Everyone familiar with memetics? It’s like genetics but relates to the communication and reproduction of units of culture, information and communication. Your memories of your life are filled with memetic content, popular music, scenarios from commercials on television, movie scenes both old and new, as well as stories and images from events that were considered historically significant, like the video of the lunar landing.

It’s like the traditions we make? Yes, but more elemental. We think of all this information as being whole concepts that stand alone and don’t affect each other, but each one of these memories work together to form your world view and general disposition.

Like the lunar landing making the world stand still to watch it? Or the events of the terrorist attack on the twin towers. Just as genetics work together to give you the body you now come to identify as yourself, memetics work together to give you your self-image and sense of the social or communal world. Even affecting your sense of the natural world and perception of what you consider “real.”

We all tend to know the names of people we have never met and perhaps wouldn’t even befriend if we had the chance to meet them in person. They call them celebrities. We also know the names of a good many so called authorities on everything from politics to science to concepts of artistic merit. So in a way, we all have many more “parents” than just the two who contributed to our genetics. All these little bits of information, story, and experience work together to shape your thoughts and feelings on everything. They form the biggest part of your subjective experience. There is much more in your brain than the things you yourself have seen or heard or experienced.

How do our personal filters play into the shaping of these “memes”? We still choose what information is important and what is not. I get this idea of other external ideas and influences, but we can’t synthesize everything we are exposed to. I would disagree. Neuroscience points to evidence suggesting that not only can we synthesize everything we are exposed to, but that we even generate new pseudo-experiences to go along with the original content. Why it doesn’t seem to be the case is because there is a big difference between the domain known as conscious function and the unconscious functions of the brain.

People are innately social creatures. The core of our brain is wired to take in and evaluate social signals from the environment even well before our cognitive processes become aware of them. This is why they say negative attention is better than none at all. Our brains need the sense of being in any way involved with others of our own kind, and really, the world as a whole.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~