Memes: Effects on Consciousness

Memes: Effects on Consciousness Presented by: Aaron Cortez Danielle Claus Sonya Morales

Memes: What Art They? “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” – R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Memes: What Are They? “If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.” –R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Memes “When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.” – R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Memes: Can They Alter Consciousness? • When an individual or group of individuals pass on memes (cultural practices, social/political practices, scientific theories) does this effect and possibly alter the consciousness of those receiving the new input? • If new beliefs, or ideas change an individual’s perception of the world thus changing behavior and actions, can this be correlated with altering consciousness? • We believe memes do effect consciousness, though the effects may be more subtle and on a longer time scale than the explicit examples we have studied in this course.

Historical Examples of Meme Propagation • 1) Clinging to Old Memes (Danielle) • 2) Karl Marx and Memes that construct social superorganisms (Aaron) • 3) Animals and Memes (Sonya) • 4) Sir Isaac Newton: Effects on Perception of the World (Danielle) • 5) Meditation and Memes (Aaron) • 6) Religion memes (Video Clip)

Memes in South America • According to Howard Bloom when an animal is vulnerable it tends to gravitate to familiar things. • When an animal is flourishing is when it can afford to try new things, be more frivolous with its energy • This explains in an evolutionary way why animals and people tend to revert to old “memes” .

The Meme Advantage • To illustrate this example is The Wari expansion in the late middle horizon in South America • The second half of 5th century ? Was marked with a drought which caused suffering amongst the local people • The inconsistency of the water and agriculture lead people to reinforce their deification of ancient memes • They believed in huacas which are “any person, place or thing possessing a sacred or supernatural quality” basically different memes that had possessed different supernatural properties (Golwaki and Malpass)

The Meme Advantage • When the Wari invaded the land, there was no evidence of warfare, they just built on pre-existing religious centers or huacas (old and pre-existing memes) therefore, a correlation was made between the ancient ancestral memes and the dominant memes of the Wari. Discretely associating the Wari with the Gods. • One example was the site of Cerro Baul of Moquena valley • Cerro Bual was a site built to venerate the nearby Apus or snow peaked mountains which were thought of as ancestral guardians and had to be appeased by the local people • The Wari came in and facilitated worship of these mountains by building ceremonial centers to honor the locally embraced memes and also incorporated worship of their own memes.

The peak “Arundane may have been viewed as the ancestral origin of the local groups, as well as the apu most closely related to the altiplano and the Tiwanaku realm. Picchu Picchu, on the road to Wari itself, was the apu associated with Wari regional identity and, through its links to mountains closer to Wari, with the imperial Identity” (446).

The Meme Advantage • Although the dominant tribe most likely controlled access to the site, they did facilitate veneration of local gods and huacas which allowed the local people to continue to cling to their original memes This is an explicit example of how memes can be maintained and manipulated, by hosts of different memes, to subliminally control a vulnerable mass of people.

Memes: The Constructor of Social Superorganisms “Memes stretch their tendrils through the fabric of each human brain, driving us to coagulate in the cooperative masses of family, tribe, and nation.” –Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle

Karl Marx • From 1852 to 1864 Karl Marx sat solitary in the library sifting through books and compiling his ideas. • Little did he realize that he was simply the tool for fragmented memes.

Karl Marx • Marx blended a collection of memes successfully into a single comprehensive work, thus creating a new meme, which suggests that memes can evolve. • Remarkably his work, Das Capital (1867), went virtually unnoticed for 50 years. The meme could not find the proper hosts.

Karl Marx • Marx’s meme needed minds capable of organizing the masses. • These minds were those of Lenin, Stalin and their friends. • Lenin became a firm believer in Marxism and passionately wanted revolution in his motherland Russia. • But Lenin had to wait for the right time to inject Marx’s meme into the mind of the masses for a successful revolution.

Marx’s Meme Spreads • In 1905, Czar Nicolas went to war with Japan who annihilated the Russian Baltic fleet • The people were becoming enraged at the incompetence of their leader • Russia’s battles on the eastern front during WWI left the country in shambles. • This was the tipping point, Russians resented their leader more than ever • Finally it was time for Marx’s meme to infect the receptive mind of the masses who were ready for change.

Marx’s Meme Spreads • Lenin seized the opportunity, taking a train to the Russian capital. He started riots and bombarded the crowds with Marxist slogans • Marx’s meme finally had the receptive minds it needed to create a social superorganism • By the second half of the 20th century, the meme had control over the minds of over 1.8 billion people. (Russia, China, Korea, Cuba etc.)

Animals and Memes • Do you think that animals portray meme transmission or is this unique only to humans??

Birds and Memes • It can be argued that the learning and imitation of birdsong is a meme • P.F. Jenkins studied the Saddleback bird on islands off coast of New Zealand • Jenkins observed that they have 9 distinct songs and males of a given group had a distinct song and dialect • Jenkins studied the song patterns of the father and son, and concluded that they were not inherited genetically • The son as well, was able to adopt the unique songs of his neighbors via imitation

Birds and Memes • The learning and acquisition of birdsong is analogous in many ways to human speech • Both are learned early in life • Both require listening to the sounds to imitate as well as hearing their own production of sound • There is evidence of innate predispositions for the learning and perception of the complex vocalizations • Songbirds and humans have a critical period for learning

Birds and Memes • Jenkins noticed that there was a song pool, and a certain number of songs on each island, and sometimes there was an invention of a new song, which Jenkins referred to as cultural mutations, because they were usually variations of the old • This is an explicit example of how memes can propagate from one mind to the next in birds • These songs act as cultural identity to particular groups of birds, just like language in humans

Isaac Newton: Scientific Memes • Proposed theory of gravity and invented calculus • His compilation of various physical and mathematical laws changed the way he viewed the world • His memes spread over time to enable new inventions and discoveries in astrophysics, math, and engineering which collectively changed the way we perceive the universe. • Manifestation of new memes in brain=change in perception=change consciousness

Meditators focus on Meme to Achieve Meditative State • In the Lutz et al. article, trained Meditators showed robust gamma oscillations while focusing on “unconditional loving kindness and compassion.” • The focus was “non-referential compassion” which means the meditators were not focusing on any particular living beings, objects, memories or images • This basically means the meditators were focusing on the idea of compassion to achieve a meditative state and not directing it to or deriving it from anything physical! • Ideas are memes. These results suggest that training the mind to focus solely on a particular meme can produce an altered state of consciousness which as Lutz et al. claim, is a unique state compared to guided, mantra or object focused meditation. • What do you think????

Review/Discussion ?’s • Do you believe that the propagation of memes from one host to the next can alter the consciousness of the recipients?

Review/Discussion ?’s 2) What is it about an individual or group that makes them either vulnerable to new memes or clingy to old memes? Is it based off the individual’s experiences or the salience of the memes, both, or something else?

Review/Discussion ?’s • It seems to be clear that memes propagate from one mind to the next via imitation and language. But where do they originate from? Are memes emergent properties of the brain as suggested by computational neuroscience? !?!?Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff believe truth, ethical, and aesthetic values exist in the quantum geometry of the universe!?!? Are memes stored here?!?!????

References • 1.) Bloom, Howard (1995). The Lucifer Principle. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. • 2.) Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press. • 3.) Bloom, Howard (2000). Global Brain. John Wiley and Sons • 4.) Glowacki and Malpass. 2003 Water, Huacas, and Ancestor Worship. Latin American Antiquity Vol 14 Dec 2003. • 5.) Williams and Nash. Sighting the apu: a GIS analysis of Wari Imperialism and the worship of mountain peaks World archaeology vol 38 2006 • 6.) Schreiber, Katharina. 2005. Sacred Landscapes and Imperial Ideologies: The Wari Empire in Sondondo, Peru. Archeaological Papers od the American Anthropological Association Vol 14 • 7.) Kuhl, Patricia et al "Birdsong and Human Speech: Common Themes and Mechanisms" Annual Review of Neuroscience Vol 22 March 1999

Memes: Effects on Consciousness