Robert Scantlebury – July 1991
That Just About Wraps It Up For God
It is the memes which form the Model of Reality that each of us
has. Memes evolve not only in
'evolutionary' time, but also in each of our lifetimes. We refer to the rapid, personal evolution of
our memes as 'learning'. On day one we
have no memes at all apart from a few reflexes that keep us going (provided our
mother does not abandon us) until we can sort it all out. Gradually new memes evolve from these simple
reflexes, millions of times faster than genes do, but by exactly the same
process that genes do. Thus, a copy of
the reflex is made and comes under 'natural selection'. For memes, though, the agent of selection is
not so much Nature as ourselves - we pick the best memes, the best ideas,
according to how useful they are to us, whether they work. We are able to mutate the memes to produce
new 'alleles', new versions of the same idea, and also completely new
ideas. All these ideas compete for our
attention and approval, to be selected (believed) and included in our Model,
the way we see things. The tool we use
to produce mutation is known as creativity.
The tool we use to select 'good' ideas, fitter memes, is the scientific
method, trial and error. We try out a
set of beliefs (model) or a single belief (meme), and see if it works; if it
doesn't it is 'switched off', rejected.
Eventually we get better at 'second guessing' whether a given idea will
work or not, we develop a knack, an ear for the 'ring of truth': Intuition. This acts as a sort of immunity mechanism,
rejecting bad ideas which might make us do stupid things, vetting all meme
candidates for suitability. It does
this by giving them a 'dry run', by setting up a proposed model and 'listening'
to the sound of the new model - does it sound sweet or not? All this is done unconsciously, so that at a
conscious level all we have is a sense of 'rightness' ('Yes, of course; that's
it!') or wrongness ('Something here seems a bit fishy to me!').
Evolution is working on memes at more than one level. At one level, memes evolve as they are
passed on from one generation to another.
They change slowly, but not as slowly as genes do because, unlike genes,
new memes can also arise within a single generation by evolution acting at
another level. It is at this other
level that our own personal memes evolve, within our lifetimes, starting from
nothing and gradually building up into our Model. Memes evolved in this way, can be inherited from the parents or
acquired by 'experiment' from the environment.
This second way of acquiring memes explains why inherited memes evolve
more quickly than do genes. It is a
special feature of memes that they can be acquired from the environment, and it
does not apply to genes; genetic characteristics cannot be acquired, they can only
be inherited. It was an early fallacy,
attributed to Lamarck, that such acquisition was possible, but we now know that
genes only change randomly, by mutation.
Incidentally, there is a third level of evolution, cultural evolution,
which I shall discuss presently.
The brain is so structured that it facilitates the evolution and
expression of memes (which is its primary function), just as the genetic
mechanism (DNA, RNA, ribosomes) is structured to express genes. The details of the physiology of the brain
aren't as important as the principles by which the mind works, and some insight
into these is to be achieved by pursuing the analogy between genes and
memes. Genes work by creating gene
products, enzymes, which catalyse chemical reactions within the cell, raising
and lowering the amounts of a number of key chemical substances. Perhaps there is a meme product which
catalyses 'neurological reactions'?
Whatever may be the details of how they work, memes do not bring about
chemical change; they bring about movement, action and behaviour.
We can study the brain from outside in (behaviourism), or from
inside out (psychology). Both
approaches are equally valid; different ways of looking at the same thing. Rather than take sides, I will attempt to
synthesise the two approaches by discussing a phenomenon common to them both -
Language. From the behaviourist's
viewpoint, we exhibit 'linguistic behaviour', our utterances are 'speech acts'. A psychologist, on the other hand, tries to elucidate
the 'conceptual thinking' that underlies our use of words. The unifying concept is that language is
simply the outward expression of our memes.
One meme, one proposition.
Language developed as an efficient way to transmit memes from one
human to another, particularly from parent to child.
Only humans have the necessary vocal equipment to produce
words. We must have developed language
before we reached our current form, since a number of physical characteristics
have evolved to facilitate it. Before
spoken language, memes were transmitted by example; the offspring imitated the
parents and the parents educated the offspring non-verbally. The mechanics of meme transmission is quite
unlike that of gene transmission, but the effect is the same; the progeny
acquire characteristics from the parents.
No material is transmitted directly, though; the memes still evolve by
themselves, but one of the criteria that the child uses to select memes is the
approval a meme generates in its parents.
It is just simple conditioning; the parents reinforce the behaviour
'coded for' by the memes, so the behaviour and the memes generating it are
retained. The same mechanism of
'imitation' operates in human infants today up until the day they have mastered
language; indeed, it continues to operate, in the background, whilst the
individual is occupied processing verbal information. The fact that a dual system, verbal and non-verbal, is in
operation accounts for the curious behaviour that sometimes afflicts people who
have been given 'hypocritical' instruction from their parents. The parents tell them verbally to do one
thing, but non-verbally to do the opposite (they say one thing and do another). The child tries to incorporate two
conflicting memes, which is only possible by inventing another spurious meme
(something like 'its okay to be hypocritical'), or by 'kidding oneself'. Sometimes this can have pathological
results.
Incidentally, the term 'meme' derives from the traditional,
pre-language method of meme transmission, from the Greek for 'imitation'.
Language is acquired by imitation too. It is composed of memes for its sounds, its semantics and its
syntax; all of which have to created by the child almost out of nothing. The basis of language, of what the child is
able to say and to understand in it, is the wordless model of the world which
it has already developed in its first 3 years.
The Model is composed of memes, concepts, which the child is able to tag
with the new 'handles' it has learned, namely words. This means that, insofar as we can avoid hypocrisy and
self-deception, any statements we make which we hold to be 'true' are actually
elements of the Model - memes laid bare.
Its not that easy to be sure we are being completely honest with
others, or even with ourselves. But if
we cannot guarantee 'truth' or even 'true belief', we can at least strive for
consistency and accuracy: Do these beliefs, this set of memes, 'hang together'? Does this person's behaviour support what he
purports to believe in? This essay is,
in effect, a verbal exposition of a large part of my own Model of Reality, that
part which is conscious to me. Although
it is purely theoretical, its memes are derived from several sources:
experience (the world), reading (other peoples memes) and inspiration
(creativity). I have two motives in
verbalising my model: I can bring it under better scrutiny, both my own and
others; and I am affirming my own belief in it by 'sticking my neck out', as it
were.
Language, then, is a set of sounds, which are tags we use in place
of our old mental images to represent our memes. We need the sounds to exchange our memes with other people. A lot of our discourse is still on the level
of 'body language' (which is just as well for pre-language infants!), though it
is largely unconscious. But sounds,
articulated by the mouth and modulated by the larynx, are a better way of
encoding memes. You don't have to be
watching the speaker to get the message, for instance; and our vocal repertoire
is practically limitless, so there is scope to represent any and all memes, all
shades of meaning with great accuracy.
This is a dramatic improvement over body language, with its sparse
vocabulary of memes showing only interest, disapproval, fear, excitement,
withdrawal, and so on. It is as if we
have replaced a simple club with an armoury of sophisticated weapons and
precision tools.
There is a clear parallel between the invention of language, and a
genetic phenomenon with which we are all too familiar - viruses. A virus is a kind of organism that has
dispensed with the encumbrance of a body, or even of a cell. It retains only the DNA itself, carefully
wrapped in a simple protein coat. It
doesn't even posses the ability to reproduce itself, let alone feed, respire,
photosynthesise, or indeed any of the abilities normally shown by
organisms. How then does it
procreate? It is a parasite. It invades a living cell and takes it over,
hi-jacks the genetic mechanism itself, and instructs the cell to make millions
of copies of the virus itself! The cell
is crippled by this, needless to say, and is no longer any use to the organism
possessing it. Worse, it is a time
bomb. When the virus has used up all
the cells productive capability, so that it has become a huge vesicle packed
with new virus particles, it bursts the cell open, infecting all the cells in
the vicinity with a virus in like manner.
A virus could not have existed before the genetic mechanism itself
had evolved. In fact, the virus must be
derived from that self same mechanism, just as all other life on Earth is. There is evidence that viruses originated
from a particular kind of gene, a stretch of DNA called a plasmid. Although the vast majority of DNA is in the
nucleus of the cell, some can be found in the rest of the cell too, in the
cytoplasm. These strands of DNA are
called plasmids. They seem to be able
to insert themselves into the chromosomal DNA, and to remove themselves
again. What they are for, what their
function is, is unknown. But it could
be that once upon a time a 'mutant' plasmid evolved which inserted itself into
a chromosome and instructed the genetic control system to make copies of it. The copies could have then infected other
cells when the first cell died. The
coat protein might have been a later refinement. But the plasmid would have 'escaped' from the control of the
cell, it would be a free living agent itself - a virus.
Memes have worked the same trick.
Language evolved, in genetic and memetic terms, because it increased the
accuracy, precision, and speed of memetic transmission. The primitive humans who first used language
became fitter than their non-language-using cousins. Once 'out in the open' the speed with which new memes evolved
increased dramatically, a new phenomenon had been created - cultural
evolution. Before the development of
language, a single meme, once created in the mind of an individual, had only
one chance to replicate itself - when the animal became a parent and educated
its offspring. But with language, a new
meme could be spread throughout a population very quickly. This meant that the number of possible
trials of the meme in a given space of time was increased many times. If the meme was a 'good' one, it would pass
the trials and within days rather than millennia it would become established in
the 'meme pool'. If, on the other hand,
it was a bad idea, a disadvantage to individuals possessing it, then its life
would be mercifully short. The
development of writing, and later of printing and publishing means that the
length of time in which memes are distributed throughout a population is
virtually instantaneous. Information
Technology and the media now means that the cross section of the population
available to be infected is measured in millions.
Cultural memes, like viruses, have a life of their own. Their success consists their popularity, in
the number of people for whom that meme is 'switched on' - the number of
believers. A successful meme is not
necessarily a 'good' meme in the long term, though it may well become
'fashionable' for a while. Many memes
are useless but benign, some are indispensable, and some are malignant - the
parasites. Parasitic memes are the
parallel of virus bourn diseases; they cause epidemics, suffering and
death. They offer short term solutions,
palliatives, or pain relief, which is how they get past the normal meme defence
mechanism, but in the long term they are only interested in themselves and they
create havoc in the world models of the victims, and therefore in their
behaviour. The only cure is for the
victims to somehow arm their defence mechanism with more powerful weapons, for
them to get a better grip on reality, for them to grow.
The defence mechanism against foreign memes, the immunity system
of the mind, is the faculty of Intuition.
This is a sub-system, a sub-model of the main Model, which has developed
an 'ear' for the smoothness of the running of the Model. It vets all foreign memes, as well as the
home grown variety, such that they are only admitted if they make the Model
sound sweeter, not less sweet.
Dangerous, unrealistic memes are thus barred from expression, banished
to a pool of useless memes. Perhaps the
meme is given a positive rejection, in which case its negation, its anti-meme,
is incorporated into the Model! In a
sense Intuition is weighing up the 'truth' of the meme, how close it is to
Reality.
The Intuition is only as good as the Model of which it forms a
part. If the Model is already a long
way from Reality, or if the Intuition is itself badly trained (a sort of 'tone
deafness'), then any old meme will get past the door. If this goes on for some time, the individual's Model will
correspond less and less with the real world, and so more and more bad memes
will be accepted; its a vicious circle.
The extent to which the behaviour of these people is abnormal, and their
lives unsuccessful, depends largely upon which particular cocktail of memes
they have acquired. They may not
consider themselves to be at all affected, or they may be very disturbed. There is a wide variety of strategies that
such people adopt to deal with their peculiar distance from Reality, and they
are often put in one of a few dozen special categories as a result: tyrant,
sadist, psychopath, fascist, bigot, misanthrope, pessimist, fatalist,
depressive, schizophrenic, defeatist, loser, coward, and so on. Whether they can be helped, whether they
want help, depends upon the exact circumstances. But the general way in which there interests might be served is
to help them to grow: disabuse them of their malicious memes and give them some
healthy ones.
So language, culture, the world of ideas, philosophy and science
are all aspects of a single phenomenon - a pool of viral memes that populates
our brains and our libraries. To study
this creation is to study ourselves.
Science is not so much a body of 'knowledge' as a collection of theories
which humans can use to model the world.
Language is a sort of gateway into our minds, into the world of
memes. The words we use are not
arbitrarily selected tokens, but meaningful representations of our memes. This is why we often find that a particular
word or phrase is extremely apt to describe the concept it refers to, why we
are often amused by such aptness and by ambiguity and word-play, and why
certain forms of poetry are possible at all.
The way a language changes reflects the way the memes are
evolving. Such evolution occurs by
copying and mutation. This is why the
use of analogy is so powerful; we only understand new concepts by referring
back to established ones. We use
phrases such as 'it is as if...'
Analogy and metaphor are the main tools we use to comprehend Reality -
we are copying memes. As our
understanding grows, the analogy is qualified and modified: 'it is as
if...but...' This maintains our
categories and characterises them - we are mutating our memes. Our experience is structured in a hierarchy,
a taxonomy, which parallels the levels of organisation of our memes (into
teams, super-teams, hyper-teams, and so on).
The structure of our language reflects this: there are genera, ways in
which the items of a class are the same; and differentia, ways in which the
items of a single class differ. The
differentia of one level are the genera of the next level down. So by studying Language itself, quite apart
from using it to communicate, we are studying the way we structure Reality,
studying our own Models of Reality.
The framework I have attempted to elucidate here, that ideas are
memes, biological entities which behave exactly like genes, permits a fresh
analysis of language and philosophy in which words and propositions are tied
into a 'central dogma'. Just as genes
are the units of inheritance, selfishly ensuring their own perpetuation - their
immortality - so memes are also a unit of inheritance with identical
aspirations. They are the determinants
of behaviour, and they selfishly ensure their own immortality. The old philosophers asked 'What is the good
life?', the central question of their philosophy. This question is actually the cry of the memes themselves. In translation it reads 'How can I [the
meme] live forever?' In biological
terms it means this: What meme or set of memes is it that leads to a stable
society? If this doesn't seem to
follow, consider this: the meme is the determinant of behaviour, and 'the good
life' is a way of life, a set of behaviour patterns (determined by memes) which
everyone ought to adopt. The definition
of perpetuation is stability. So if
memes are to perpetuate themselves, the behaviour they determine, which they
hope everyone will adopt, must be that which leads to a stable society, to
social harmony, to social health. I
stress society, because it is fundamental to the human condition; it is our
habit to live in large groups, and many of the benefits we enjoy as modern
humans stem from such societies. The
helpless child is born into a family unit which protects and nurtures it for maybe
20 years; then the adult is released into the world, and the role of the family
is taken over by society. Very few
individuals live outside society, and their behaviour, the behaviour of monks,
hermits and recluses, cannot be considered typical; I make no apology for
omitting them from the current picture.
This is the point of synthesis for all the ideas presented so
far. Most of the ideas are not at all
new, but putting them together in this way, it seems to me, achieves a new and
powerful way to understand who we are.
It is not a parable, a metaphor for some 'deeper' message; as far as I
can see, this is just how it is. This
seems like a good place to draw all the threads together and to summarise the
key points I've tried to make.
Evolution is a mathematical process by which order inevitably
emerges out of chaos. On Earth, DNA
evolved as the genetic material, the stuff of which the immortal genes are
made. The genes created a global
machine to ensure their own perpetuation.
The elements of the machine are organisms, billions of individuals, the
characteristics of which are determined by the genes themselves. Over the years, the machine was improved by
evolution. The high point was reached
with the emergence of humans. In human
brains, genes successfully handed over the control of human behaviour to memes,
entities which determine behaviour, and which are analogous to genes, but which
evolve millions of times faster than genes.
The memes quickly made humans the dominant species on Earth, the most
powerful beings the planet has yet known.
Humans are born with instincts, gene determined memes, but very
few of them. From this small beginning
they evolve the many other memes they will need to control their
behaviour. Two of the memes they create
initially are: 'Something's Happening' and 'I Am'. These two memes provoke the questions: 'What's Happening?' and
'What should I do?' In trying to answer
these two questions, the infant creates a number of 'working memes' which it
puts into two categories: Truth and Right.
The infant develops a faculty which vets new memes for admission to
these categories: the Intuition. This
faculty is capable of integrating the many qualities which the memes present
into a single Quality, which, for the memes that pass the test, is recognised
as Beauty. Intuition works by putting
the meme candidates through a 'dry run' on a Model of Reality. Intuition has developed an 'ear' for the
smooth running of this Model. How well
Intuition and the Model develop is largely a matter of luck.
As humans, most of our fundamental memes are laid down by the
Infant Genius, a child less than 3 years old, in wordless images before
Language is acquired. In general, we
are not conscious of these early ideas.
Language is the viral form of memes, and is grounded in the unconscious
understanding of the early Model.
Language, and memes in general, though created by the infant, are shaped
by imitation, by the conditioning of parents, and by the conditioning of nature. The infant seeks parental approval and
practical success. From the collection
of memes built up in this way, the infant creates the Model and develops
Intuition. By the time Language is
mastered, the fundamental memes are already laid down; the rest of the
individual's life is most often concerned with day to day matters, with which
Language and Reason can deal comfortably, rather than with ideas. But we are all occasionally confused, and
occasionally some of us become philosophers.
Philosophy, religion and mysticism are attempts to contact the
unconscious memes laid down before Language was acquired, an attempt to
'remember' and to verbalise these memes.
Science is organised Reason, the faculty we developed as infants to
'sort things out' into categories with tags, and the faculty from which
Language is derived. Art is the product
of the Aesthetic sense, another name for Intuition. The entire human endeavour is an attempt by the memes to
perpetuate themselves. The strategy
they have been obliged to adopt is to model Reality as closely as
possible. One definition of Reality is
that it is that meme which is immortal; by approaching Reality memes approach
immortality.
This section is about as near as I shall get to actually answering
the question 'What's Happening?' I had
thought I would leave this question aside, but I think it emphasises the power
and beauty of meme theory that it can tackle such a question, so here goes.
Evolution is a physical law, the Third Law of Thermodynamics if
you like. It explains many phenomena,
not merely the development of life on Earth.
After the Big Bang, the Universe consisted of a ball of energy,
pure light. There was no matter. Matter only 'condensed' out of the light
when the ball had expanded sufficiently, so that the 'temperature' of the
light, its density, had dropped below a critical point, its 'freezing
point'. The fact that the Universe
constantly expands, and so constantly cools is related to entropy, change, and
time. You can think of it as giving the
lost heat somewhere to flow to. The
first matter to condense out of the Sea of Light was a mixture of protons and
electrons - plasma. This condensation
is an example of some new stability emerging from the chaos of the light. Just as a single crystal seeds the
crystalisation of a vessel full of solution, so the condensation of a proton
'seeded' the condensation of the other protons; an example of propagation of
stability. It was some time before the
Universe cooled enough for the electrons and protons to condense further, to
form hydrogen - the next 'plateau' of stability.
The next actor on the stage is gravity. It is tempting to try and suggest that gravity is connected with
evolution, that one is a corollary of the other or that they are both
corollaries of some greater principle.
But I'm not enough of a physicist to do it. There does seem to be an 'attractive principle' whereby like
substances separate out from mixtures and group together: water is distilled
into pure rain water, oil and water form two separate layers, rock grains are
separated according to their solubility in water and their size (the speed with
which they settle). All these processes
are driven by energy systems: the gravity of Earth, or the heat of the Earth or
Sun (both results themselves of gravity).
So gravity seems to be the greater principle. Another avenue is that gravity is a distortion in space-time; if
time is created by entropy, then perhaps gravity is a corollary of
entropy? This would make entropy, time,
gravity and evolution all statistical phenomena, pure mathematics. Just a thought.
The cloud of hydrogen that the comprised Universe was not
completely uniform - there were local dense regions and sparse regions. The action of gravity on these regions was
to form stars, and collections of stars (galaxies), and collections of galaxies
(clusters). This was the third stable
plateau. Planets formed when some of
the stars exploded, scattering debris around the galaxies which was trapped by
other stars to form solar systems (plateau 4).
By such means, the Earth was formed over four billion years ago.
It is probably true to say that conditions on Earth were just
right for Life to evolve. But that
isn't saying much. Here we are, so conditions
must have been right. It would make not
a jot of difference if the probability that such conditions arose 'by accident'
were fantastically small: one in a billion billion billion. Perhaps we are just incredibly lucky. The fact that Life evolved means that for
whatever reason, conditions were just right for this to happen. Why posit the existence of an outside agent
to 'set things up'? It is simpler,
neater and perfectly satisfactory to assume we are just dead lucky. My hunch is that we are not all that lucky,
and that evolution is such a powerful phenomenon that Life could evolve almost
anywhere.
Conditions were conducive to the evolution of Life (plateau 5),
therefore Life evolved (plateau 6).
There was no single point at which Life emerged from the chemical soup,
it was a gradual process. As I have
suggested here, evolution has been at work since the Universe exploded in the
Big Bang, achieving new stable states, new plateaux. Life is the 'cream' on top of the milk that evolution produces: Order
out of Chaos. Because Earth is a
dynamic chemical system, energy being constantly fed in from the Sun, it is
constantly 'bettering' itself (evolution).
The living machine, the Biosphere, has altered conditions to what they
are now so as to make Life more comfortable.
There is no longer any trace of the early chemical systems which
developed DNA and the genetic mechanism.
In a sense, DNA won and it eliminated all the opposition. My guess is that as computer simulation
becomes more sophisticated and powerful, it will be used to accurately model
these early chemical systems so that we will one day be able to say with more
confidence exactly how genes began.
I made a point of emphasising that conditions must have been 'just
right' on Earth for life to evolve, and one need not posit an outside agent to
bring this about - it just happened.
This reasoning is equally valid when applied to the larger question of
the origin of the Universe itself. The
sort of thinking that posits an outside agent to create Life might argue
something like this:
'The conditions that currently pertain in the Universe are just
too finely tuned, too perfectly set up, engineered to too great a precision for
them to have occurred by pure chance.
If any of a hundred parameters were different to one part in a million
million, the Universe could simply not exist.
This suggests, therefore, that the parameters were preset by a conscious
outside agent, the being we call God.'
I disagree. What can it
possibly mean to say that the Universe could not have arisen by pure
chance? For all we know, billions upon
billions of universes have been 'tried out' in the past, each with its own
random hodge-podge of physical laws.
Perhaps none of them lasted more than a few nanoseconds, or one or two
may have managed to stick it out for a few million years, and then fizzled
out. But we live in this Universe;
aren't we lucky? Twenty billion years
old and still going strong. Where does
God come in? In fact, I don't suppose
other universes did exist in the past; I suspect that our Universe is the only
possible one. Another point is that
Time did not exist until the Universe did, so it is nonsense to talk about
'past' universes existing 'before' ours.
But what happens outside the Universe, in Eternity, is anyone's
guess! However you look at it, this
Universe exists and its like it is. The
answer to 'Why is it like it is?' might as well be 'It just is.' If it wasn't like this, we wouldn't be here
to ask these questions. This is not a
reason for the Universe to be thus, it is just a consequence of it.
Perhaps you are still sceptical: 'Yes I see what you are saying,
but my question is this: Why should there be anything at all?' To this I would answer: Why not? There doesn't have to be a cause for or a
purpose to the Universe: it simply is!
An idea I find helpful is this.
The Universe exists, so it clearly isn't impossible for it to do so. But suppose it was very improbable: one in
as-large-a-number-as-you-like. If this
means anything at all, it means that one would have to wait a very long time
indeed for the Universe to just spontaneously happen. But how long? In the
Timeless Void of non-existence which is all that there was before anything
really was, the question 'How long?' is itself meaningless. One second is as 'long' as billions of
years. One wouldn't have to wait any
time at all. Even if we suppose some
sort of Eternal Time which we allow to pass just to make the idea of
probability work, and we allow for an unimaginable amount of it to pass,
eventually, since the Universe is not actually impossible, it would suddenly
exist. Only if the Universe was
impossible would one have to wait for ever, so that the Universe never came into
existence. Since it is not impossible,
it had to happen eventually.
As a last ditch defence, someone might try this: 'The Universe
cannot possibly exist unless some agency, something outside the Universe is
constantly maintaining it, all the time preventing every last atom and particle
in every galaxy from ceasing to exist.'
Actually, I don't have any particular problem with this. It seems a bit far fetched - a lot of
trouble for this outside agency to go to - but as long as this agency is
outside our Universe, whatever that means, then one can suppose whatever one
likes about it. The only effect we
would notice is that things would exist, and they would carry on existing,
which is not saying a lot. It is only
when this outside agency is supposed to have any other effect on our Universe
besides maintaining it that I would have difficulty. In particular, I fail to see the need to identify the outside
agency with the Deity.
It seems to me that Evolution is sufficient explanation for the
existence of Life on Earth, and therefore for the existence of Man. There is no need to posit God, and it
complicates things immensely if you try to do so. But Evolution has been working since the Big Bang - still no need
to bring God into it. And from my
argument above about the Creation of the Universe, God is not required there
either. The Creator God was a useful
meme, a simplistic explanation which sufficed until the pieces of the jigsaw
finally fell into place; until a new meme with better credentials emerged. Now we know 'Who The Creator is':
Evolution. By extending the concept of
Evolution to cover all systems, not just 'living' systems, we can see that the
emergence of Order out of Chaos is just inevitable. The development of the Universe after the Big Bang was
inevitable. The occurrence of the Big
Bang itself was inevitable.
However, there are other reasons to believe in a God besides the
awesome power of Nature and dignity of Man.
Even if the Creator God has lost out, is there not room for another kind
of God, a Personal God? If we look into
this idea, we find its root is not outside ourselves, but within
ourselves. We have created God because
we need Him; we need somebody to love us.
God exists as a meme. This kind
of existence puts God on a par with any other idea we can have, be it
evolution, gravity, water, rocks or Tuesday.
But these other ideas have a property that God doesn't have; we can
objectively test for their existence, they are aspects of Reality. It is not possible to prove that God exists
(many people have tried), except as a very powerful concept in which many
people believe passionately.
The origin of the meme is in our early childhood. Before we found out that Mum and Dad were
just human beings exactly like ourselves, we treated them as God. The fact that there were two of them was not
relevant (does God have two hands?).
When God the parents was no more, we were at a bit of a loss. In some families, this hole is never filled,
but in religious families, the hole is filled by the meme God. Father says 'Obey me, but obey God first'
and mother says 'I love you, but God loves you more'. This is a great comfort to the child, who is seriously worried about
his parent's human frailty. 'Who is
going to look after me when my parents are gone?' asks the child, or 'Who is
looking after all the children and grown ups who haven't got a Mum and
Dad?' The child isn't able to grasp
that one day he will be able to look after himself - and in some ways he is
right to be sceptical about it; many people grow up being unable to look after
themselves, and they look for other members of society, their friends or their
partners, to substitute for the parents they desperately need. In terms of TA, Transactional Analysis, this
need is felt by the Child (one of the three ego states) which may not trust its
own Adult and Parent (they are all it has to rely on) if they haven't so far
managed to fulfil all its desires. Very
few people are totally self reliant, and those that are usually have some great
faith to support them; faith in themselves, perhaps, or in God.
Even if the infant is happy at the time with God as his protector,
he may not be happy later when he grows up and learns more about life. After all if Father Christmas doesn't exist,
why should God? Surely He's next for
the chop? Or perhaps the child grows
into a thoughtful individual with a philosophical leaning. He will most likely find the notion of God
rather too simplistic. And what of the
child raised by 'heathens' - what is there for them to believe in? There are a number of strategies - two of
the commonest are: one, to just keep looking, be sceptical, learn as much as
possible, ask questions, to make The Search the meaning of one's life; or two,
to just accept something as the answer, anything will do, no matter how bizarre
or dangerous: drugs, drink, sex, flower-power, money, power, violence. These two strategies, poles apart, account
the behaviour of a great many modern adults these days, now that the churches
are empty.
The Creator God is no longer needed now we have Evolution; is
there any replacement for the Personal God which people clearly need if their
lives are not to be meaningless? As I
have hinted at above, the state one wants to achieve is one of self-reliance. If you need to be loved, love yourself. Trite?
Well, yes; put as starkly as that.
It would take more space than I have allocated myself to do justice to
the idea of loving oneself. But lets be
clear what I am not saying. I am not
suggesting that one should become utterly selfish, nor that one should become
an egotist, nor that would should assume an air of great self-importance and
arrogance, nor that one should sacrifice everything for the sake of some
burning ambition. In fact you don't have
to do anything. Its not a prescription
for any behaviour at all. It is simply
an attitude, a belief.
The TA school put it like this. Say to yourself: I'm Okay. It's not enough to just say it, of course,
you have to believe it. And you have to
believe all the corollaries that follow from it: 'I can cope, I am confident, I
like myself, I like other people, There's nothing I can't handle, I'm not
scared of anything, I can take it whatever it is, There is nothing I can't do
if I set my mind to it, I am calm, I am relaxed, It's going to be all
right'. And a whole lot more.
I have said that I can't do justice to this new meme: I'm
Okay. But in a sense this entire essay
has been an attempt to do this one meme justice. The meme is part of a meme cluster, it is easier to accept the
whole cluster than try to fit the new meme in on its own. This is the tight circle of ideas I
mentioned way back, elements of which I have been repeating throughout and
certain of which I have elaborated upon in order to illustrate the power of
meme theory. I haven't exhausted the
list of memes in the cluster but they include: Reality, Self, the Model,
Intuition, Reason, Truth, Beauty, Right, Good, Quality, Growth, I can, I'm
Okay, You're Okay, and It's Okay.
Each of these memes can be given short 'operational' descriptions
which explain how they interact (this essay is the full description). Truth: what works. Right: behaviour that that works. Good: describes memes that work.
Quality: the sum of all aspects.
Beauty: Quality of Good memes.
Intuition: that which judges the memes.
Reason: that which sorts out Reality.
The Model: sum of all our memes, our current approximation to Reality,
built by Intuition. 'Self' (as distinct
from 'self' which is just how we represent ourselves in our Model) is a
particular meme towards which we aspire.
Reality is what we are obliged to model. The closer our Model gets to Reality, the more successful and
self-reliant we are, and the closer our memes get to achieving the immortal
meme, Self. Growth is becoming closer
to Reality. The Assertions (I can, I'm
Okay, You're Okay, It's Okay) are a defence against 'bad memes', past errors,
mistakes we once made which limited us in the past, and which may stage a come
back later. As we Grow, our Intuition
improves, our Model improves, our insight improves (the ability to explain
external phenomena), and our 'wisdom' improves (our ability to reflect, to know
ourselves). Prayer and meditation are
simply the act of contacting the Self via the Model.
All individuals aspire to achieve the Self, the immortal
meme. Were they to achieve it they
would each have a single Model, they
would be one person, known to Buddhists as Buddha. The extent to which we are rid of useless and 'bad' memes, and
have a Model which is close to Reality, defines what stage of Growth we are at,
how many questions we still have, how content we are, how free of misery, how
powerful, how active, how free.
Is it possible for two brains to achieve identical Models? Can we all be Buddha? I doubt it.
But it is a standard to aim for, a point on the horizon, a Pole Star to
plot our course by. The idea is not to
get their but to travel, to live, and to enjoy the journey.
What I have tried to do here is to take the evolutionary paradigm
and the genetic paradigm one stage further; to apply them to the evolution of
both the Universe, and the Mind of Man.
On the way, explanations for a great many related phenomena have
emerged. Memes, culture, learning, and
wisdom. The origin of memes, our
distant childhood, how we are haunted by old memes, the origin of mystical,
religious and philosophical ideas.
Behaviour, psychology, bad memes, and early errors. The origins of tyranny, sadism, defeatism
and fear. A very wide range of effects
for what is basically quite a simple but elegant theory. And I haven't really said very much that is
actually new. It is the power and
beauty of the idea that leads me to accept its validity. Using the terms I have defined, I must
maintain that this meme is True - it works; at least it works for me! The Model I now seem to have by virtue of
the new meme is, more than any other model I have yet had presented to me,
closer than ever to Reality.