The Meme Machine

OUT OF THE MEME RACE 245
ripe old age and get rich and famous, I want the strawberry one. All these hopes
and desires are based on the idea of an inner self who must be kept happy, and
their occurrence feeds the selfplex. So one trick is just to meet them all with a
refusal to get involved. If there is no self then there is no point hoping or
wishing for things for the sake of someone who does not exist. All these things
are in another moment, not now. They do not matter when there is no one for
them to matter to. Life really is possible without hope.
The result of this way of living seems somewhat counter-intuitive; that
people become more decisive rather than less. On a second look this is not so
surprising after all. From the memetic point of view the selfplex is not there to
make the decisions, or for the sake of your happiness, or to make your life
easier; it is there for the propagation of the memes that make it up. Its
demolition allows more spontaneous and appropriate action. Clever thinking
brains, installed with plenty of memes, are quite capable of making sound
decisions without a selfplex messing them up.
A terrifying thought now raises its head. If I live by this kind of truth –
without a self that takes responsibility for its actions, then what of morality?
Surely, some would say, this kind of living is a recipe for selfishness and
wickedness, for immorality and disaster. Well is it? One of the effects of this
way of living is that you stop inflicting your own desires on the world around
you and on the people you meet. This alone can mean quite a transformation.
Claxton describes the effect of giving up the illusion of a self in control.
‘The thing that doesn’t happen, but of which people are quite reasonably scared,
is that I get worse. A common elaboration of the belief that control is real . . . is
that I can, and must control “myself”, and that unless I do, base urges will spill
out and I will run amok.’ Luckily, he goes on, the premise is false. ‘So the
dreaded mayhem does not happen. I do not take up wholesale rape and pillage
and knocking down old ladies just for fun.’ (Claxton 1986, p. 69). Instead, guilt,
shame, embarrassment, self-doubt, and fear of failure ebb away and I become,
contrary to expectation, a better neighbour.
In fact, we could reasonably have had faith in this from our understanding of
memetics and of meme-driven altruism. Also, if it is true that the inner self is a
memeplex and its control is illusory, then surely living a lie cannot be morally
superior to accepting the truth. But if the self is a memeplex and can be
dismantled, then what is left when it is gone? There is a human being, body,
brain and memes, that behaves according to the environment it finds itself in and
the memes it comes across. We know that the genes are responsible for much
moral behaviour – they brought about kin-selection and reciprocal altruism, love