MEMES: HOW DO FASHIONS START?

PROFESSOR RICHARD DAWKINS  Richard Dawkins is a biologist and formerly Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University  He has written extensively about genetics, most famously in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’  BUT he has also been interested in why some social behaviour such as ‘fashions’ get passed on when others do not

Student Activity  One example of a fashion is people wearing their baseball caps backwards?  Think of FIVE other current fashions.

FASHIONS AND FADS  Why did people start wearing their baseball caps backwards?  Why do they now wear them the right way round or sideways?  Why do terms such as ‘wannabee’, ‘spin- doctor’ or ‘dumbing down’ suddenly enter the language?  Why do people speak like their parents?  Why do tunes or catch phrases ‘catch on’?  Why does religion get accepted by so many people?  Why do these things survive and other ideas drop by the wayside?

GENES AND MEMES  Dawkins says that the genes which shape what we inherit are ‘selfish’ in the sense that their only interest is their own replication.  They want to be passed on to the next generation  Some genes do not get replicated, hence evolution  It is not so much that ‘genes want x’ but ‘genes that do x are more likely to be passed on’  Dawkins applies this to elements of culture and asks why some ideas get passed on and others don’t

HOW DO MEMES WORK?...1  A meme is: ‘A self- replicating element of culture, passed on by imitation’ eg ideas, behaviour, stories, fashions, songs, customs, beliefs  Memes, like genes, compete for space in brains, books, TV and the internet for their own selfish survival  Because humans have the ability to imitate behaviour, memes travel down generations but also between people at a particular time  Our culture is based on competition between ideas: some survive some do not

HOW DO MEMES WORK?...2  Ideas spread if they are effective memes.  Perhaps they appeal to our sense of danger, or to our appetites: food or hunger, and to what is ‘cool’ at the time  Copying of memes is imperfect and there are far more mutations than you would get with genes eg forgetting the words of a song  Our ideas are not our own creation. We are hosts for memes which survive in the competition to catch our attention

IMPLICATIONS  Helps us understand the evolution of the brain and the ideas in it  Helps understand origins of language  Helps us understand how cultures and lifestyles develop  Helps us understand specific things like the evolution of the internet in terms of which bits of it ‘take off’ and which bits do not  Raises big questions about how our identity is formed

CRITICISMS  Difficult to pin down exactly what a meme is  It is a rather vague concept  Memes are transmitted at a very weak level compared to genetic inheritance  We do not know what memes are made of or where they reside  How ‘big’ is a meme? Is a whole religion a meme or are we mean smaller ideas and concepts?  What ARE the factors which get some memes passed on and not others? Needs more investigation  Not yet a fully worked out theory

Try reading more about Dawkins and his book ‘The Selfish Gene’ Richard Dawkins