The Meme Machine

CHAPTER 17
The ultimate memeplex
‘We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators’. So
ends Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene in which the whole idea of memes
began. But who is this ‘we’? That is the question I want to ask now. The
‘ultimate memeplex’ of my title is no science fiction futuristic invention, but our
own familiar self.
Think for a moment about yourself. I mean the ‘real you’, the inner self, that
bit of yourself that really feels those heartfelt emotions, the bit of you that once
(or many times) fell in love, the you that is conscious and that cares, thinks,
works hard, believes, dreams and imagines; I mean who you really are. Unless
you have thought about this a good deal you probably jump to many conclusions
about your self – that it has some kind of continuity and persists through your
life, that it is the centre of your consciousness, has memories, holds beliefs and
makes the important decisions of your life.
Now I want to ask some simple questions about this ‘real you’. They are:
What am I? Where am I? What do I do?
What am I?
You may be one of the large majority who believes in the existence of a soul or
spirit. Ethnographic studies show that most cultures include notions of a soul or
spirit, nearly half believing that the soul can separate from the body (Sheila
1978). Surveys show that in the United States 88 per cent believe in a human
soul, and in Europe 61 per cent, figures in line with high levels of belief in God,
life after death, and supernatural phenomena (Gallup and Newport 1991;
Humphrey 1995). Presumably, people assume that the soul is their inner self or
‘real me’ and will survive when their body dies.
There is a long history of philosophers and scientists brining to make sense of
such a view. In the seventeenth century, the French philosopher René Descartes
took a wonderfully sceptical view of the world, doubting every belief and
opinion he had. He decided to treat everything as though it were absolutely false
‘untie I have encountered something which is certain, or at least, if I can do