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Memes Research Paper

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Notably, innate human abilities and ideas permit culture to determine the favored genes, which in turn can reinforce the culture. The relationship between culture and genes can be viewed as a vicious circle. To comprehend, the significance of culture, it is essential to view it as an independent organism, a parasite— a meme! The term "meme" was conceived by Richard Dawkins as "information copied from person to person by imitation"(as cited in Bull, Holland, and Blackmore, 2000, p. 2). Memes are ideas, beliefs, practices, etc. In order, for these memes to be successful parasites, their hosts (the humans) have to be successful at this imitation process. This complex social behavior is a consequence of our possession of a very sophisticated genetic mechanism: the mirror neuron system! Mirror neurons are a fairly recent neuroscientific discovery that affirms that the same neurons fire when we perform an action, as when we observe the action being done by …show more content…

Memes can be adopted independent of the consequences on the host (Bull et al, 2000). Their fast paced growth is beneficial to them, because by increasing their rate of evolution, memes can minimize the impacts of their hosts on them, as they do not allow enough time for the genes to have enough evolutionary progressions to which the memes will have to re-adapt (Bull, Holland, and Blackmore, 2000). Genes will have less time to re-adapt to these memes and exert pressure on them. Therefore, it is obvious that we are always in danger of adopting memes that are detrimental to our survival. Take smoking, drug abuse, and alcohol, for example! Those are some powerful memes but they are in no way positive or essential to our evolution. Yet, they spread under social influence. Genes are immune systems and memes are the viruses. Sometimes, no matter how hard the immune system fights, the lethal viruses sill find their way into the

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