Today’s post is about a seemingly obvious, yet kind of “wow” topic – theory of evolution as applied to language.
You know the story of the theory of evolution. We thought God designed man for some probably important reason, then in 1859 Darwin came along and said, well, actually, it’s a whole lot changes in gene frequency over time. It’s a simple really: the genes that cause themselves to be more frequent in the next generation will be more frequent in the next generation.
Cue to 1976. Richard Dawkins describes Memetics: ideas that cause themselves to be more frequent in the next generation of ideas will be more frequent in the next generation of ideas. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club. From Wikipedia: “Memetics is also notable for sidestepping the traditional concern with the truth of ideas and beliefs. Instead, it is interested in their success.”
Memetics is a theory you love applying to the “other” side of the argument. Dawkins himself viewed religion is a meme because it causes you to want to spread it, but Science is awesome and rational. Liberalism is just a bunch of mimetic viruses drilled down by the state educational system, but conservatism is just and proper. You can also reverse the two sides. Just because something is a meme, doesn’t necessarily make it bad. It’s not a Fully General Counter-Argument .
After all, each concept in language whether identifies as a word or not has survived to the present day due to its ability to replicate itself. Each word in particular and language as a whole are not some God/Man given tools for conveying meaning. They are a self-serving distributed entity living inside people’s brains. Words and viral ideas occupy your precious mental space and may or may not provide you with any actual advantages in happiness or life expectancy. That makes it sound a little negative. Kind of like the machines in the Matrix.
But as the wise councilman in Matrix 2 mentioned, we need machines to survive, so the blogging will continue until morale improves. The first question is: what is the mechanism by which concepts cause themselves to be repeated over and over again?
The first and most blunt way is by blankly stating the intent of self-repetition. Diamond Sutra in Buddhism is one of these examples Only four lines of the Sutra explained to someone else = lots of merit. In some ways this is actually awesome because it is the most honest way of acknowledging the sutra’s viral nature. This is self-spreading entity by design. A similar method is employed by the ice bucket challenge or “share this blog with 3 people and you will find inner peace.” But seriously. This blog is awesome.
The second way that ideas spread is through compelling people to violence against non-believers. It’s actually not all violence, but violence against those who could most likely offer a competing idea B. This is the most dangerous way that ideas can maintain a hold on existence. Crusades are a common example, but so are wars to “democratize” the shit out of countries. Racial intolerance has a history of threatening their opponents. However what takes the cake in this category are totalitarian governments. The Dear Leader makes the sun rise. Why is that? Because the opponents of Dear Leader are nowhere to be found. The “idea” of government lives on supported by bad arguments. This is where memetic evolution is closely tied to genetic evolution as well. Is it that ideas that oppose Dear Leader(s) are losing the memetic battle or is it that people have a genetic tendency to consider politics as a life or death proposition? I am not sure, but either way the deck is frequently stacked against pacifism.
The third way ideas can spread is by causing themselves to be repeated endlessly in arguments about its meaning. Common examples are probably “should,” “moraliy,” “fair,” and other vague-isms. If a repetition of a word meant to solve the problem actually makes the problem worse, people will repeat it until somebody realizes this happened. And maybe substitutes another word, like “awesomeness,” at which point the process begins again (video). A not politically correct example is the hypothesis that taking about rape culture actually makes people more accepting of rape. Tao Te Ching has an idea of throw away “morality” and justice and people will do the right thing.
I am sure there are many other ways memes choose to propagate in both symbolic or parasitic way. The follow up question is some of these “memes” or “mind viruses” are dangerous and expensive, how do I get rid of them?
My theory is that some religious leaders of the past tried to “warn” or lessen the impact of memetic evolution on people’s actual life. Tao Te Ching tried to just go with “those who know don’t talk, those talk don’t know” and a few other prohibitions against languages. Buddhist Sutras have a broad view of freedom from the five skandhas, with linguistic memes belonging to skandha #3 – conception. Buddhism, unlike Taoism, puts a strong emphasis on setting up counter-memes of its own. A bolder strategy, which means more popularity for the religion, but also a danger of itself becoming a mindless meme, with the original meaning of “freedom from ideas” being forgotten. Which is why there is a failsafe: “They should recall that in teaching spiritual truths the Buddha always uses these concepts and ideas in the way that a raft is used to cross a river. Once the river has been crossed over, the raft is of no more use, and should be discarded,”. They are just giving you a weaker virus and at the end of the day, it’s your memetic immune system that’s going to free you anyways “disciples are not enlightened by a set method of teachings, but by an internally intuitive process which is spontaneous and is part of their own inner nature.”
