The New Idea in Town

I was surprised to read on what appear to be the most important reliance in humans: ideas or “memes” as Dawkins calls them. I’ve heard of evolution being applied to other aspects of human life like vocabulary and other tendencies but the author makes some surprising conclusions. “…if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved into the common pool.” (p. 199) These statements surprised me because they are related to my previous blog. Humans don’t want to have children, they want to change the world and by world we mean culture.

Dawkins explains that memes are ideas that “it’s spread will depend on how acceptable it is to the population of individual scientists”(p. 194). So it seams that memes are based on fecundity but not on how many or how effective they can be but as how people accept them. Therefore it is correct to assimilate the meme with a virus. What our author misses to emphasize is how important these ideas really are and what they do to the human population. In Darwin’s case we can see how a ‘little’ book can change the understanding of living things forever. In effect, the human populous now has driven its scientific development into expanding and developing new ways in which the theory applies instead of taking creation as an explanation. So this brings me to the question this chapter emphasizes are memes more important than genes? Yes they are, they spread more effectively, become big parts of people, and they change drastically anything they come in contact with. It’s only if an idea would be removed or deleted completely that the difference could be felt. This situation occurs in God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr, with the hope of recovering the American culture the U.S government takes desperate action by forcing the population to completely forget a war. “ When the men came I held the pills under my tongue. When they left I spit it out… “Does any one else remember?” “Not around here,”” (God Is Dead pg 174) And just like that an entire population changes their entire personality. A little change in the hinges and the clock starts working differently.

How can something that doesn’t physically exist change so many individuals? The only explanation might be humans are now in control of their lives “We alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.” (p201)