Memes have invaded Earth & are colonizing us!

Life evolves without a designer. All it takes is replication (copying), changing conditions to adapt to, and low survival rates.

DNA is a species’ overall blueprint. Strings øf DNA are composed of genes. Making copies of genes is not exact; some don’t replicate precisely. Mutations happen. Offspring vary.

Psychologist Susan Blackmore gave this analogy at PopTech. She holds up a coat. What if we made ten copies of the coat? Some would have slightly shorter sleeves, others would appear in a different color, and other variations would appear. Next you take the best coat of the lot, best being defined as the most appropriate to surrounding conditions, and throw the rest away. Then you make ten copies of that coat. And again. And again. If the room became colder, eventually heavy coats with fur collars would predominate since they’re the best adapted for cold temperatures.

Animals and plants have always evolved this way. No plan. No brain behind it. Just replication with variable results and survival of those which adapt the best. Polar bears are white and fat because that works best where they live, not because a deity decreed, “Let there be fat, white polar bears.” From a gene’s point of view, propogation is the only goal and replication is at the heart of it. DNA had a monopoly on replication until humans came along.

Humans replicate culture. People share ideas and pass them along to others. These snippets of culture, called memes, are modified in the retelling. Just like the coats, the memes with the best fit with current conditions persist. And just like the genes, memes exist only to propogate. So now we have two sorts of evolution going on, the genes and the memes.

The memes are making tremendous advances. What would help memes spread among humankind? Language certainly made it easier to transmit memes from one to another. So did writing. And printing. And the telegraph. And radio. And television. And now the net. The memes are using us to expand their reach.

This gets scary. Memes don’t know when to quit. For a meme, more is always better. We are depleting the earth’s resouces in service of memes. Susan Blackmore suggests we all wake up to what’s going on.