Culture appears to have always existed, and seems to be self creating. You go about your daily living with just a cursory inkling of how the world's economy, world events or world history, i.e., world culture, arises and develops. Then one day a friend says to you: “Do you know what the smallest bits of culture are and what generates culture? Why, memes, of course. We live in oceans of Culture-generating memes!”
The most common types are advertisements. Odds are the ads you are familiar with are familiar only because they are the most successful memes. Chances are the ads you've never heard about, the ones that have slipped your mind and the ads you have a hard time recalling are dead and dying memes. It is in the nature of memes to stay alive and thrive by spreading themselves around from person to person, and from one corner of society to the next. Failure to thrive is not an option. Humans and their large brains and furtive minds are meme copying machines. Each meme competes with its rival to see how many times it can get copied by one human to the other and then from other humans to the next humans. 1 person infects 2. 2 becomes 4. It then spreads to 8. Then, just after a few iterations, you have an exponential epidemic of memes. No wonder the meme is called 'the virus of the mind'. As far as a meme is concerned, its sole purpose is to get copies of itself into as many minds as possible. It will use any means available, join any foe, involve you in any scheme, and use any trick in the book to accomplish this end. Some really bad meme like the 'suicide bomber' meme will join up with the '72 virgins await me in Paradise' meme. The second emboldens the first to self detonate, and a religious fanatic blows himself up and murders hundreds of innocents. This evil 'suicide bomber' meme with its '72 virgins . . .' partner in crime, then moves on to its hundreds more innocents. Thankfully, the vast majority of memes are not diabolical, virulent and evil doing, but benevolent do-good memes that are civilization preserving. The name of the ‘meme game’ is survival by copying itself in the highest abundance. This is what it means in the memetic world to be the fittest. A spiritual or a material cultural phenomenon is the living embodiment in which a meme expresses itself.
So, how does meme and culture relate? Memes and men make up the core of culture. Let’s look at two items of culture, the horse and the automobile. Cultural artifacts are the commodities in the meme marketplace. The Twinky meme, The Unicycle meme, The Hip Hop meme, The Olympic Swimming meme and The Hockey Puck meme, etc, trade in twinkies, unicycles, hip hop, olympic swimming and hockey pucks, etc. They once plied a thriving slave trade but was forced to abandon that repugnant commodity more than a century and a half ago. There is a trade war among competing meme vendors for human customers. The vendor with the greatest market share in occupied brains & minds will be the most dominant in that given meme industry. The market place consists of sellers & buyers. In the meme market, sellers are memes & buyers are the minds of women & men. A meme competes to sell itself, or occupy and pimps itself out, to as much processing capacity of the human brains & thinking minds as it possibly can; this is what it means to be a successful meme, to sell as much meme copies to as many men and women as it possibly can. This is what a meme lives for. Should I reiterate that sellers like the horse and automobile memes work to sell themselves to as many men and women as humanly possible? If you might have noticed, horses are extremely rare; this is because their meme has not had nearly as much success at copying and selling itself as their rival, the automobile meme (to as many men and women as humanly possible).
Why is it that the most successful memes like those of certain religions are ubiquitous in billions of minds? There are a billion and one reasons ; and that's for meme to know and you to find out (pun intended). The very fact that the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious memeplexes have been dominant from one descendant generation to the next for many millennia means they are past masters at virulently getting themselves widely and wildly replicated, infecting billions of human minds. There use to be hundreds of different religions, some would even say thousands. The overwhelming majority of these religions may only be found in the dustbin of history now. Have you ever heard of the Gnostic religion? Probably not. That might be because it's probably heading there too. You probably also did not know that much of the teachings, wisdom and culture of Christianity and Islam were originally developed within Gnosticism. The Christian and Muslim religious meme gangs are not necessarily richer than Gnostic meme schools, seeing that both are its derivatives. Its just that, for one reason or the other, Islamist and Christendom meme replicators are extremely good at getting themselves mindlessly copied (no pun intended).
Transportation culture has an overwhelming abundance of automobile transport than horse transport because there are much more copies of automobile meme than there are copies of horse meme in the minds and brains of women & men. When men think about getting about they have in mind riding in an automobile and rarely have a thought about riding on a horse. BMW memes cause people to think more about BMW's than race horse memes drive men to think about galloping stallions.
The automobile ‘meme’ is actually a meme collective, or a memeplex. That is, a set of memes working together as a well coordinated whole. For example the tire meme is part of the automobile meme complex, or memeplex; the tire meme makes a great deal more copies of itself being a part of a car memeplex than if it was not an integral part of that meme whole. Most memes find that they survive best as parts of a memeplex whole. The horse on the other hand is technically a single meme but it is an elite horse-gene collective, or genome; typically, the supreme best of the best horse genome, horsefly genome, butterfly genome, fly genome, flower genome, rosebush genome or rooster gene collective make up the elitist gene teams. Automobile memeplex sellers are more concerned about having the best of the supreme best of the automobile meme partners and submemeplex partners, like the car tire memes, seat memes, headlight memes, the most souped up of car body meme complex, the best dashboard meme subcomplex and engine submemeplex with the mostest , etc. The horse meme advertises itself as the single horse meme that it is. The horse meme only needs to be a horse whisperer. The horse's already well coordinated elite gene team takes care of itself and sells its meme.
Memes and genes have much in common. Both are replicators working to make as much copies of themselves as they are able. Both are governed by The Evolutionary Algorithm
1. Variation
2. Selection
3. Heredity.
and the good adaptive qualities of
1. Fidelity
2. Fecundity
3. Longevity
The Gene, historically, is the first self copying entity. This, the original replicator, emerged here on Earth more than three and a half billion years ago. We are immersed in seas of life. Currently the culture of which the meme is the smallest unit, are, relatively speaking, smaller ponds surrounded by oceans of living matter, of which the gene is the smallest unit. Memes emerged after the evolution of the human brain less than a million years ago. Whereas the gene is a biochemical replicator, the meme is a mind/neurological replicator. The meme depends on brains & minds to get copied. The gene on the other hand self copy’s using the biochemicals guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine (A), thymine (T) & uracil (U) nucleic acid biochemicals. The gene replicator method is known as complementary base pairing: G pairs with C; and A pairs up with T or U. For example, the string G-G-G-G-A-T-T-G-G-A-A-A-C-C-T-A-G-G-G-G-G (let's just call this string the genetic code for very fast chicken legs) will attach the different units G,C,A and T to get the string C-C-C-C-T-A-A-C-C-T-T-T-G-G-A-T-C-C-C-C-C. Now when this latter string attaches the various nucleic acid bits you have a copy of the first, the very fast chicken legs gene. If our chicken happens to inherit this gene from her ancestor, she might outrun a preying cheetah. On the other hand, the meme replicates, or is copied from one brain/mind to the next by imitation. That is, by one human being imitating another human being. The phenotype is the biological expression of a particular gene team, or genotype. For example, the phenotype of the chicken gene set (genotype), is the lightening fast living hen herself. And The Concorde jet flying at seventy-five thousand feet at near mach 2 speeds is the cultural embodiment of its supersonic jet airplane meme collective.
IMITATION TYPE REPLICATION (MEME)
VS
TEMPLATE TYPE REPLICATION (GENE)
VS
TEMPLATE TYPE REPLICATION (GENE)
Replication by Imitation
The meme is the unit of culture. The meme is a piece of a cultural artifact's blueprint instruction set . A meme is made
via imitation. For example, a handclap becomes a meme if and only if and when
the handclapping of one person is imitated by another and then imitated by
another, which is again imitated by another person (even if your handclap is
imitated only by one other person you have still technically created a
meme). Your handclap may create a chain reaction of other pairs of hands
clapping, which may produce a cultural phenomenon known as an applause. However, if I am very impressed by a
performance and I generate what comes to be known as my enthusiastic style of handclap,
unless others in the audience imitate my enthusiastic style of handclapping,
my handclapping does not count as a meme; my enthusiastic style handclapping
may only be meme regarded if at least one human being imitates me and handclaps
in my
enthusiastic
style.
If I clap a certain way and nobody else follows me and clap in that particular manner, my clap is not a meme. If others clap following me in the distinctive way that I did, then my clap is a meme by virtue of the fact that another person or a bunch of people are imitating my clap.
Imitation is the method by which a meme replicates. If I get others to imitate my style of
If I clap a certain way and nobody else follows me and clap in that particular manner, my clap is not a meme. If others clap following me in the distinctive way that I did, then my clap is a meme by virtue of the fact that another person or a bunch of people are imitating my clap.
Imitation is the method by which a meme replicates. If I get others to imitate my style of
CHINGYclap
...(1st)meme type meme, a great deal more often than your notCHINGYclap...(2nd)meme type meme, then the CHINGYclap
meme is said to be fitter, or more successful than the notCHINGYclap meme(s). Let’s say of the two
variants the (1st)meme type makes more copies than the (2nd)meme type.
If after many generations only (1st)meme type copies are surviving, then the (1st)meme type is said to have been selected because it is fitter than the (2nd) meme type. Why is it that only (1st)meme type copies survive to populate the subsequent
handclap descendant generations? Because for one reason or the other the (1st)meme type is able
to best adapt, or best fits the Handclap Environment with
respect to the less fit unsuccessful (2nd)meme type. It’s usually the case that the fitter (1st)meme type has randomly
mutated a variant that is favored (selected) and the unfit, less successful, (2nd) meme type wasn’t able to
randomly generate an adaptable mutant. Put into evolutionary terms, the (2nd)meme type
is not generating any fit (favorable) mutant variations
from its replication for selection to consider for inheritance by the next generation
of handclap memes. Fitness in the Handclap Environment is measured by the (1st)meme type having far and away the most meme copies (99.99%) from one handclap generation to the next handclap generations (no one even pretends
to bother to imitate the (2nd)meme type while there is a stampede rush
to imitate the
(1st)meme type).
“And The Evolutionary Prize goes to: The
Survival
of The Fittest!”
MEME & SLICE BREAD
The breadknife
is the breadknife meme physicalized. For us who physicalizes this meme into a phenomenon of the material-social-spiritual world, our purpose is to fashion a tool to
slice bread. But if slicing bread with this form of matter gets some of humanity to copy and spread the breadknife meme, then by all means the meme goes all out
to get society to, instead of breaking bread, to use people to make breadknife tools to cut their loaves of unsliced hard dough bread, and make taboo, manually breaking them. A byproduct
of all this meme activity is the accumulation of breadknife culture.
However, the ultimate goal of the meme is not really about culture and slicing
bread; the purpose of the meme is the wide and wild spreading of breadknife meme copies. But if
culture and slice bread can 'get it there’ it will continue to 'go
for it’ with culture and slice bread. If the spread of this cultural artifact continues to be of service
to the meme in the meme’s ultimate purpose of getting copied into the minds of
as many people as possible via imitation, then it will do everything in its
power to generate breadknife culture. The breadknife meme, in order to accomplish its
ultimate goal of being copied more prodigiously works on society to advertise
its merits. The more people it can get
into, the more copies are made. In other words, the more men and
women copy 'your’ breadknife idea, the further and wider spreading and more numerous the meme becomes. The more people use its breadknife technology, the more the breadknife
meme is copied and spread wide and far by imitation type replication. If people should stop making and
using breadknives, the survival of the breadknife meme is at risk. The meme uses all kinds of creative tricks, original tactics and
sophisticated strategies in order to get copied via one person imitating another, that person being imitated by the next, and so it spreads by imitation to as many souls as possible.
Its best advertisement is the making and use of cultural artifacts.
The breadknife meme advertises its merits through you, boys, girls, men,
women, and as much of society that it can bend to imitate and copy it. Some of
the many varieties of ways memes do this is increasing their use, expanding
advertising and getting people to improve their manufacturing
process, which in turn improves the quality of their physical artifacts. If this is no longer working out well for the breadknife and butter knife memes they may move on to greener pastures. The butter knife might partner up with the Swiss Army Knife
and become a part of Swiss Army Knife Culture, and the breadknife may team up with other more successful knife gangs. Feel free to add your own meme story
narratives; don't leave out the many intricate details, including all the
sophisticated tactics & strategies, wheelings & dealings and
world shaking revolutionary alliances with other memes. Don't forget to include
all the spiritual & material culture that memes are inspiring, warts and
all. Discuss meme generated Christian Bible culture, meme inspired Torah, Koran, Gnostic cultures. Elaborate on memeplexes and the culture they spawn: musical memes and musical culture like Hip Hop
& Reggae ; the highways and byways of political metaculture; advanced economic cultural sophistication; the art's memetic networks and the cultural matrix of the arts. The Internet & its Techno memes; the transformational creativity of Twenty-First Century science meme matrices & the complex memeplex of revolutionizing advanced technology, and the civilizing cultural creativity they direct and organize.
Here’s the
bottom line. The breadknife meme is a denizen of time. That is, a meme is a
replicator entity like the DNA and RNA gene replicators, that has as their goal to travel through long stretches of generation time. Whereas
our lives are measured in decades, and just a few generations, the lives of
memes are measured in centuries and tens of generations (the lives of genes are
measured in millions of years and hundreds of millions of generation time!). Memes
may ply themselves as the blueprint instructions that direct society’s construction of physical and
intellectual cultural artifacts. Memes supervise and motivate the production of artifacts, this is doubtless absolutely true. These phenomena of culture don't just enrich the lives of the people who make them. That they do without a doubt. However, in the eyes of memes, they serve as cultural
vehicles for getting the memes hopefully through very long stretches of
different, many, and varied time periods. The meme is opportunistic and uses
any random adaptive variant, as long as the cultural mutant can get it from a
time period A to as much future time periods as possible. As the meme evolves
and moves on to the next and future generations, the obsolete vehicles of the
past generations are discarded (grandparents and parents eventually die). However, the meme, through human industry, recreates
the updated next generations of its material and spiritual-intellectual
cultural vehicles (children and grandchildren inherit the meme from their grandparents and parents and carry the meme forward through time). This human cultural work helps in the meme’s unending
quest of deep time exploration. Most importantly for humanity, in
each period of meme time travel, memes, working through humans, generate and broadly spread
culture: spiritual culture (poetry, music, etc), political & economic,
scientific, technological and art culture, and all of culture in fact. In other
words, without memes interacting, directing and working through humanity, the upkeep and
evolution of human culture is not possible. Culture benefits the lives of each
and every human being. However, what benefit memes is remaining alive through hundreds of generations of time in vehicles of human culture. Breadknife benefits me. Now I am able to
slice up my hard dough bread, apply butter with my butter knife and enjoy buttered
slice bread as part of my breakfast. The breadknife and butter knife memes benefit from my
breakfast experiences as its breadknife and butter knife cultural artifacts keep the meme relevant. As I imitate this worthwhile breadknife bread slicing experience
from my mother, father, brothers, sisters or friends, it allows the meme to continue to
copy itself through imitation. Culture is maintained and updated in each time period and is
the meme’s physical vehicle as it deep dives through hundreds of years.
As the breadknife and butter knife memes plot their navigation and negotiate a path into the future , I am enjoined to enjoy the provisioned buttered slice bread. And I
happen to love sliced hard dough bread lathered with a thick slab of
butter!
Template Replication
There
is another form of replication. This is template type replication in which one body type
acts as a template for making copies of a different body type,
and then the second, but opposite body type turns
around and acts as a template for making copies of the first body
type that made it. Genetic replication is template type
replication (also known as complementary base pairing). The gene is the unit of life. The smallest piece of the blueprint
instructions of the biological organism is the gene. A gene is a string
combination of four different kinds of DNA beads: G C A T. There are also four different
types of RNA beads: G C A U
but a string of RNA beads is not a gene. A gene is a DNA thread made only of
combinations from G C A and T DNA beads. An RNA thread, made from combinations
of the RNA beads, G C A and U ,
is another closely related template type replicator that works in tandem with
the DNA template type replicator. RNA serves DNA by making copies of its gene strings.
The gene string, which is a DNA thread by nature, acts as the template for
making copies of RNA threads. The genetic information instructions in the DNA
thread is copied into the RNA thread. Put another way, RNA threads are copies
of the genetic information instruction set stored in the organism’s set of DNA
threads. The body’s gene copy set (RNA threads) are used to make the proteins for the functioning
of the worthy phenomenal biological artifact, known as Chingy.
Let's look at an extremely simplified example of gene replication. The DNA beads G&C pair up only with each other. A string of the bead G acts as the template for making copies of a string of the bead C:
GGGGGGGGGGGG (1)string
CCCCCCCCCCCC (1)string
Then the (1)string gene returns the favor by acting as the template for making copies of the (1)string gene that made it:
GGGGGGGGGGGG
(1)stringCOPY
CCCCCCCCCCCC
(1)string
This happens through G’s&C’s in the strings hitching up only one with the other.
The other DNA twosomes that form exclusive pairs are A's&T’s. Here’s another drastically oversimplified gene template replication, this time using the above two DNA beads. The DNA beads A&T pair up only with each other. A string of the bead A acts as the template for making copies of a string of the bead T:
AAAAAAAAAAAA (3)string
TTTTTTTTTTTT (3)string
TTTTTTTTTTTT (3)string
Then the (3) string gene becomes the template for making copies of the (3)string gene that made it:
AAAAAAAAAAAA (3)stringCOPY
TTTTTTTTTTTT (3)stringA gene string can be any combination of the DNA beads G C A T:
AAGCTAAAGGGTTTGTC (4)string
But only G&C and A&T complement each other (“complete each other”), or pair with each other via complementary base pairing (base as opposed to acid; there are chemicals that are acidic by nature {“sour tasting” like vinegar} and others that are basic {“bitter tasting”}. DNA chemicals like G A T C just happen to be basic. If DNA and RNA chemicals were acids, the complementary pairing of G&C and A&U for example would be called RNA “complementary acid pairing”.
Again, the (4)string DNA thread would be the template for making copies of the (4)string DNA thread:
AAGCTAAAGGGTTTGTC (4)string
TTCGATTTCCCAAACAG (4)string
(4)-&-(4) together forms a unit known as THE DNA DOUBLE HELIX. In other words, the double helix is made from two complementing lengths of DNA threads braided together. When (4)string copies (4)string and then (4)string turns around and copies (4)string, you have copies of the DNA double helix (4)-&-(4).
An RNA thread, (5)string, acts as template for making copies of RNA thread (5)string:
AAGCUAAGGGUUGUC (5)string
UUCGAUUCCCAACUG (5)string
However, whereas DNA threads (4)-(4) link up in a string-pair braided unit known as a DNA double helix, (5)string, (5)string are separate individualized RNA threads. Of course, the (5)string RNA thread acts as a template for making copies of the (5)string RNA thread and (5)string turns around and acts as the template for making copies of the (5)string RNA thread. Even though (5)string & (5)string are the complement of each other, RNA threads are never found braided together as a single unit; there are no RNA double helices. here is a mind boggling comparison: If the longest RNA thread is as tall as your foot, the shortest DNA thread-pair braid is a five mile stretch!!
And that’s the story of how boy meets girl in the gene world!
Gene based evolution gave rise to the biosphere. Culture emerges and evolves as a result of the driving memetic influences powering collective humanity. One of the most significant developments since the emergence of the meme has been the rise of the radically transformational World Wide Web's "Techno meme". However, of singular importance since the million year emergence and evolution of the meme, is the emergence from the vast memeplex network matrix, of the flowering impact of the selfplex phenomenon called ‘Consciousness’.
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