The Meme Machine

MEMES OF THE NEW AGE 181
eyes. And believers in God and life after death know The Truth. This is a
slightly different version of the ‘truth trick’, for it need have no element of
validity at all.
Finally, NDE memes use the ‘altruism trick’. People who come close to
death and survive are often changed by the experience, becoming more caring of
others and less concerned with themselves (Ring 1992). The limited evidence
available suggests that this change is a function of simply facing up to death, not
of having a near-death experience, but when NDErs behave altruistically this
helps spread their NDE memes – ‘I’m a nice person, I’m not so selfish now,
believe me. I really did go to heaven’. Wanting to agree with this honestly nice
person helps spread the memes. And if the NDE survivor really does help you,
then you may take on the NDE memes as a way of returning the kindness. Thus,
NDE memes spread, and among them is the idea that people who have had
NDEs behave more altruistically.
Other forms of the altruism trick are nastier. The Christian version of NDEs
depends heavily on the idea that only good people go to heaven. Having a
beautiful NDE implies you are a good person and should be believed. This also
means that people who have hellish NDES are less likely to report them, and
their memes will do less well (not to mention the fear and loneliness they must
feel if they cannot talk about their experiences). Disbelievers in life after death
and researchers who pursue brain-based explanations are treated as nasty people
who, if only they were nicer, would come to The Truth – another tactic that
gives heavenly NDE memes the edge. No one wants to share the beliefs of a
nasty person.
The most successful NDE memeplex in North America today is a rather
sickly Christian version. Experiencers describe heavenly scenes, a classic Jesus,
judgements based on the most narrow interpretation of moralism, and lessons to
be learned in this schoolroom of life. Their books stay on the best-seller lists for
months and some of them become rich. In Europe, other versions seem to
survive the competition a little better but, so far, scientific explanations are
faring badly.
If we have to set naturalistic explanations against heavenly ones, then a
memetic viewpoint is far more compatible with the former. But memetics
cannot settle this impossible issue one way or the other. What it can do is
explain why powerful myths spread through whole cultures and provide a shape
for some of the most profound experiences of people’s lives. These strange
experiences are, like all our experiences, dependent on a brain state that has been
shaped by both genes and memes. I suggest we will come to understand them
better when we stop toning to draw a line between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’