I agree with Daniel Denett’s notion of the meme that says how memes are replicating packets of information, though I disagree with his negative portrayal of memes—as harmful “viruses”; things that compromise our welfare and survival without giving anything in return.
Memes are very much like genes. They’re two sides of the same coin—polar opposites. While genes are responsible for the survival and the passing on of tangible and physical, memes are responsible for the passing on of the ideological and metaphorical. Just as genes try to replicate themselves, memes very much do too. It is true that memes have the capability to override our natural instinct of ensuring our own survival and reproduction, but that doesn’t make them “harmful viruses” that compromise our best interests in survival. Like genes, memes are subject to natural selection. Bad memes are eliminated simply because they aren’t good enough. Take communism for example—it fell because it was the weaker meme out of itself and capitalism.
While genes govern survival as a singular organism, memes govern survival as a species. If communism were to have gone global after the Cold War, the world would be in a less good state than it is now—more people would’ve died due to poverty and oppression, and there wouldn’t be as many humans as there are now.
Understanding ideas as memes gives us a wider perspective on the world of ideas—a “God’s mode” view on things. Memes show us the world of ideas and its intrinsic operations in its most basic form. It gives more scope to our ideas by allowing us to see things from an “origin point”.
It is interesting to note that Susan Blackmore’s idea about the “teme” is actually a subset of Marshall McLuhan’s idea about how media and technology are extensions of Man. “Temes” are extensions of memes—memes that are spread and sustained by machinery rather than Man himself. It might seem farfetched and right out of an epic sci-fi at first sight, but the idea of the “teme” actually tallies with one of McLuhan’s ideas about machines—that over-reliance on technology creates something called psychic stress, which causes us to lose consciousness over certain aspects of our life because technology takes care of them for us. An example of this is how taking television for granted may shorten our attention spans, as it causes us to take entertainment for granted.
If we “extend” the idea of “temes” to a point of extreme using McLuhan’s logic of media, the ever-increasing presence and power of technology will eventually cause “temes” to replace memes—machines will replace Man in determining what values and ideas are spread by influencing us from within, and we will be completely unaware of their influence over us. This isn’t just because reliance on them renders us unconscious to their effects on us, but also because technology is getting everywhere—even inside our bodies. We will become mechanical beings without our own awareness; and our decisions will be influenced by machines in ways so subtle that we will not be aware of their power over us.
Create a metaphor of an idea – but do not make use of the clichéd naked lightbulb concept, but come up with an original interpretation of the idea metaphor. Next, extend the logical conclusions of this metaphor till you get a image system (or ecology) of ideas relating to it. Starting out with a deep doodle, create a visual representation of this metaphor, with written notes explaining the idea.
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