Genes, Memes, and Other Things
Mood: contemplative
Music: Pandora's Box
I've been having to read the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins in my Psychology class. Do not get the impression that by stating that I have to read it that I do not like it. In truth, I think the book is amazing. I can easily see how this book could so easily make so many allies and enemies among the human population.
I just read the 11th chapter of the 30th Anniversary Edition of the book, and it has truly struck close to home with some thoughts I've had for a while now. This chapter I believe to be one of the most important within the whole book.
What is life, and how does one define if something is living? So many people have not yet begun to even think of these sorts of questions. I began thinking of it around my freshman year of college. Why is it that the definition of what is living is so narrow? Because we only know of one type of life? Fuck that. Stop being a bunch of dumb-asses. Humans have amazing brains and minds with great capacities to think. Just because you cannot physically see it does not mean it is not there in some other portion of the universe. There has been a debate on whether viruses (that should by all Latin-root rights be viri for plural....) are actually living or not. Even if you hold life down to something as narrow as things that have nucleic acids forming chains that self-replicate, even viri still fit that. When was the last time you saw a non-living rock with RNA? No, fuck that. Even under narrow definitions a virus is still alive.
I took this further though a few years back. What exactly is life except that which reproduces in one fashion or another (asexual/sexual), needs to consume resources to continue to propagate...that's pretty much all I based it on. Those thoughts brought me to fire. It seems alive to me. It spreads and gets larger. More energy is added to it to create more fire. The energy is the consumed resources it needs to continue growing and spreading. I'm sorry, fire seems damn well alive to me.
Regardless whether or not you think fire is alive, does it not seem possible that there are other forms of life that don't conform to double-stranded DNA that lives in cells? Chapter 11 seems to think so (thought I'd let you forget about your reading assignment, didn't you?). Memes...think of them as particular aspects of culture. Relate them to the genes. Memes can propagate themselves in the minds of many individuals just like genes can physically propagate themselves in the bodies of many individuals. Memes can compete for resources. Limited number of people in the world to believe in the meme. Also, limited brain-capacities for memes within one individual. Read the book and especially that chapter to get a better explanation than what I can give.
What I took away from it was this... Just like genes, memes are not alive. However, they constitute an entity that is living. Culture. Culture is alive. It mutates. Changes. Evolves. Adapts. Culture is a much better living organism than us. By better I mean it's life expectancy. A certain culture can live a long time. What's interesting to think is that with the dawning of the electronic information age, cultures are mixing more rapidly than ever. It's not out of the question to conceive a singly worldly culture to which all humans subscribe. And would this culture ever die? Not really, it's an organism that can undergo evolution without having to spawn duplicates of itself that are slightly different from itself in order to evolve. Think of it as you being millions of years old, but your body has evolved from the ancestors of homo sapiens itself. You are still you, but you are different. Culture is one helluva organism. Something has just evolved from the state of corporeal to that of an incorporeal state. Sound familiar?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Don't know him? That's unfortunate. Read up on him. What particularly interests me is his Omega Point theory. It coincides quite nicely with what I said above. We humans seem to be evolving to a certain, defined point. What that point is no one can really say. It's not intelligent design. It's just happening. The evolution of the mind has really opened up the door of possibilities. Self-replicators (genes) making cells. Cells making tissues. Tissues making organs. Organs making the body. One organ in particular is the brain. The brain made something on its own though. The mind. Everything up to that point was very physical in nature. Now we hit the mind. Incorporeal. It doesn't seem to have stopped there. Your individual mind may die when you die. Many minds have come together to make culture though. Culture is the new evolutionary organism among the human race. We are getting closer and closer to a point of an immortal, living organism. The Omega Point. The ultimate complexity of the mind. The perfection of mind. A god. I don't believe what I said above was coinciding with the Omega Point theory. I am certain that similar thoughts are what drove Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to this theory.
You may ask why a perfect being, a god, would have to be a mind. I have a theory of my own. And I'll need to post about it right after this one. Stay tuned for another damn-long post.
Music: Pandora's Box
I've been having to read the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins in my Psychology class. Do not get the impression that by stating that I have to read it that I do not like it. In truth, I think the book is amazing. I can easily see how this book could so easily make so many allies and enemies among the human population.
I just read the 11th chapter of the 30th Anniversary Edition of the book, and it has truly struck close to home with some thoughts I've had for a while now. This chapter I believe to be one of the most important within the whole book.
What is life, and how does one define if something is living? So many people have not yet begun to even think of these sorts of questions. I began thinking of it around my freshman year of college. Why is it that the definition of what is living is so narrow? Because we only know of one type of life? Fuck that. Stop being a bunch of dumb-asses. Humans have amazing brains and minds with great capacities to think. Just because you cannot physically see it does not mean it is not there in some other portion of the universe. There has been a debate on whether viruses (that should by all Latin-root rights be viri for plural....) are actually living or not. Even if you hold life down to something as narrow as things that have nucleic acids forming chains that self-replicate, even viri still fit that. When was the last time you saw a non-living rock with RNA? No, fuck that. Even under narrow definitions a virus is still alive.
I took this further though a few years back. What exactly is life except that which reproduces in one fashion or another (asexual/sexual), needs to consume resources to continue to propagate...that's pretty much all I based it on. Those thoughts brought me to fire. It seems alive to me. It spreads and gets larger. More energy is added to it to create more fire. The energy is the consumed resources it needs to continue growing and spreading. I'm sorry, fire seems damn well alive to me.
Regardless whether or not you think fire is alive, does it not seem possible that there are other forms of life that don't conform to double-stranded DNA that lives in cells? Chapter 11 seems to think so (thought I'd let you forget about your reading assignment, didn't you?). Memes...think of them as particular aspects of culture. Relate them to the genes. Memes can propagate themselves in the minds of many individuals just like genes can physically propagate themselves in the bodies of many individuals. Memes can compete for resources. Limited number of people in the world to believe in the meme. Also, limited brain-capacities for memes within one individual. Read the book and especially that chapter to get a better explanation than what I can give.
What I took away from it was this... Just like genes, memes are not alive. However, they constitute an entity that is living. Culture. Culture is alive. It mutates. Changes. Evolves. Adapts. Culture is a much better living organism than us. By better I mean it's life expectancy. A certain culture can live a long time. What's interesting to think is that with the dawning of the electronic information age, cultures are mixing more rapidly than ever. It's not out of the question to conceive a singly worldly culture to which all humans subscribe. And would this culture ever die? Not really, it's an organism that can undergo evolution without having to spawn duplicates of itself that are slightly different from itself in order to evolve. Think of it as you being millions of years old, but your body has evolved from the ancestors of homo sapiens itself. You are still you, but you are different. Culture is one helluva organism. Something has just evolved from the state of corporeal to that of an incorporeal state. Sound familiar?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Don't know him? That's unfortunate. Read up on him. What particularly interests me is his Omega Point theory. It coincides quite nicely with what I said above. We humans seem to be evolving to a certain, defined point. What that point is no one can really say. It's not intelligent design. It's just happening. The evolution of the mind has really opened up the door of possibilities. Self-replicators (genes) making cells. Cells making tissues. Tissues making organs. Organs making the body. One organ in particular is the brain. The brain made something on its own though. The mind. Everything up to that point was very physical in nature. Now we hit the mind. Incorporeal. It doesn't seem to have stopped there. Your individual mind may die when you die. Many minds have come together to make culture though. Culture is the new evolutionary organism among the human race. We are getting closer and closer to a point of an immortal, living organism. The Omega Point. The ultimate complexity of the mind. The perfection of mind. A god. I don't believe what I said above was coinciding with the Omega Point theory. I am certain that similar thoughts are what drove Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to this theory.
You may ask why a perfect being, a god, would have to be a mind. I have a theory of my own. And I'll need to post about it right after this one. Stay tuned for another damn-long post.
posted by cjufnf at 5:13 PM
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