Say what you memes
In cyberspace, you can be more interesting than you really are. Or just name-drop Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” in your social network. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins puts forward his theory of memes, which can be roughly described as a “neo-Darwinian account of the spread of ideas.” In his theory, he likens it to genes propagating themselves by moving body to body via spermatozoa or eggs. “We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,” writes Dawkins. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene.’ I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to ‘memory,’ or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream.’”
The term includes tunes, catchphrases, political ideas, scientific theories that propagate in the same way by moving from brain to brain. He uses this concept of memes to explain religion in his controversial anti-theist book, The God Delusion. He maintains that religious ideas survive because they are able to survive in any “meme pool” or part of a “memeplex” along with similar ones such as folk superstitions or urban legends.
Of course, as other writers like John Gray have noted, Dawkins’ “memes” is an ill-judged Darwinian metaphor and, strictly speaking, not even a theory — a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwin is applied outside its proper context. In fact, Gray writes: “it is unclear whether this is really a theory or simply a rather inept analogy, for though he talks loosely of the propagation of memes occurring by a process of imitation, Dawkins never specifies a definite mechanism for the transmission of ideas. Nor is this surprising, given that no such mechanism exists.”
Fortunately, we have the Internet.
According to Wikipedia, the use of the term “meme” in cyberspace can refer simply to the “propagation of a digital file or hyperlink from one person to others using methods available through the Internet.” This can consist of a “saying or joke, a rumor, an altered or original image, a complete website, a video clip or animation, or an offbeat news story, among many other possibilities. In simple terms, an Internet meme is an inside joke, that a large number of Internet users are in on.”
Last week, around the various social networking sites such as Facebook, an Internet “meme” went around asking people to name their top 15 albums and to list these down in 15 minutes. It proved to be very successful. Like a chain letter, it also asked that you forward the meme to 15 other friends and so forth. Even many celebrities got in and posted their favorite albums. (Even this magazine’s literary editor could not help but pull himself from his more scholarly pursuits — such as the reading of the thousands of submissions from those who wish to etch their names alongside the gods of our literary pantheon including several national artists and select the piece to published this week and onward into posterity — to acquiesce and educate us regarding the genius of Geddy Lee.)
One thing that was curiously consistent with many of the lists posted is that many of those included Miles Davis’ 1959 album “Kind of Blue” more often than not as the sole “jazz” entry among the rock, pop, indie fare cited. Described as a “master class in modal improvisation” (whatever that actually means), the record featured performances by John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans among others. In his autobiography, Davis recalls that, “Everything was a first take, which indicates the level everyone was playing on. It was beautiful.”
A year before, in 1958, Davis had already intimated that he wanted to do something different. “The music has gotten thick. I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.” According to the UK music magazine, Mojo, he was influenced as well by composer George Russell’s theory of Lydian tonality to produce “simple, slow-moving harmonic frameworks… and indicated (to the rest of the musicians) to be used for improvisation.”
Not that any of that matters. In social media, preening and posing by tarting up your profile information (i.e. the books you read, the movies you see and, yes, the music you listen to) is prevalent. After all, no one wants to admit that all the music they like is confined to, let’s say, grunge from the early ‘90s or only music released after 2006 — or, for that matter, films falling under that unfortunate abbreviation as being “rom-coms.” Usually, there is the token Kurosawa epic, John Hughes ‘80s flick or nouvelle vague entry just as there will be Jane Austen or Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado to be listed alongside the Paolo Coehlos and Dan Browns. In music, there might be a hip-hop album or an acknowledged ‘60s rock classic as well as, yup, “Kind of Blue.” (At the risk of sounding like a snob, I can’t help but think the inclusion of the latter came after a visit to a Starbucks.)
“I thought the Internet would change people. I thought it would allow us to build a new world through which we could model new behaviors, values and relationships,” says media analyst and writer Douglas Rushkoff. “In the ‘90s, I thought the experience of going online for the first time would change a person’s consciousness as much as if or she had dropped acid in the ‘60s.
“Sadly, cyberspace has become just another place to do business. The question is no longer how browsing the internet changes the way we look at the world; it’s which browser we’ll be using to buy and sell stuff in the same old world.”
Although I’m not as despondent as Rushkoff (mainly because I never thought that the Internet would usher in Kubrick’s Star-Child but rather just be atavistic old Alex in new garb, still horrorshow, nonetheless), I see all this fancy talk of Dawkins, memes, “Kind of Blue” and the Internet as just the latest things we humans use to amuse ourselves. Even writing this whole article about all of that is my own attempt to do the same. Nothing inspires as much as having nothing really to say but feeling the urge to say something in the first place. In fact, that may be just the impetus for every tweet ever.
