The Meme Machine

THE ULTIMATE MEMEPLEX 233
computer, and my favourite pictures. I am not just a living creature, but all these
things as well; and they are things that would not exist without memes and
would not matter without ‘me’.
An interesting consequence of all this is that beliefs, opinions, possessions
and personal preferences all bolster the idea that there is a believer or owner
behind them. The more you take sides, get involved, argue your case, protect
your possessions, and have strong opinions, the more you strengthen the false
idea that there is not only a person (body and brain) talking, but an inner self
with esoteric things called beliefs. The self is a great protector of memes, and
the more complex the memetic society in which a person lives, the more memes
there are fighting to get inside the protection of the self.
As the number of memes we all come across increases, so there are more and
more chances for memes to provoke strong reactions and get passed on again.
The stakes are thereby raised, and memes must become ever more provocative
to compete. The consequence is that stress levels increase as we are bombarded
by memes that have successfully provoked other people. We acquire more and
more knowledge, opinions, and beliefs of our own, and in the process become
more and more convinced that there is a real self at the centre of it all.
There is no ‘I’ who ‘holds’ the opinions. There is a body that says ‘I believe
in being nice to people’, and a body that is (or is not) nice to people. There is a
brain that can store knowledge of astrology and the tendency to talk about it, but
there is not in addition a self who ‘has’ the belief. There is a biological creature
who eats yoghurt every day but there is not in addition a self inside who loves
yoghurt. As the memosphere becomes more and more complicated, selves
follow suit. To function in our society we are all expected to hold opinions on
science, politics, the weather, and relationships; to hold down a job, bring up a
family, read the paper, and enjoy our leisure time. With constant memetic
bombardment our lives and our selves become more and more stressful and
complicated. But this is a ‘Red Queen’ process. No one benefits because
everyone has to keep running just to stay in the same place. I wonder just how
much memetic pressure selfplexes can take before they blow apart, become
unstable, or divide into fragments. The unhappiness, desperation, and
psychological ill-health of many modern people may reveal just this. Today’s
psychotherapy is a kind of memetic engineering, but it is not based on sound
memetic principles. That is something for the future.
In conclusion, the selfplex is successful not because it is true or good or
beautiful; nor because it helps our genes; nor because it makes us happy. It is
successful because the memes that get inside it persuade us (those poor