The Meme Machine

38 THE MEME MACHINE
Written words may not fare much better. The words on this page have at
least got as far as being read by you, but may well get no further. Even if you do
pass them on, you may scramble them for easier recall or because I have not
made myself clear, so the copying fidelity will not always be high. Millions of
newspapers are printed each day but by a week later most of the copies have
gone and most people have forgotten what was in them. Books may do a little
better – though in the United States alone something like one hundred thousand
new books are published every year. Not all of them can be influential or
memorable. And while some scientific papers are widely read and quoted, it is
rumoured that the majority are not read by anyone at all!
We could not (even in principle) calculate the proportion of potential memes
that actually do get passed on but the idea is clear enough. There is enormous
selection pressure, and therefore very few survivors from among the very many
starters. Only a few memes are successfully copied from brain to brain, from
brain to print, from print to print or from voice to compact disk. The ones we
regularly meet are the successful ones – the ones that made it in the competition
for replication. My question is simply – which memes are those?
I am going to take the meme’s eye view as a way of tackling several
controversial questions. I shall start with a simple one. The question itself may
not be profound but it does turn out to be rather intriguing – and it will give us
practise in thinking from the meme’s point of view.
Why can’t we stop thinking?
Can you stop thinking?
Perhaps you have practised meditation or some other method of calming the
mind. If so you will know that the task is not trivial. If you have not, I suggest
you try now to empty your mind for a minute or so (or if you cannot face it now,
try it sometime when you have nothing ‘better’ to do, waiting for the kettle to
boil, or the computer to boot up, for example). ‘When any thought comes along,
as it certainly will, just acknowledge it and let it go. Do not get tangled up in the
thoughts or follow them up. See whether you can find any space between them.
The simplest forms of meditation are no more than this kind of practice. It is
fiendishly difficult.
‘Why? You will doubtless notice that thoughts just seem to pop up out of
nowhere and grab your attention. You may also notice what kinds of thought
they are. Typically, they are imagined conversations or arguments, reruns of