Thread by @robkhenderson

People don't have genes, genes have people

People don't have ideas (memes), memes have people

Memes are “units of culture: ideas, beliefs, practices, and anything else that can be passed on via social learning.”

Read The Selfish Gene by @RichardDawkins and The Ape that Understood the Universe by @SteveStuWill to learn more

Memes are analogous to genes. Just as some genes are more likely to survive and replicate, so it is with memes. Some ideas and practices are more likely to survive than others

But here’s the weird part: The determining factor for whether a meme will be passed on is whether survival benefits the meme itself, not the person using it

Just as a gene doesn’t “care” about the survival of an organism, but rather the survival of itself, a meme doesn’t “care” about the survival of the meme-holder, but simply its own survival

In biology, natural selection favors selfish genes. In culture, natural selection favors selfish memes. Memes that act as if their goal is to survive and propagate themselves into the future by jumping into other potential meme-holders

Memes are not conscious any more than genes are conscious. And most meme variants go extinct, while others proliferate. Some memes help the host. But other memes can be detrimental (similarly, some gene variants can benefit us, while others can put our health at risk)

For example, some religions promote fertility, urging their meme-holders to have lots of kids. The meme-holders then inculcate their kids with the memes, which benefit the meme’s survival

Other religions enforce abstinence. The Shakers were an 18th-century American sect that demanded strict celibacy. Over time, the Shakers became extinct

Beyond Shakerism, it may be possible that other memes urging people to not have children or have more children are similar. And over time, these memes have the same sterilizing or procreative effect

And just as natural selection in biology gives the impression of intelligent design, so too does it give this impression in culture. Memes look like they’ve been designed by a creator to protect and advance themselves. But they are just the memes that survived

Memes survive because they have properties that keep them in circulation in the meme pool. Like genes, memes survive to the extent that they help themselves, not their hosts

Memes spread best when they mesh with the native contours of our minds. Music is one example. Of all the countless musical endeavors throughout history, only a few happened to press our emotional buttons in the right way to spread in the meme pool

And humans seem to have an inbuilt tendency to divide the world into groups of “us” and “them.” Warfare is a constant in human societies, and sports appears to be universal as well

Dividing the world into the good guys and bad guys seems to come naturally for us. Any meme variant that incorporates this will have a high chance of replicating itself into other hosts

Parasites are entities that use another organism to survive without instantly killing it, and either has no effect on the host or actively harms it. Memes aren’t parasites, but sometimes they are similar

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-Ideology and language games
-Propaganda and self-deception
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