VSPA Congress, 12 November 1999,
Amsterdam
Abstract
Memes are behaviours, habits, skills, songs or
stories, that are passed from person to person by imitation. Like
genes, memes are copied with variation and selection. This means they
are replicators and take part in an evolutionary process - in this
case the evolution of mind and culture. In the past, the co-evolution
of genes and memes has given rise to the enormous human brain and our
unique capacity for language and culture. In today’s world memes
have constructed new ways to get themselves copied, from writing and
the printing press to computers and the Internet. Along the way they
have shaped human consciousness. I will argue that ordinary human
consciousness, with its false sense of a perceiving self and free
will, is an illusion created by the memes for the memes.)
