This Meme’s For You

With this blog we gear up for a more concerted social media presence — wish us luck!

In so doing, we recognize that our humble meme may have a tough time in the battle for people’s attention. Nevertheless, to paraphrase a famous speech from a cigar-smoking British Prime Minister who has himself become a meme: “We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing pages … we shall never surrender!”

It was Richard Dawkins, a geneticist, who noted in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, that, like the indomitable gene (the unit of information encoded in DNA), there is yet another self-replicating entity which resides in our being. He called it a meme. But you won’t find it under a microscope. Memes live in our brains in various incarnations, including beliefs, theories, tunes, images, ideas, buzz words, styles of dress, religions and their iconography, politicians and their tropes. Like DNA, memes replicate and often attach to other memes and meme-groups for space in our heads.

Consider that the “you” that you think you are may simply be a meme! That disconcerting thought was posited by Susan Blackmore in an essay called “Waking from the Meme Dream.” It’s a sobering idea. And how do you prove it isn’t true? We mediate reality through language, so a person’s world is essentially symbolic. In this constructed universe, as Carl Jung noted, “physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances.” Long story short, we live in a tangled web of memes, and that is why cultural evolution and our own survival may depend on which memes win out.

In this light we invite you to take a closer look at our meme:  A man on a whale on an ocean looks up in the direction of the North Star to which his staff also points. As we see it, it represents a greater integration of the spiritual in our personal lives. In one prayerful image it says “Please World, look up from your digital devices, if only for a minute. There’s something more!”  Does our meme stand a chance in a noisy, competitive marketplace? Or will the world simply continue on its accelerating march to darkness, courtesy of the many nasty, ignorant and self-centered memes that are floating out there? Whatever happens, we are as of this blog taking a stand. We believe the memes justify the ends. And we welcome any donation to our cause.