and Theory. 44 (1): 14–29. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2005.00305.x. ISSN 0018-2656. JSTOR 3590779. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to 'evolution.' ... We conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.

Atran, Scott (2002). In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195149302. Within cultural anthropology, materialist approaches are skeptical of such units. In particular, Dan Sperber argues that memes are not unitary in the sense that there are no two instances of exactly the same cultural idea, all that can be argued is that there is material mimicry of an idea. Thus every instance of a "meme" would not be a true evolutionary unit of replication. [43] Atran, Scott (2001). "The Trouble with Memes" (PDF). Human Nature. 12 (4): 351–381. doi: 10.1007/s12110-001-1003-0. PMID 26192412. S2CID 1530055. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 October 2021 . Retrieved 8 October 2021.As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.” – Helen Keller Lankshear, Colin; Knobel, Michele (2019). "Memes, Macros, Meaning, and Menace: Some Trends in Internet Memes". The Journal of Communication and Media Studies. 4 (4): 43–57. doi: 10.18848/2470-9247/CGP/v04i04/43-57. ISSN 2470-9247. S2CID 214369629. Archived from the original on 4 January 2023 . Retrieved 11 January 2023. These days meme is evolving semantically again, which seems like an appropriately meme-y thing to do. We've spotted it functioning as a verb: Freud, Sigmund 1913. On the interpration of dreams, D. A. Brill (trans). New York Macmillan. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Interpretation_of_Dreams (accessed 21 September 2020). 10.1037/10561-000 Search in Google Scholar The existence of gene-like particles is an important feature of transmission processes in the biological case. But the way I have described biological change shows that such particles are not an essential feature of a Darwinian evolutionary system. This applies to cultural change too. This is the reason why culture can be a Darwinian evolutionary system even if memes do not exist. By insisting on gene-like particles, memetics mischaracterises cultural processes and provides the wrong framework for an evolutionary analysis of culture.

Heylighen, Francis; Chielens, K. (2009). Meyers, B. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science: Evolution of Culture, Memetics (PDF). Bibcode: 2009ecss.book.....M. doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3. ISBN 9780387758886. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 February 2021 . Retrieved 22 May 2009. Gill, Jameson (2011). "Memes and narrative analysis: A potential direction for the development of neo-Darwinian orientated research in organisations" (PDF). EURAM 11: Proceedings of the European Academy of Management. European Academy of Management: 0–30. ISSN 2466-7498. S2CID 54894144. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 October 2021 . Retrieved 5 April 2022. Kelly, Kevin (1994). Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Boston: Addison-Wesley. p. 360. ISBN 9780201483406. theory ( Freud 1922 1959, Redl 1949, Wheeler 1966, Ritter and Holmes 1969, Levy and Nail 1993) and deindividuationSelfishness is a trait that can have a significant impact on our personal and professional relationships.

Once the meme is out there, it's very hard to quash. No amount of evidence will stop a certain segment of the public from believing … Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001 Search in Google Scholar Keywords: Behavioural Contagion; Coevolution; Emotional Contagion; Evolution; Imitation; Meme; Memetics; Selectionism; Social Contagion; Social Learning We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory,' or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'. These people always think first about themselves and are greedy by nature. It’s heartbreaking to come across fake friends who can betray you anytime, so always take time to trust people. #SelfishQuotesThe idea that biological change can be explained by appealing to transmission and selection factors was Darwin's idea. This idea has been elaborated in many important respects in the last 150 years, but Darwin's original insight has withstood the test of time. Biological change is best understood in terms of a Darwinian evolutionary system, a system where the composition of populations is determined by a combination of transmission and selection factors. The same is true of cultural change. Cultural change is best understood in terms of a system where the (cultural) composition of populations is determined by a combination of (cultural) transmission and selection factors. Culture is a Darwinian evolutionary system.