CopyRight @ 2004
Have you ever wondered what language God speaks? I wasn't doing that, but
long ago I was fascinated with how thoughts seemed to come in natural
groupings. A person learns different parts of something and it leads them to
a core understanding of what the person is learning about. The parts they
learn have made a framework that encompasses what they are learning. Once
that core framework is achieved, most of the person's development is just
plugging parts into that frame work. That entire framework becomes a single
thought. The event of that understanding is usually fairly sudden. Michael
Polanyi referred to it as Emergence in his book Tacit Knowing. The person
can then explore their understanding of the complete concept in near the
same amount of time it used to take to intellectually examine any of the
parts that the person initially learned. It seems as though many small
thoughts had been configured and assembled not only in logical order, but in
a physical order that is used by the brain for processing information. I
called these thought groupings "mindsets". They may be accurate
representations of reality or they may be how people perceive the world. If
they are accurate, they indicate that there might be an interesting and
revealing underlying logic to existence and the human physical and
psychological worlds. They also seem analogous to Objects in software
programming where methods are associated with the data they work on. It
might even be more than an analog .
A day late and a dollar short. Richard Dawkins coined the term "memes" in
contrast to genes. He described that memes had many characteristics of life
including heredity. They follow the rules of evolution, not just biological
evolution either. I'm not sure how much Dr. Dawkins thought beyond the
evolutionary nature of memes. For that matter, it matters little what he or
anyone else currently thinks. Our understanding of memes 20 years after they
were hypothesized is not going to be much better than the best
understandings of the Theory of Evolution 20 years after Charles Darwin
published the Origin of the Species. Still, if you are a true life
scientist, you recognize that this may be a very powerful key to
understanding many things about humanity and the world. This is the concept
that humans are "meme machines", evolved to interact symbiotically with
memes. It implies that an understanding of something is independent of
humans.
I follow my path through that land and understand many things along the way.
I found a strong understanding that one of the languages of God is memes. It
would explain a lot.
A meme has to be logically consistent. Important memes are closely examined
for logical consistency. Lack of logical consistency condemns a meme. Being
based so strongly on logic shows that there is an underlying mathematics to
memes.
When I was in school in Santa Cruz, there was a major offered called History
of Consciousness. Even for Santa Cruz, that one sounded odd. It was the
history of when ideas began, spread, were used and their consequences. Well,
examining memes or mindsets and their importance, over the years I came to
understand that the History of Consciousness could just have well been
called the History of Memes. It's not just about the creation of an idea, it
is also about their spread and consequence. It shows an interesting
potential for a very subtle manipulation of the development of the human
race. Just inject a meme into the system in such a way as to get its desired
spread rate. If you can.
It also explains something about prophesy. Some are about objects and
events. Some are clearly representations of complex concepts. God gives
individuals message memes of concepts and the prophet must find a way to put
it into words. It explains some imprecision, while God's message is still
faithfully retained. A meme is a logical structure and you cannot change the
message without violating the logical structure of the meme. It's how people
consciously and unconsciously use reason to judge truth. What creates the
logical structure can be many things, but they all convey the same message
and understanding, even coming from a person and time where the meme is
almost impossible to express.
If he wants a prophesy, God may put the same meme in different minds at the
same time. The message will get out. It will both get reinforced by other
prophets and at the same time it will suppress other prophets.
The downside is that memes may be almost completely artificial in action and
concept. They could be a logical chimera. I don't believe so. My experience
suggests that memes are the real McCoy.
Biblically this brings up two points.
This relates to the issue of the relationship of God and humans. This would
fit that we are created in his image psychologically. It makes no clear
point about physical similarity, but might be suggestive of some part of a
spiritual similarity.
The Bible is a complex social and ecological meme as are the teachings of
Jesus. Prophesies in dreams are common enough, but that implies little about
memes. I never have looked at the Bible or other books that much for mention
of memes. I wasn't thinking of it at the time.
Theory points that there are memes humans have that were created by God.
Just another way of saying that God taught us lessons. The difference though
is that these may have a different structure from more natural memes. They
may be internally or externally recognizable by their cohesion and integral
nature. Remember, you never know when a meme emerged. Were any of them from
God? Obviously love is one possibility, but it's nature goes way beyond a
thought or a meme. It is also a strategy. Faith is another interesting
possibility. It is certainly a meme, though there is a strong genetic base
to faith as well.