THE HUMANISTIC IMPLICATIONS OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOBIOLOGY, AND MEMETICS AND THE CO-EVOLUTION OF GENES AND MEMES

Dr. Tom Arcaro, Professor of Sociology, Elon University, Elon, NC 27244

Paper presentated at the annual meeting of the Association for Humanist Sociology in Austin, Texas, October 12-15, 2000.

Reflexive Statement #2

It has been long months since I wrote the above essay [Part I] and upon re-reading it just now I am both impressed and embarrassed. The depth and scope are aggressive but the documentation and overall scholarship is weak. Yet I have forged on in this line of thought, still not sure if I am any closer to answering the question "what does being human mean?"

Back in graduate school I was lucky to have a major professor who allowed me total freedom to explore both in terms of theory and methodology. My wandering lead to reading a great deal of Marx & Engels to the point where I fancied myself as something of a well read person as far as classical Marxism was concerned. Yet it was not original sources which caused my epiphany regarding Marxism but rather a working paper by a fellow grad student two years my senior. His paper concerned the concept of medicalization, and in this paper were these phrases

I was struck by that phrase and immediately knew much more what Marx had been trying to tell me in his 19^th century polemical style. Little did I know then that a seed had been planted (a meme, more accurately) which would follow me through my professional career and finally bear fruit in a profound way.

During roughly the same time in my graduate career I attended the AAA meetings in Washington DC and heard humanist anthropologist Miles Richardson deliver a paper in which he talks about the basic anthropological question, namely "what does being human mean?"

A third graduate school ghost I must mention (which I was lead to by a phrase in Richardson's paper) is Leslie White who included the essay "Man's Control Over Civilization: An Anthopocentric Illusion" in his book The Science of Culture. This essay haunts me still in that it argues exactly as the title states. As a humanist I have been blessed with an infinitely deep curiosity about and concern for the human condition (and all of the tragedies and injustices which exist) but simultaneously cursed by the doubt that anything that I or anyone else does "really matters" in terms of making the world more humanistic.

In an essay by TR Young (fellow humanist) I was able to find an antidote to the pessimism I felt from White. In explaining the humanistic/sociological implications of chaos theory he pointed out that human agency is even more critically important than we had ever thought. He offered a new geometry to understand power. The flapping of the butterflies wings does cause massive weather changes far away, and hence the minor actions of one humanist can have the same impact on a societal level. (see Young 1992) Good for TR. Good for me.

If I accomplish anything in my short time upon this privileged stage it is that you will walk away understanding some of the humanistic/sociological implications of both evolutionary psychology and meme theory.

My quest is, as ever, to understand what being human means (see my previous works that appear in Humanity & Society and The Humanist Sociologist the two publications of the Association for Humanist Sociology), and this quest has taken me into the study of evolutionary biology and more recently into the "new" science of memetics. I offer not a completed, tidy set of thoughts, but rather a post card from my most recent stop on my journey.

We are human. Zoologically we are a merely another species, an additional life form on this planet whose existence is the product of the same evolutionary processes that created all other life forms. The sole point of evolutionary psychology is that the human brain and hence mind is a product of selection forces over the millennia. In How the Mind Works Steven Pinker "reverse engineers" human behavior through the use of evolutionary principles, always beginning with the premise that we would not be this way unless there were fundamentally genetic advantages to how and why we act the way we do.

It is both beyond my ability and the intent of this essay to completely explain evolutionary psychology. But suffice to say that it is a powerful paradigm that begins with an aggressively non-anthropocentric premise, namely we are part of nature. Far from there being a massive quantum difference between us and the chimps, we may be indeed merely a naked ape with a thin veneer of what we (with great hubris) call "civilization."

But can we really accept that statement? Like Linnaeus (and even Darwin) I questioned the idea that the mechanism of evolution could produce a species as "advanced" as ours. Can evolution explain consciousness, calculus, capitalism or Catholicism let alone Calista Flockhart? My reading in evolutionary biology (Steven J. Gould, Richard Dawkins etc.) and evolutionary psychology (Wright, Pinker, etc.) led me to back to graduate school again where, as an anthropology student, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene was assigned reading. The task he set for himself in this book was to explain human being from the genes-eye-perspective, pointing out the basic evolutionary processes which, ultimately, put gene replication as a centerpiece of the explanation. We are lead to see that a chicken is just an eggs way of producing more eggs, and that, by extension, we humans are just gene replicating machines. (This book was reviewed in Contemporary Sociology by the sociologist P. L. Greene back in 1977.) In the final chapter Dawkins presents an idea that has, to wildly understate, caught on. That idea is the concept of the meme. Memes are units of culture in one sense but more must be understood as replicators. It was not until I read (just this summer) Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine that I fully understood Darwinian evolution. The same kind of epiphany happened when I read her book as when I had read my fellow graduate student's paper long ago and finally understood Marxism. Here is one of the lines that had a big impact:

"…imagine a world full of brains, and far more memes than can possibly find homes. Which memes are more likely to find a safe home and get passed on again?" (Blackmore p.23)

After first taking in the idea of evolution from the gene's perspective it was not much of a leap to understanding cultural evolution from a meme's-eye-view. Here are two quotations from Dawkin's River Out of Eden, in each I have inserted the word 'meme' where gene appeared:

The above quotations were chosen to illustrate first the idea that the same algorithm works for any replicator (in this case memes and genes; there are theoretically other replicators out there in the universe). Secondly they were chosen to raise the question "are memes and genes the same in all ways?" They are demonstratively not the same. One crucial difference is that in complex organisms evolution occurs on a very large time scale. Memes are more like viruses in that they can replicate extremely rapidly. Another essential difference is that the vectors that can transmit memes (much like viruses) are many and varied, whereas genes must be transmitted through sexual or asexual reproduction. A third difference has to do with an idea of symbiogenesis first developed by the biologist Lynn Margulis. Symbiogenesis is a process whereby new species are created that partially circumvents the Darwinian algorithm, i.e., through cooperation as opposed to competition (did you ever wonder why your mitochondria has it's own DNA? Margulis' theory -now widely accepted-- is that deep in evolutionary history mitochondria were bacteria which were in a parasitic relationship with a host and that this connection developed into a permanent symbiotic relationship with the host). Whereas in genetic evolution symbiogenesis is somewhat rare, this process is most likely common in meme evolution.

Again, after one understands the algorithm, the rest falls in place. But what is an algorithm?

Algorithms can and do function through a variety of mediums, i.e., they are 'substrate-neutral.'

I have asked several mathematician types to explain the concept of algorithm to me. The best one word definition was "it is a process." Marx understood that capitalism is an algorithm that, once set in motion, must have the outcomes he predicted. But why haven't they? I would argue that they have, but that is for another essay. In the movie Jurassic Park the phrase "life will find a way" was popularized. This is a pop culture summarization of the observation that once the algorithm of replicator competition was set in motion, it would become unstoppable. Indeed, life forms have populated an infinite variety of eco-niches on our planet, and the bush (please, not the ladder metaphor which (1) assumes evolution has a preferred direction and that (2) the top rung of this ladder is inhabited by our species; Gould does a wonderful job of expanding on this idea in his book Full House) that is life is rich and diverse. This is so as well for the process once begun for any replicator, hence the term Universal Darwinism.

In The Meme Machine Blackmore provides not only a good restatement of meme theory (other books along this line include Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie and works by Dawkins and Dennet) but more importantly an explanation for the question that has been around since Darwin and Linnaeus, namely how could evolution have produced us. Her explanation is that memes function just like genes, and once the meme replicator algorithm was set in place (and had a medium in which to replicate, namely the human brain) there was nothing to stop memes from spreading and becoming more complex. A major thrust of her book is that genes and memes co-evolved. Again, a deeper explanation is needed here but is beyond the scope of this presentation. In short, Blackmore solves the problem of how evolution could have created us (and Calista Flockhart). The simple answer is that genetic evolution alone did not create us but rather the co-evolution of memes and genes did.

Al Lee was one of the founders of the Association for Humanist Sociology and also author of the book Sociology For Whom? His question is a good one and his answer is that sociology's ultimate purpose is to help make humankind more just. I agree with this premise and extend it (in such a way that I think Al would have approved) as such. The vast majority of consumers of sociology are those students we have in our intro to sociology classes. Tens of thousands of students each semester take -likely as their only sociology class ever-- intro courses. I would hazard that if we added up all the intro to soc students accounted for by just the people in this room there would be tens of thousands (I alone -having been bored enough one day to do the count--have taught over 4000 students in intro to soc classes). In the vast majority of the texts that we use the three main theoretical perspectives (functionalism, conflict and interactionism) are presented and used. These conceptual tools are useful and can lead the student towards productive and critical assessment of her self and culture. A fourth main perspective is needed, namely evolutionary theory presented in a way that would be inclusive of both genes (i.e., evolutionary psychology and sociobiology) and memes. Once understood this paradigm generates many useful and provocative questions. One of the sine qua non of humanistic sociology --as anyone who has ever read our journal or attended one of our conferences will attest-- is a marked lack of theoretical myopia; we are an eclectic bunch who thrive on exploring the usefulness of new ideas, concepts, perspectives and theories. By adding this fourth main perspective to our theoretical toolbox we will further enhance our student's ability to critically look at their lives and the world in which they exist.

Anecdotally I can offer the fact than in the past few months when I have talked to students about both evolutionary psychology and meme theory they have picked it up very easily and have almost gleefully used this tool which is new to them. It appears to make intuitive sense and catch on easily. (The meme meme is a good replicator, it appears.)

But how is this new paradigm sociology? It demonstratively did not come from within our field. The answer to that question comes from Thomas Kuhn who told us long ago that paradigm shifts within a discipline will frequently come (I would argue exclusively) from without. Sociology will wallow around in the same old semi-sterile waters unless and until a new perspective comes along from the outside. This is exactly the case with the evolutionary paradigm. There is little work being done in this area by sociologists but much done by folks in other fields. It would make sense for us to at least be able to understand the basic premises of this paradigm which purports to explain self and society (not to mention adoption, altruism and cola wars). To their major credit Wallace and Wolf have devoted an entire chapter of their recent theory text (Contemporary Theory 5^th edition) to the general topic. Their chapter "Rediscovering the Body: The Sociology of the Body and Sociobiology" offers the reader a fresh perspective on what being human means. You mean we have a body and we're similar to other species? Wallace and Wolf fall somewhat short of giving a fair explanation of sociobiology largely, I feel, because they fail to explore some of the more recent literature of non-sociologists who present current research into evolutionary psychology. This lucane is perhaps an indication of disciplinary wall maintaining, and they might be hesitant to use any perspective which has another social science in it's name. There is no mention of meme theory, although they do reference Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene where the idea was first presented.

One major thrust of humanistic sociology is maximization of human potential, and hence helping to empower people to control their own lives is a common task of many in our ranks.

A meme "font" is a person who "infects" many people with their thoughts and ideas. The opposite of a meme font would be a meme "sink" or a person who interacts very little with others at any level. Memes go into meme sinks but they rarely ever get passed on. As college and university faculty we are particularly influential meme fonts and I assert that we should take every opportunity to pass on verbally and in writing all of the positive memes we can. We pass on an idea in class and the student tells a roommate or a parent, and they in turn pass on the idea. Humanism is good and positive, a meme that I pass on at every opportunity. By understanding the algorithm of meme replication (i.e., memetics: the study of how memes replicate, interact and evolve) and thus knowing what makes for good fidelity copying we can more effectively infect minds in a positive way.

Just as TR Young argued that chaos theory was a statement for human agency (Young 1992), I am presenting the idea that meme theory also empowers everyone to infect many others with those memes which they find important, useful and positive. I agree with Brodie (1996) when he asks,

"Memetics provides new insight into the way our minds, societies, and cultures work. ….what would it be like to look at culture as a meme pool [parallel to gene pool],where the ideas in our heads are shaped and transported by various forces including mindviruses? How many of these viruses are already with us? Are they helping or harming us? Can our enemies crate new ones and infect us with them?" (p. 64)

As humanist sociologists we have a big responsibility to understand how memes work and how we can be infected, and we need to make our students aware of these ideas. I hate the fact that I can't choose not to be constantly bombarded by the Nike "swoosh" (or swooshika as some activists have called it) or the Microsoft logo. To understand the mechanisms of meme replication and all of the vectors through which they can be transmitted (e.g., television, radio, billboards and, yes, college classrooms) is vital. Unlike genetic engineering which is highly specialized and technical, memetic engineering is something that we can all do. Our task is to create and pass on memes that are positive and humanistic. Indeed, "the ruling ideas of any age are ever the ideas of the ruling class" precisely because the powerful control meme transmission both directly and indirectly. We must be proactive, humanistic memetic engineers. As such we have to understand memes and memeplexes and how they can be impacted and directed. (Vocabulary note: if a human body, for example, is a complex but cooperating set of genes --a 'geneplex'-- then Catholicism [or capitalism] is a complex but cooperating set of memes --a memeplex.)

The normative system in any culture is extremely volatile, especially at the micro level. Norms emerge constantly in every situation where humans interact, and the vast majority of these norms are short lived. An example that always makes sense to my students are the norms which evolve on a long "road trip" where, for example, some phrase or behavior will become hilariously funny for the duration of the journey. Some norms though last longer and may in fact even spread to other groups and, if they are very successful, become institutionalized as part of the cultural normative fabric. Why do some norms "survive" and others not? The answer lies in understanding the algorithm of memetic evolution. I offer this discussion of emergent norms to illustrate how this perspective can push students closer to the understanding that culture is not "out there" external to their lives, but rather of their own making, and also to point out that many other basic sociological ideas can easily and usefully be re-framed in terms of memetic theory. The theory of contagion takes on a fresh meaning when looked at through this perspective. Indeed, this is essentially the thesis of Brodie's book Virus of the Mind.

Are we merely a bucket of genes added in with a bucket of memes, i.e., are we totally determined by these two sets of replicators? The perspective outlined above clearly argues for a new concept of both self and culture and, if taken too literally, can make a thinker feel quite controlled. Perhaps so, but that is a philosophical issue that is clearly beyond this essay.

Can a humanist be a "Universal Darwinist?" The better question is, can a humanist usefully add this perspective to her theoretical toolbox with which to understand and change in a positive manner the surrounding world? The answer is, I feel, yes. I invite you to allow yourself the opportunity to explore this new tool. I hope that you find it as provocative as I have.

This is not the end in that this is clearly a work in progress. Please forgive my raw presentation and take it only as an invitation to understand these conceptual tools I discussed above.

I would like to thank my wife Dr. Amo Burbridge, my students Athena Mandragouras, Riza Aquino and Cameron Brown and my colleague Dr. Duane McClearn for their help in formulating the ideas in this paper.