h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is something I'm thinking about a lot these days. Last night I was lying awake a long time thinking about writing a book entitled 'The Megameme' about what would be the *ideal* conceptual framework for a society. I mean ideal as I can conceive it and of course I'm a fallible human being so what I would consider ideal may be quite fallible in practice too.

Anyways ... so what is a 'meme'? Richard Dawkins first proposed the word and concept. As a 'gene' is a basic unit of biological inheritance ... encapsulating any kind of quality or attribute of a living creature that is 'coded' by its DNA and can be passed on to its offspring ... so a 'meme' is a basic unit of *cultural* inheritance: an idea, a practice or a symbol, or something along that line, that is passed on from one individual to another within a culture or society. The way in which memes can be passed along are various.

A 'memeplex' is an entire complex of ideas or practices that forms a kind of connected whole, so the memeplex itself supports the memes it contains.

A 'metameme' is a meme about memes: for instance the concept of a meme is itself a meme.

In my rather frantic and delirious bout of thinking last night I was considering how people of our 'modern' societies all largely share a certain kind of 'meme' or memeplex ... a certain kind of conceptual framework, a way of looking at the world. THIS IS NEVER STATED OUTRIGHT. It is simply assumed: assumed by pretty much every mainstream magazine and newspaper in the 'western' or 'first' world; assumed by pretty much every movie or TV programme in the first world. This is the way reality is assumed to be; all characters operate on this assumption and their ideas and desires and ways of doing things all neatly fit into this overall 'memeplex' of modern human culture.

Now ... I live in a totally different private inner world ... and I have a totally different conceptual framework and worldview of the 'external' or 'real' world. I am very aware of the 'memes' constituting my own conceptual framework and it is clear to me that most people are unaware of the memes constituting *their* conceptual framework and worldview. It is clear most people 'receive' these things and never question them and in fact are hardly aware of having received these things or even that these things exist. They simply accept that things are the way everyone else accepts they are and in fact they cannot imagine things being otherwise.

This is why I find this quote from the Wikipedia article about metamemes very interesting:

"It has been proposed that the degree of consciousness one society has about the very memes that form it is correlated with how evolved that society is."

A society in other words where most individuals are *unaware* of the exact nature of the ideas/memes constituting the worldview or conceptual framework of society in which they live, is therefore not a very highly evolved society.

The very existence and nature of memes are currently hotly contested by scientists. Same with the above idea about society being conscious or unconscious about the memes that constitute it. Nevertheless ... though I cannot define exactly what memes are and can even less 'isolate' memes or the basic elements of meaning, the ideas of memes, metamemes and memeplexes have value and validity. I am also in general agreement with the statement that a society is more highly evolved the more *conscious* it is about its own nature (and I would say the more conscious it is about the outside 'real' world as well ... in fact I would say the more conscious a society is in general, the more evolved it is.)

So I am now really thinking if writing a book about the basic ideas or memes of our society - and how these ideas can be improved - might not be of value to many people. Specifically I would like to demonstrate how many incongruencies and inconsistencies there are in the ideas most people simply take for granted. I really think we should try to eliminate as many as possible of the grave inconsistencies ... I recognise though that there are some rock-bottom inconsistencies that may never be harmonizable. But being explicit about this, too, and explaining the reasons why, could also enhance consciousness.