The Rise of the Planet of the Memes
All while matter can neither be created nor destroyed — from a time when we were cavemen and hunter-gatherers, to a time when we send probes to Mars, something increased. An artist, who doesn’t create the colors, nor the brush, nor the canvas, nor the oil, and neither the light, can combine all of them and produce a priceless masterpiece. What is it that we create with every human endeavor? When it cannot be either about matter or energy, how then do we even begin to comprehend what on earth are we doing?!
Of late, I have been pondering a view on who we are and what we do. In this view we are more about the arrangement, form, and order of things rather than the things themselves. Consider yourself — every cell, atom and molecule that make up your body and mind right now will leave you over the years; yet there you would be. Your memories, body, and face will remain (somewhat) intact. Every time your mind creates a memory, it seems to defy the first law of thermodynamics and create something out of not even thin air. But then, the notion is, even when creating memories, the mind does not create something that occupies space or has mass but instead creates a “pattern” or “arrangement” of neural connections in the brain. Mona Lisa is not about colors, nor brush, nor canvas, nor oil and neither light — it was a set of patterns that Leonardo Da Vinci conjured up with his imagination. It is the pattern that survive the test of time that make us who we are.
Consider civilizations, cultures, ideas and traditions around the world. For the most part in human history we had been nomads foraging forests until we discovered agriculture. With agriculture we started to settle down at one place and build cities, towns and communities. Agriculture was preferred over the nomadic lifestyle as it reduced the risk of uncertainties in new environments, and helped us survive better in large, protected communities. The idea or pattern behind agriculture spread across different places in the planet and established themselves firmly in the most fertile areas. Observe that, the two most populous countries today happen to have the most fertile river basins on the planet.
Notice how, the patterns of Arabic/Indian numerical systems are preferred over their Roman counterpart for digital computations. Yet again, a preferential bias ensures a wider adoption for one pattern over its counterpart. Every business product, from cars, clothes, computer programs, to this very screen you are reading on, are not made up of anything that occupies space and has mass. What occupies space and has mass was already a given ever since the “big bang”, irrespective of whether we came to be or otherwise. It is the arrangement of the parts of a phone or a screen, and the act of bringing together minerals, rocks, metal, and sand, that make these things what they really are. We too, came to be in the universe from a process of patterns that compete to survive. Patterns encoded in carbon chains called RNA/DNA. The very first RNA replication is a lot about carbon chains that, by sheer chance, happen to replicate. This close-to-perfect replication allows just enough room for new mutations and over millions of years the process of Evolution by Natural Selection brought about the diversities in species we have today; quite like the diversity in ideas, cultures, languages, traditions, numeric systems, and what have you.
That said, reproducing ideas is a lot less resource and time intensive process than reproducing living beings. With ideas and thoughts, all it takes is proper communication. The wheel, money, printing press, Renaissance, Industrial revolution etc. were not the evolution of human species in biological terms. They were an evolution of ideas that proliferated better and stood the test of time with each communication. We built educational institutions mostly so that ideas from different origins could come together and reproduce across generations. Good ideas learnt during a lifetime, it turns out, also helps the certain genotypes to survive better than others, thereby creating a two way feedback loop. This phenomenon is dubbed the Baldwin Effect. What results is an exponential increase in technologies across the world only in the very recent times of human history, now that sharing and spreading information and knowledge are just a few clicks away. Globalization and the internet are the modern arena for a very different kind of Evolution. The Evolution of memes — ideas that spread by communicating themselves!
If you stand back and think about it, we now have a problem. Our biological selves that came from millions of years of biological evolution is quickly being succeeded by the exponential evolution of the artificial memes we build and spread. The issue occurs when, the direction of the memes deviate from the direction of evolutionary biology. For instance, sugar is a comparatively recent development in the human species. And so are dental cavities and toothache. Sugar helps particular kinds of bacteria grow on our tooth which releases an acid that erodes away the enamel. Sugarcane and its farming is part biological and part memetics. Sugarcane, in a natural wild habitat, is not as common-place as sugar is in our day to day lives. It readily converts to glucose in our blood and tricks our humble brain into thinking that it just had a ton of food making it release dopamine. We are today addicted to this dopamine with every dose of morning coffee/tea completely unaware of the clash our biology goes against the artificially induced habit. The real fight is between our biology and the memetics behind sugar production; and we seem to be losing with the many diseases caused by sugar overload.
Let us take another example. Say, you want to get from one place to another in a city by car and there is unusually high traffic. With every red signal that you have to stop some anxiety builds up. Your mind fights between “I need to get there” and “the signal is red”. Over time, it stresses you out, increases blood pressure, heart rate, and spreads general unease throughout the body and mind. An extended, continuous exposure sometimes results in some form of road rage. All that while you are sitting in your car, the AC is on and the seat is designed for comfort. Not many muscles move, yet, by the time you reach the destination you land up tired and stressed. Let’s switch the scenario a tiny little bit and imagine yourself playing football/soccer. For 90 minutes, every muscle in your body is engrossed in the game and you continuously get from one place to another, quickly and on foot. One difference is that there are no red signals, and the other is that you land up feeling de-stressed after the game. How weird is that!
Humans and other animals have been taking part in activities like sports and games since ages. It is Nature’s way of keeping the species fit and ready to hunt for prey and run from predator. Children seem to derive the most pleasure in running behind a ball for 90 minutes! That’s Nature’s way of training them. Where in Nature, or the wild, do you find red signals asking you to wait? In fact, when you are catching prey or running away from predator, waiting is the only thing you are not supposed to do. Now look at our “modern” society and the queues. Also, notice how hunting today is a leisure activity for which people can spend thousands to cross oceans to get to Africa and hunt for exotic endangered species!
Enough about hunting. What about “gathering”? Does the picture of a caveman foraging the most ripe fruits for their tribe remind you of the last time you went shopping/marketing? It should. Did you lose yourself completely in the activity? If yes, thank Nature again.
Yet another interesting example of biology vs artificial memes is the Trolley Problem. Notice that “trolleys” (as given here, a way to cause death without direct physical contact) are a rather recent development, without which there would be no Trolley Problem. I could go on and on about how modern tools and technologies seem to clash with various aspects in our inherent biology. I am not suggesting, in any way, that ALL technologies have these issues and that we should go back to being hunter gatherers. Maybe, taking our evolution into consideration before we commit to our innovations would be a better direction for ourselves in the long run.
As for now, you could turn to your overburdened “smart” phone and scroll away. If it freezes and you have to “wait”, thank mankind and the glorious planet of the memes!