- seCtIon FoUR: eVoLUtIon
have been created out of the interplay of memes exploiting and redirecting the
machinery Mother Nature has given us’ (Dennett, 1995b, p. 367). The self is a
‘benign user illusion of its own virtual machine!’ (Dennett, 1991, p. 311).
But perhaps the illusion is not so benign after all. Another possibility is that this
illusion of self is actually harmful to us, although it benefits the memes that make
it up. On this view, the self is a powerful memeplex (the selfplex) that propagates
and protects the memes within it, but in the process gives rise to the illusion of
free will, and to selfishness, fear, disappointment, greed, and many other human
failings. Perhaps without it we might be happier and kinder people, although it is
hard to imagine consciousness without a self (Chapter 18).
On Dennett’s view, ‘Human consciousness is itself a huge complex of memes
(or more exactly, meme-effects in brains)’ (1991, p. 210), but this presents two
problems. First, memes, by definition, can be copied. Yet our own conscious expe-
riences cannot be passed on to someone else; that is the whole problem and fas-
cination of consciousness. Second, the memes can, arguably, be dropped without
consciousness disappearing. For example, at moments of shock, or when silenced
by the beauty of nature or in deep meditation, the mind seems to stop. Far from
losing consciousness, as Dennett’s theory would imply, people say that they
become more conscious at such moments. This suggests that perhaps human
consciousness is distorted into its familiar self-centred form by the memes, rather
than that it is a complex of memes (Blackmore, 1999). If so, what is left when the
memes go away?
Dawkins believes that ‘We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the
selfish replicators’ (1976, p. 201), and Csikszentmihalyi urges us to ‘achieve control’
over our minds, desires and actions: ‘If you let them be controlled by genes and
memes, you are missing the opportunity to be yourself ’ (1993, p. 290). But evo-
lutionary processes are not controllable by the creatures they give rise to; and in
any case, who is this self who is going to rebel?Finally, if memes are a second replicator that is copied by the vehicles of the
first, could the same thing happen again? Could meme vehicles made by human
meme machines, such as computers or phones, become copying machines for a
third replicator which we might call temes or tremes? Certainly the invention of
computers, and especially the internet, has brought the concept of memes into
popular culture and led to new research in memetics (Shifman, 2013). So, perhaps
a new replicator is already evolving in cyberspace, unseen by us, yet supported‘Human consciousness
is itself a huge complex
of memes’
(Dennett, 1991, p. 210)
IS THIS A MEME?‘We, alone on earth,
can rebel against the
tyranny of the selfish
replicators’
(Dawkins, 1976, p. 201)
‘there is no one to rebel’
(Blackmore, 1999, p. 246)
PRACTICE 11.2
IS THIS A MEME?As many times as you can, every day, ask yourself ‘Am I conscious
now?’ Take whatever you were conscious of and ask ‘Is this a meme?’
Anything you copied from someone else is a meme, including thoughts in
words. Anything that is purely your own and not copied is not. How often
is your awareness free of memes?