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The Masters We Serve: the Gene and the Meme in Human Affairs

Posted on: Thursday, 23 September 2004, 06:00 CDT

The biological/cultural analogy works because human groups operate using memes, the "cultural genes" that hold people together and allow them to differentiate into diverse roles within a group. The gene and the meme are both instructions that encode responses to a particular reoccurring context. The human body operates using genes and is a genetic organism. The human group operates using memes, and is a memetic organism.

Modern humans live in a world of multiple memetic organisms. We have learned mental tools that allow us to arbitrate between the needs of competing memetic organisms. These tools do not always operate smoothly, leading to conflicts internally to a person, as well as conflicts between different memetic organisms.

INTRODUCTION

A human body is a collective. We are biological organisms built by the cooperative efforts of a group of differentiated cells. These cells build our tissues and organs, all of which work together to let our collective of cells stand up, move about, and be much more ingenious about satisfying needs than any cell by itself.

The biological collective works because of the common origin from which all of the cells grow. Every cell in a body came from the same zygote (unless the person has had a transplant) and they all operate using the same genetic instructions. In essence, they all speak the same language. Even though the human species is extremely homogenous genetically, die "language" difference from body to body is enough that we cannot exchange cells outside the confines of sexual "trade" or without intense medical help. Other cells are invaders; they are fought off and destroyed to protect the body.

Within the collective, the individual cell matters only in that it is part of the whole. If it dies, it is replaced; if it divides, it is doing the replacing. For example, the work of the heart is done by all of the heart cells-it is effort that manifests from the aggregation of all of the heart cells following the rules encoded in their genes. Problems only arise when a difficulty aggregates across enough cells to manifest in opposition to the effort.

Our cells, as diverse as they are, are coherent to each other; that is, they support each other via their common genetic rules. Through that coherence, support also runs back toward the cells, supplying them with what they need to survive.

The biology of cellular collectives-i.e., genetic organisms, is very analogous to the ecology of human collectives, i.e., cultures, societies, formal institutions, etc. People work toward being "productive members of society" and differentiate their skills within the economy. People operate with the same rules as others within their culture. They speak the same language. They give their work to the group and, in return, the group provides them support and protection.

The question arises: Why does the biological analogy work?

The answer is surprisingly simple: Our cultures are not biological, but they do run on a set of specific rules that operate like genes; these rules are memes. Memes are "cultural genes" (Dawkins, 1989) that transmit instructions and hold people together. Memes do not ride on DNA like genes; instead they ride on language. They are not the blueprints of proteins; instead they are the blueprints of specific and learned behaviors. Instead of reading instruction off molecules within our membranes, humans think to process, sort, and perform memes.

Memes flow between people via language, bringing cultural instructions and technological innovation to every person who processes them. Different kinds of people deal with different parts of a memetic structure, either moving materials, building tools, bringing people together, or managing the data flow. Everyone does a part within the group-whether that group be a tribe, a book club, a mom-and-pop store, a multinational, a nation, or another institution.

These cultures, corporations, grass-roots groups, etc., are alive. Memes make them alive by giving humans the way to diversify and to act coherently throughout the group, just as genes do within a genetic organism. These living human groups are memrtic organisms that are shaped by the memes that flow within them. Their blood is information and their food is the labor of people.

A memetic organism can be as small as a family unit that uses a set of behavior standards, i.e., "In this family, we use manners at the dinner table." It can be as large as a multinational corporation that also uses a set of behaviors, i.e., "At our Large Electronics Corporation, we produce the best cell phones." A memetic organism can be a town, a city, a neighborhood, a church, a book club, a school, a country, etc. Memetic organism describes any and all human groupings.

Memetic organisms operate on a scale beyond the personal physicality of the individual; they are bigger and older than any one person. For example, there are several governments and religious organizations that have survived many generations. China is several millennia old; the Roman Catholic Church is two millennia; Britain is several centuries old, and United States of America has now past two and a quarter centuries. Individual people live within these memetic organisms. They learn the organism's memes from other members, transmit those memes to their children, and produce goods and services for the group. The memetic organism itself is bigger and older than the individual and will survive even if that individual leaves or dies.

Humans live at a unique boundary in that we are both genetic and memetic. We must keep ourselves alive and we must keep our groups alive, as well. At the extremes are the sociopath who puts physical needs above the welfare of others and the victim who gives until it kills him or her. Most of us live in the middle ground, both giving and taking.

That giving and taking is a very big part of the sociocognitive system. The system is based on the flow of memes in and out of human individuals and starts in the biological processing of an individual's brain (hence the "socio"). The system produces memetic organisms in much the same way as the various biological systems produce a genetic organism.

Understanding the intersection between the needs of genetic and memetic organisms shifts the underpinning point of view about human behavior. A person behaves in a particular manner because of personal genetics, i.e., the brain with which he was she born; and personal memetics, i.e., the attitudes, morals, and skills they have picked up during his or her life time. The personal genetics are about keeping the body alive; the personal memetics are about keeping that person's memetic organism alive. Understanding human behavior centers on understanding how the individual manifests his or her genetic and memetic influences. It's all about looking at the mechanics of interchange between genetic and memetic organisms.

The social sciences hinge on studying and understanding memetic organisms. But the underlying, unspoken assumption about people is that the symbolic abilities of individual humans are the core of our survival. A memetic organism, i.e., a culture or organization, is assumed to manifest out of the individual actions of a group of humans living together. Group dynamics are seen as an emergent property of behavior. The reverse is actually true: Behaviors are a manifestation of the memes of the memetic organism in which the human lives. New members do adapt the rules to changing contexts, but they always start with what they have previously learned.

The interaction between the gene and the meme raises many questions, several of which we have barely touched on within this Introduction. Genetic and memetic organisms are analogous because the two platforms of the gene and the meme operate within the same system and with the same underpinning rules. This leads us to several points that we will elaborate in this article to help pull together a stronger understanding of the intersection of the gene and the meme:

* What is a meme?

* What is the connection between a gene and a meme?

* What is the combined system in which they operate?

* How do the resulting memetic organisms operate?

* What is the human role within a memetic organism?

* What can humans do to modulate the behavior of memetic organisms?

* How are memetic organisms evolving?

DETERMINISTIC REPLICATORS-HOW MEMES WORK

Humans learn to think. We learn the language in which we think, and we learn the frameworks we use to guide our thinking. Learning and thinking are actions of the brain, which is part of the human body. The first step to learning and thinking is to produce the biological infrastructure that supports these actions. To do this, a human body must first express the scripts that are the genes encoding the cellular processes, muscle movements, and instinctive responses that reside in our cells. These expressions build the body, its perceptual systems, and the brain that processes all of the incoming information.

The second step in learning to think involves retaining and remembering sequences of genetic responses. The sequences humans remember are the best responses to the context of our environment. By remembering the best responses, we maximize the precision of our response and minimize the nee\d for our brains to generate a new response every time the same context occurs.

This encoding in memory of sequences of genetic responses is the deterministic replicator script called a meme. For example, humans can take the muscle movements needed to pitch a baseball, or to speak a word, or to knit a sock, and remember them precisely from one execution to the next. We also learn and remember the rules of grammar and logic.

Not only are memes repeatable, but they are transferable as well. We can watch and mimic, remember the precise sequence we see, and then practice it. We can talk to each other, exchanging the instructions that shape thoughts. Or we can read books and understand thoughts with a depth of detail not possible through speech alone.

The human brain is the hardware on which our replicator scripts run. The brain reads the scripts and produces the neurological signals that tell the body how to express a response. The biological mechanisms used by the brain differ from the computer mechanisms with which we are familiar, but as a metaphor, computers work well to explain this process.

For animals, both the right and left cerebral cortices process now information-sensory data comes in and is used to determine the correct reaction for that particular moment. Both perception and reaction are combined to form a snapshot ofthat now. Life is a stream of nows, with no past or future, only the current moment and its context. Because both cortices process nows, there is no room for, or a mechanism to support, the recording of memes. This works well for animals, but in terms of hardware, the animal brain can only read genes-the scripts with which it was born. Basically, the animal brain works with read-only memory installed at the factory with very little room for upgrades.1

Humans have an added feature in our brains. Unlike other animals, our left posterior parietal cerebral cortices do not process snapshots of nows but instead record and process the body actions that are executed over a series of nows, forming sequences of actions retained as memes.2 Our right cortex remains perceptual- bringing in and processing sensory information, but our left cortex has become procedural-creating, perfecting, storing, and executing the procedures coded in our memes.

The Left Procedural Cortex is a major upgrade in brain hardware and gives humans a disk-drive that not only supports our ability to learn, but also to perfect. Without the Left Procedural Cortex, there would be no complex tools, no language, no culture, no societies, and no human cognition.

THE GENE-BUILDING THE "HARDWARE"

Genes encode action directives that express as discrete fonctions in response to a context within the cellular environment. These functions either build proteins or control the building of proteins, all of which come together to build the cells that make up the individual bodies of human beings.

The accumulation of different expressions forms genetic traits and instincts. In order for a gene to express and a trait or instinct to develop, there must be a need for the behavior it supports.3 These behaviors run the gamut from internal cellular functioning to flight from a predator.

Traits and instincts appear on the macroscopic level of the body. If a baby is left alone with no interaction, he or she will develop several severe problems that are almost impossible to correct, such as losing the ability to socialize. For the baby, no external stimuli existed to signal to the cells of the brain that they needed to ramp up the production of the chemicals and connections that support talking and interacting with others (Curtis and Cicchetti, 2003).

Instincts are the primitive driving forces behind everything we do to keep ourselves alive-eating, sleeping, mating, avoiding pain, etc. They manifest as a series of action directives hard-wired as pathways in the brain. You are born with these pathways intact; you do not need to learn them. Learning can modify some instincts, but a person without neurological damage will always pull back from a hot object, or jump when he or she is startled by a snake.

The action directives that are the basis of motor functions, such as moving the hands and using the vocal cords, are genetic. They are hard coded and cannot be changed, though there are expressive differences between individuals. Motor functions are the base scripts we use to build everything that we do.

THE MEME-THE "SOFTWARE"

The remaining scripts are cultural and encoded as memes. These are the scripts produced and executed by the Left Procedural Cortex. At its most basic level, a meme is the encoding of a sequence of action directives in the Left Procedural Cortex.

Unlike the Right Perceptual Cortex, the Left Procedural Cortex does not process perceptual information. Though the left side of the brain does process sensory information for the right side of the body, it does not build that information into perception-that function is carried out by the Right Perceptual Cortex. Instead, the Left Procedural Cortex focuses only on the action part of the now.

The Left Procedural Cortex maintains all of the processing architecture of the Right Perceptual Cortex, but instead of building the entirety of a now with the vast amount of sensory information included, it takes only the actions needed to respond to a situation and use its considerable processing power to build the entirety of a behavioral sequence derived from a series ofnows, from beginning to end. This behavior is a procedural "snapshot," which is stored as a sequence. A sequence can stand alone as a meme, or be linked together with other sequences to form more complex memes.

A memetic sequence is not genetically hard-coded into the brain when an individual is conceived. Instead, it is built by the brain as the individual gains experience throughout life. The resulting neurological pathway becomes a template for future responses in much the same way as a gene is a template for cellular functioning. Just as a cell can make many copies of a gene so it can build enzymes; a human can repeatedly express a meme so that he or she can speak the same word in the same way over and over again; produce multiple perfect baseball pitches over several games; or build the different components of a clock.

Since memes are not chemically hard-coded like genes, they are much easier to modify. A meme coding an interaction with peers can change rapidly and radically over just minutes, whereas genes coding mating behaviors can take thousands of years to differentiate. The speed at which memetic scripts can be built, modified, and refined gives humans a major advantage in adapting to rapidly changing environments. For example, humans can throw. We perceive the context of a target and that context becomes the trigger for a throwing meme. Once triggered, a throwing meme will express rapidly from beginning to end and ignore all changes in the environment as the meme is being expressed. Once the expression is completed, then a snapshot of a new now is formed.

To create and retain the meme, the Left Procedural Cortex remembers the best sequence of action directives used in the past to hit the target. When the target appears again, the brain responds by expressing the meme, and the entire sequence of the best throw is executed again, greatly increasing the likelihood that the thrower will hit the target.

Memes express through die acts of body movements-talking, writing, painting, dancing, sports, or any other endeavor that humans learn. Once we learn the sequences, we can express the memes. The main memetic carrier is the electrical and chemical system of the Left Procedural Cortex, but modern humans also use language to broaden the depth of the memes we transmit, and also to widen their distribution. The movies, books, TV, art, and all the other artifacts of human design are the media in which the external language carriers reside.

Memes divide into two categories: Production memes code for the building of tools and other tangible expressions of human thought and creativity. Control memes regulate production memes and are the rules of a culture. The expressions of production memes leave tangible evidence of their existence, whereas control memes must be inferred based on ancient and modern societal patterns.

Genes split into production and control replicators as well: Production genes produce proteins and control genes turn the production genes on and off. Two of the most prominent examples of control genes are Gli3 and sonic hedgehog, both of which regulate the formation of limbs and other features (Spirov, Bowler, and Reinitz, 2000).

In a memetic organism, production memes are the instructions that lead to the creation of tangibles, i.e., the body movements that allow a person to throw a spear or shoot a gun; the fine motor memes that allow a person to type, sew, or create intricately detailed works of art or tools. Control memes are the instructions that regulate production memes, i.e., the school rules about not running in the halls and only running at recess; the attention rules that separate work and family, allowing tools to be made at work and family bonds made at home; the social rules that regulate when and where an opinion can be expressed; the rules of grammar that regulate how, when, and where language is used; the religious rules that regulate social synchronization by using the production memes that produce music and social gatherings; etc.

The modern world is full of control memes, and it is the control memes that matter the most. Control memes are the core of a memetic organism; production memes can be purchased, copied, reverse engineered, and used, but the control memes regulate how that memetic organism uses the products. The distribution of production meme knowledge and the tangibles created by them is controlled by a myriad of control memes ranging from the processes \of education, to copyright and patent laws, to marketing. It is the control memes that make the culture.

CULTURAL RULES AND THE SELF

Control memes manifest as cultural rules, a type of meme that sets up controls within a group. They form the belief systems through which we filter our choices. How an individual organizes and uses these rules at any given moment is distinctive. How you use your cultural rules is one of the ways you give yourself a unique signature in the world. Some examples of cultural rules are "I am a smart consumer, therefore I will shop for the best price,""I am a member of the PTA at my child's school, therefore I attend meetings and volunteer," and "I am eco-conscious, therefore I recycle."

Cultural rules are ordered within the mind by the Self, a very powerful way for an individual to regulate the demands of a group. The Self developed as an extension of consciousness when cultures began to interact with each other (Jaynes, 1990). It allows a person to apply reasoning and prioritize possible choices when the cultural rules of memetic organisms overlap. The person then makes a decision based on his or her allegiances within the multi-group society.

Within a Self is a hierarchy of allegiances-a control hierarchy that prioritizes for the individual the importance of all of the cultural rules of all of the memetic organisms to which a person has committed. Each allegiance within the hierarchy is weighted according to the emotions associated during personal experience with a rule; cultural literacy and knowledge of the entire rule-set; brain biology; and experience and emotional tagging concerning a whole host of other factors. All of these weights make the hierarchy highly individualized.

Prioritizing allows an individual to adhere most strongly to the cultural rules of that person's primary memetic organism. These are the values and ideals a person holds most dear. Behaviors are checked against these high-priority rules first. A behavior may ultimately violate a rule of a minor allegiance, but the rules of the major allegiances are more important and will not be violated without the individual suffering a considerable amount of guilt.

Another property of the Self is that it allows an individual to keep an identity in spite of encroaching memetic organisms. An individual decides whether or not the cultural rules of a particular group are "true" or "false." If true, the prioritizing mechanism of the Self takes those rules and weighs their importance as an allegiance. For example, an individual may be exposed to new traffic laws in another country. These laws are true for this situation and are used while visiting the other land, but they aren't important when at home. While this prioritizing is occurring, the person's other allegiances shuffle, some moving up and others moving down in priority. The new traffic laws, though, do not completely overrule the other cultural rules the individual uses. Instead, they stay intact and maintain the person's identity while the new allegiance is added. Cultural rule-sets that are designated as false are excluded from the Self.

ATTACHMENT TO A MEMETIC ORGANISM

Humans serve two masters-the genes that build our bodies and the memes that run our consciousness. Memetic organisms, on the other hand, are creatures solely of the meme. They do not live in the same context as a biological human. The needs of the gene mean little to the memetic organism.

But that does not mean that the needs of the memetic organism mean little to us. We are biologically set up to adhere to at least one memetic organism; the emotional system facilitates this by making us feel "bad" when we cut in line or steal (Damasio, 1994). Each person has his or her role within the memetic organisms with which that person has chosen allegiance. Positive emotions support these roles and help people produce social coherence.

Positive feelings support the memetic organism by connecting the memetic organism's needs to the emotionally delineated, physical need-states of the person. Pride and love for the group are produced from this process, as is the need to protect.

At the point of intersection between the memetic organism "socio" and the biological "cognitive" parts of the sociocognitive system sits the individual person. For example, people need to eat the foods that their bodies are designed to eat. But, we have memetic organisms that control our food production and distribution. They are in place to feed the multitudes-which they do-but they have achieved homeostasis as a memetic organism at the expense of attention to the genetic needs of the individuals whom they "serve." The individual is helped, but is also harmed.

Understanding that all organisms strive for homeostasis is the key to comprehending the interaction between the "socio" and the "cognitive." Human bodies will adapt to poor conditions-we do all of the time-even those humans living in affluent, modern societies filled with multiple memetic organisms catering to our every need. Even though as individuals we are not living in optimal conditions and we know that we are not, we adapt so that our memetic organisms can achieve their homeostasis. The society prospers, and that keeps the individuals fed and protected.

If a situation gets too bad and enough individuals die, revolution forces adaptation in the memetic organisms so that biological homeostasis comes closer to optimum. This is why we have seatbelts in our cars, restrictions on testing drugs on human subjects, and child labor laws.

Every human's purpose is to achieve homeostasis on two fronts- within his or her own body and within the memetic organisms to which that person has an allegiance. Often, these two purposes do not resonate with each other.

We will override our biological need states with memetically transmitted, secondary emotional needs built from the control memes of our memetic organisms. We know that this does not optimize biological conditions, but the memetic organism prospers, and we are kept fed and protected.

Sorting out the dissonance between the biological and the social is the point of politics. The role of politicians is to represent the interests of the biological people while creating the control memes of a civic memetic organism. The people in legislative bodies usually work to find the best balance all around. This, though, does not always happen, as history has shown in many cases.

We use some of the historical non-optimized biological conditions as examples throughout the next few sections. They serve to illustrate the differences between a biological need and a social need and how, under some circumstances, one or both types of homeostasis can be disrupted.

THE MODERN MEMETIC ORGANISM

Memetic organisms build themselves hierarchically. They start with a community, which seems to have a maximum of about 150 people. This limit appears to be the biological limit to the number of people an individual can recognize and "know" (Dunbar 1998). Usually, these communities have a single leader who is available to everyone. Also, they are all organized around a single purpose, usually one that is very human and based on the needs of the people involved, either the need to help others, or the need to increase their own survivability.

Good examples of these types of communities are civic groups, grass roots organizations, book clubs, etc. Their purpose is to support the individuals involved on a personal level, and to fulfill their individual, human needs. Communities exist without hierarchical stratification.

The next evolutionary step of the development of a memetic organism is the simple hierarchy. In order to encompass more than 150 people, a memetic organism will stratify into a simple hierarchy of two or three levels, with the managers on the middle levels overseeing community-groupings of no more than 150 people.

When "overseeing" enters the equation, the mission of the overseers changes from that of the people whom they are overseeing. Middle management's job is to make sure that everyone in the community-group that they oversee performs its production memes. The ultimate role of the upper management is to oversee the overseers.

Modern humans make use of simple hierarchies, but these hierarchies tend not to stay simple for very long. Simple hierarchy is a stage through which all modern memetic organisms wish to grow- it is the mom and pop restaurant before they franchise, or the small software company before it is purchased by one of the giants. In these organizations, everyone from the upper management through middle management to the workers has one focus-keeping the organization alive long enough so that it can get its IPO legs and start feeding from the stock market.

A complex hierarchy has more than three levels. When a company or organization gets so big that it has many layers of management, the memes that the upper management are using are so removed from biology that the leadership no longer shares the mission of the workers. Leadership focuses on the overall health of the memetic organism, which in modern terms is its financial gains, growth, and power (Korten, 2001). These are the CEOs, the commanders, and the guiding hands that shape the path of the organization-the people whose job it is to ensure that the organization prospers. The needs of the workers are considered only insofar as they affect the welfare of the organization.

In terms of corporations, from a complex hierarchy springs the separation of the upper management and the workers. Historically, "upper management" consisted of the "aristocracy," which was the nobility-the people who through kinship own the land on which food is grown. Marx referred to those who owned the means of production in industry as the "bourgeoisie."

In modern memetic organisms, these two groups have effectively merged. They are the leaders, those whose responsibility itis to oversee the health of the organization, whether the organization be landbased (the aristocracy) or industrial (the bourgeoisie). These groups have merged into the "capitalists" or the "upper management," the group that owns large shares of the capital that sustains the memetic organism-the land on which the memetic organism lives, or the means of production that it uses to produce its wares. Upper management often own large numbers of shares of multiple corporations, tying these people to the welfare of not just one memetic organism, but an entire species of them. The work that is done to ensure the health of the corporate organization is not so different from corporation to corporation, and the upper management move around, building resources for first one corporation and then another. Upper management are, in effect, the personification of the needs of modern large and multinational memetic organisms.

Modern memetic organisms have sprouted another separation as well- the middle management-the affluent class of overseers who implement the control memes of the memetic organisms for which they work. Simply put, middle management synchronizes community-groups; they manage groups of workers and make sure that output reaches a certain level. Ultimately, they use their cognitive functions to ensure coherence internal to the memetic organism through the standardization of output. In this way, they function in much the same way as the synchronizing chemicals produced by a body's hormonal systems.

Even though the modern upper management and middle management have been philosophically labeled as "bad," they are an important part of modern memetic organisms. The upper management holds memetic organisms together by managing resources. The middle management synchronizes community-groups and provides internal coherence. The workers produce goods and services for consumption either within the memetic organism itself or for export. Without the people who fulfill these roles, humans could not function at the level of specialization that we do-and thus would not be able to support the population as we do today.

Humans process the information needed to achieve homeostasis at the level of the hierarchy that they occupy. In a body, cells work for their own homeostasis. The coherence among the cells allows for tissues and organs to develop a homeostasis for the group. Ultimately, the different groupings of cells reach a state where, as a whole, they are capable of generating and sustaining highly specialized systems. This new organism allows reaction to very fine changes in the environment that individual cells could not perceive. Without the whole, the fine level of perception would not be possible.

In a memetic organism, each level of the hierarchy also generates coherence until the people involved make up more than the sum of their individual efforts. As a whole, they form a creature that reacts to influences from beyond the biological realm of the individual. Each level is necessary for these complex memetic organisms to function-the upper management, the middle management, and the workers.

Before corporations, the complex hierarchy became fully formed with the Greeks and the Romans. For example, the Roman Senate worked more toward the health of Rome than it did toward the health of Romans. Religions also adopted complex hierarchies quickly, and the Roman Catholic Church is an excellent example of a memetic organism that took the Roman system and continued it, adapting, consuming, and growing for almost two millennia under the guidance and control of its upper management.

With the emergence of the Self, memetic organisms rearranged themselves around specialized upper managements. Religions retained the priesthood, and the kings separated off into lords and the landed upper managements of feudalism. With the increasing population and subsequent scarcity of resources, kingdoms, and later nations, grew in power as they took on the roles of regulating commerce and providing protection for a land region.

In the new millennia, a new species of complex hierarchy memetic organism has come into power-the multinational corporation. With the advanced transportation technology available today, the upper managements of corporations are no longer locked to the geographical area that produces their resources. With the stock options, they are no longer locked to one memetic organism, increasing competition for leaders that will do the best by the corporation.

This is not the first time in history that large, corporate entities have shaped the path of humanity: Virtually every colonial, imperial, and expansionist action of the past five hundred years was motivated or conducted by trade organizations or companies of some type. The slave trade, the opening of the American West, the subjugation of India by the British Empire, the robber barons of the Industrial Revolution, etc., were motivated by the building of corporate wealth.

HOW MODERN MEMETIC ORGANISMS LIVE

Memetic organisms function because of the cognition of their human constituents-thinking ensures the propagation of their memes in the same way that eating ensures the propagation of a body's genes.

For modern corporate memetic organisms, though, financing also operates to keep the organism alive. Money is to the memetic organism what oxygen is to the body-it is constantly absorbed and transported to the "cells" so that they can use it to continue producing.

In the modern society, the stock market is the biggest pool of money available to a corporate memetic organism. A corporation may become flush with cash after issuing stocks, become quite "happy," and have a period of high productivity. During that time, it may advertise-broadcast externally oriented control memes designed to control the production of consumption within the company's customer base. Consumers are essentially another work force-their production memes are how to use the product instead of how to produce it.4 Marketing increases the company's profits, which encourages higher prices for its stock, bringing more money into the company.

The purpose of the upper management of the company is to ensure increasing financing to facilitate the continued growth of the memetic organism. Making cuts to the work force may satisfy stockholders who react by increasing the selling price of stocks. This does not benefit the workers, but it does benefit the corporation, and allows it to reach a more comfortable homeostasis.

More money allows the purchasing of more advertising airtime, increasing consumer exposure to the company's marketing control memes. The more consumers think about a product, the more likely they will recognize it when shopping and feel familiar with it, increasing sales. More sales mean more work, increasing pay to the existing work force or more jobs.

The workers may benefit from the increase in productivity. Benefit depends on the scarcity of the skills the workers have to offer-workers with scarce skills can demand more for their work in terms of money or fringe benefits. Workers without skills must compete with a multitude of other unskilled labor and have no leverage to increase their biological homeostasis.

Within the multinational corporation, the human "cells" labor at their individual roles, contributing cognitive "food" the memetic organism. Generally, they are not aware of the overall growth and effect of the memetic organism as a whole. Rarely do the sales people in Michigan have any idea about the labor put into the product they are selling by the semi-skilled individuals in China.

Complex hierarchies will organize themselves into tiered community-groups with the workers at one plant becoming a group, and the workers at another plant becoming another group. The middle managers who manage these groups will interact with each other and form their own community The upper management will do so as well.

This is the social stratification of which modern humans are all very aware. It is the groups that form at parties, where the "successful" people all group together. It is the separate office parties, and the differences in conversations between boss-and- worker and worker-and-worker. On a large scale, it is social class; on a small scale, it is position in the organizational chart.

Humans within these community-groups clustered in complex memetic organisms use the rules of the group when making choices. The rules of the corporation are consistent from one tier to the next, but each community-group within the memetic organism operates differently, depending on what their roles are. In this way, the Chinese workers are not part of the community of the sales staff in Michigan, and are not considered when making decisions, even though they are part of the same memetic organism.

Nor do members of community-groups know how a large multinational corporation pits the nations in which it has a foothold against one another. The fighting between nations represents a flipping of power- nations once controlled the scarce resources, the most important of which was human labor. The physical work of humans mined the ores, wove the fabrics, and made the products for export. Now, there are over six billion humans on this planet, many of whom are unskilled or semiskilled, and all in need of something to do. If one nation won't cooperate, the corporation will pack up its production and move to another that will, and take its jobs with it.

The multinationals have gained so much power that NAFTA Rule 11 allows the World Trade Organization to financially penalize a nation that limits the profits of a multinational. In effect, the civic memetic organisms are no longer regulating the corporate memetic organisms (Citizen.org, 2003).

The representatives within the civic memetic organisms are supposed to be the people whose role it is to consider both sides of the homeostasis issue. They stri\ve to create balance between the biological needs of the people and the social needs of the memetic organism. When civic memetic organisms lose the power to enforce that balance, the corporate memetic organisms are free to throw homeostasis to their favor.

The abundance of humans has made unskilled human labor cheap. Also at the same time, the technological products of skilled labor have become a scarce resource. The "important" humans no longer labor in physical production; instead, they labor in meme production, and in the case of the middle management, meme "wrangling" in the form of control meme implementation. Humans now mine, refine, and manufacture knowledge as if it were a tangible commodity. The memetic organisms that control such work control the distribution of memes.

FINDING BIOLOGICAL HOMEOSTASIS WITHIN A COMPLEX HIERARCHY

Having access to haw to build the devices and machines that are the basis of modern life is very important to the general health and well being of a nation's biological population. The universities and other research institutions that create that knowledge produce the production memes needed to support a growing population. Such institutions need financial support, and poor nations without an influx of cash cannot build the resources they need.

Cash comes into a nation through the upper managements. Workers do not have enough extra cash to fund the founding of the university; this is the role of the rich leaders who guide the memetic organisms. Unfortunately for poor nations, the upper managements of multinational corporations are not local; instead, they belong to another civic memetic organism.5 Most of the money returns to the homes of the corporate leaders, where these individuals do the majority of their charitable work. Without local corporate leaders, the poor nations are unable to build up their knowledge infrastructure.

History has given us excellent examples of the upper management funding the creation of knowledge-the Roman Catholic Church was for more than a millennia the only source of research and development in Europe. The robber barons of the Industrial Revolution founded several Universities and arts institutions, including Carnegie- Melon and Rockefeller Center. Modern corporate leaders are doing the same thing. For example, Bill Gates is funding extensive education efforts and Ted Turner is funding extensive environmental efforts.6

In effect, the scarce resources of the new millennium are money and technology. By dangling jobs in front of poor nations, multinationals are making them compete for what is scarce. This gives the multinationals the power, and it makes nations more agreeable to allowing poor working conditions for their populations, and for allowing the corporation to overrun the natural resources of the nation.

RESPONDING TO THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

Homeostasis is about balance. Biological balance is not that difficult for humans to work toward-we can perceive when we are out of balance, and when those around us in our community-groups are also out of balance. We physically sense biological changes.

But memetic organisms operate in a different realm. Their context is beyond the physical, biological world of the individual human. When a memetic organism generates control memes for the individuals within it, those memes are responses to the social context, and not the biological context. Those responses are made physical through the secondary tagging within emotional system.

The physical reaction generated by the emotional system brings social memes into the physical. In essence, it translates the memetic replicator into a new context to which the human can respond with new memes. The problem with this is that memes are not context; a set of rules for responding to a situation is not the whole picture. It is not a snapshot of the environment, only a possible response to what is happening.

A new context built from a memetic map is derivative-it is a second-generation graphing of the big social context compiled by mapping human response and movement. Though this kind of information is very useful and has served humanity well for the past 55,000 years, it is not the social context. We do not-and biologically cannot-see the context of the memetic organism. At least not with the current set of tools humanity possesses.

What can we do? We can use the tools we have-production and control memes, consciousness, etc.-to develop new tools that will help solve the problems we face now.

FREE WILL

Making "choices" is the work of the Self, and a well-functioning Self will help a human sort and prioritize in the most advantageous manner. But having "free will" suggests that a human should be capable of finding the correct action under any circumstance. This assumes, though, that our derivative context is correct, and that the correct memetic response for the presented context is available for implementation.

This also assumes that individual humans control all that we create and that we are in command in all situations. It also suggests that when institutions and organizations get out of control, all we have to do is get our collective act together and make the correct choices. But, unfortunately, it's not that simple.

What is out of control? How do we know it is out of control? We cannot see the memetic organism's context. Is the situation such that our biological homeostasis is out of balance? Is our community- group out of balance? Do we think that the balance has been tipped because we are being fed control memes from another, competing memetic organism?

What does this mean in terms of free will? Within a memetic organism, cognition is the expression of already learned memetic replicators in response to a charted context. Those learned memes come from the memetic organisms in which we live, and they outline what we produce and control how and when we do the production.

This is not a system that supports the traditional definition of free will. We cannot truly "walk away"; our choices are limited by the memes we know, which are in turn curtailed and controlled by the memetic organisms in which we live and to which we have allegiances. Choosing consists of individualized sorting and prioritizing within a complex system.

Choices are made between learned rules of behavior and the reasons offered to authorize those rules. For example, people queue in line because it is a cultural rule; it protects the social order by minimizing potential harm to the individual and maximizing equitable distribution of the queued-for resource. Rule and reason work in advertising as well: People buy all sorts of products for the reasons given in the ads they see.

It is these individualized acts of sorting that are the nucleus of free will. Your Self is not your neighbor's Self, and if you have a set of memes that encourages you to explore and to expand your choices, you can and will exercise your free will at an enhanced level.

Free will has its advantages to the memetic organisms in that it facilitates needed mutations in new contexts, but as a whole the choices humans make are within a narrow band of tolerance. For the memetic organism, cognition brings people together, drives them to produce, and provides a means to keep the group coherent. People act in the service of the memetic organism to support it as a whole, and at times will sacrifice their lives in order to protect the group. From the memetic organism point of view, this is fine; humans are an abundant resource and a percentage of them are always disposable.

The system itself is not broken; it just needs an upgrade. Humans can generate that upgrade by understanding what it means to be part of the sociocognitive system, and then using cognition, consciousness, and free will to create new tools to deal with current problems of finding balance between the biological and the social.

HOW THE SELF WORKS TOWARD HOMEOSTASIS

Today, in the modern world epitomized by America, the Self must do a lot of allegiance prioritizing. We now must contend with many memetic organisms ranging from civic organizations to the corporate memetic organisms that compete for our consumer dollars. Ubiquitous and cheap media gives them all easy access to each biological human's consciousness.

For example, why do modern Americans eat less than an optimal diet? Because it supports many memetic organisms to do so, including agribusiness corporations; fast food franchise chains; the many corporate and civil memetic organisms that demand time that must be subtracted from somewhere, often meals; and to some extent the health and medical professions. We've adjusted how we satisfy a basic biological need so in the implementation of meeting that need, we also satisfy the needs of multiple memetic organisms.

All of the memetic organisms listed above also supply the livelihoods for many individual humans. They feed and protect their members, and in exchange the humans involved adjust their biological homeostasis to protect the memetic organisms. This is the true nature of reciprocal altruism-we tithe to our memetic organisms so that they will protect us. It is the memetic organisms that redistribute resources to best support themselves by supporting the member humans.

In our quest for optimal biological homeostasis, we are genetically predisposed to seek the protection of the group. The group redistributes, and we are fed and protected. It works well, except when we tithe to more groups than our biology can support, and when the groups get so disconnected from the people who constitute them that humans become only fodder.

Tithing to too many groups can overwhelm a Self. If the Self is too closed, then the individual turns to fundamentalism. If the Self is too open, then the individual is lost in a sea of memetic organism need states.

When the memetic organisms become so large that they reach the level of a complex hierarchy, the lead\ership manages more for the benefit of the memetic organism than for the benefit of the people involved.

Combined, these two problems-too many memetic organisms and memetic organisms too disconnected from the biological-have formed a new social context, and humans need new memes to deal with it. Now is the time of evolution, and a time for free will to do what it can.

We moved into a new social crisis. The first step to dealing with this crisis is to understand how and why we think the way we do. Understanding that there is an engine in the car takes away the mystery of fast transportation and allows the technically minded to tinker and improve the machine. Understanding how the sociocognitive system works takes away much of the mystery of human interaction and allows those who are bright and imaginative to create new and real tools for responding to the current social context.

Beyond world politics there are ways to use the information on how the sociocognitive system works in an individual, day-to-day life. All that is needed is the ability to identify both need states satisfied by the implementation of a meme-the biological need state within the person, and the memetic organism need state within the group.

For example, is a memetic organism manipulating your biological need to horde in order to get you to buy something you really don't need? Is it reducing prices in one market by engaging in the degradation of another? Is the product you are buying really worth that degradation, or do you only think it is because your head is full of control memes manipulating your hording instinct?

Plus, how do you weigh "worth it" and which memetic organism's rule-set do you use to make that determination? Are you using advertising? The church? The criminal justice system? Is there a rule-set for determining "worth it" in the multi-national, corporate, extremely complex hierarchies of the modern world? If one does not exist, then one can be evolved by using consciousness.

As a species, we very much need to evolve a new rule-set for weighing the needs of the biological and the needs of the social. We can decree "be excellent to each other," but what does that mean? Racism and sexism are no longer behaviors authorized by the leaderships of some powerful civic and religious memetic organisms, but that still leaves many possible abuses by the powerful of the not-so-powerful.

These abuses are very much part of our genetic heritage as primates. Our memetic organisms exploit that heritage to help facilitate the hierarchical structuring of the upper management and the workers. The less the upper management cares about the workers, the more distant they are from the biological needs of the human individual. The farther from the biological the thinking, the deeper it is into the context of the memetic organism, and the more focused the leadership is on the welfare of the organization.

This produces a happy homeostasis for the memetic organism, but most definitely not a balance between the individual and the group. And balance is what is needed-balance in the individual, personal life where a person can see the control memes that are cluttering his or her Self and consciously clean house. Balance in the corporate life where the leadership of the organization respects the biological needs of themselves, their workers, and their customers. And balance in the ecosystem too, as humans adjust to a crowded world.

Memetic organisms do respond to changes in context, but these changes only occur when the humans involved incorporate new memes into their cognitive processing. It happened when humans created memetic organisms, and it happened again when we created logic. On a smaller scale, it has happened every time a revolution swept away an old civic memetic organism and replaced it with a new one. Every change, too, has forced a move toward a better biological homeostasis for the humans involved. The memetic organisms didn't like it, but they adapted, and ultimately humans thrived.

The key is consciousness-a meme cannot evolve if it is not thought about. Considering both the biological and the social need states before implementing a meme takes consciousness. Creating new and novel ways to achieve biological, social, and ecosystem homeostasis will also take consciousness-a lot of it too, from many different people in many different areas of life.

What we propose in this article and in our two books Who Are We Now? The Evolution of the Sociocognitive System and Mind Shapes: Understanding the Differences in Thinking and Communication is a view of the entire sociocognitive system in hopes of giving a unified theory of human interaction.

The biology of cellular collectives-i.e., genetic organisms, is very analogous to the ecology of human collectives, i.e., cultures, societies, formal institutions, etc.

A memetic organism can be as small as a family or as large as a multinational corporation. It can be a town, church, book club, school or country.

The social sciences hinge on studying and understanding memetic organisms. But the underlying assumption is that the symbolic abilities of individual humans are the core of our survival.

The human brain is the hardware on which our replicator scripts run. The brain reads the scripts and produces the neurological signals that tell the body how to express a response.

A memetic sequence is not genetically hard-coded into the brain when an individual is conceived. Instead, it is built by the brain as the individual gains experience throughout life.

The modern world is full of control memes, and it is the control memes that matter the most. Control memes are the core of a memetic organism.

Every human's purpose is to achieve homeostasis on two fronts- within his or her own body and within the memetic organisms to which that person has an allegiance.

When a company or organization gets so big that its has many layers of management, the memes that the upper management are using are so removed from biology that the leadership no longer shares the mission of the workers.

In the new millennia, a new species of complex hierarchy memetic organism has come into power-the multinational corporation.

The multinationals have gained so much power that NAFTA Rule 11 allows the WTO to financially penalize a nation that limits the profits of a multinational. The civic memetic organisms are no longer regulating the corporate memetic organisms.

These two problems-too many memetic organisms and memetic organisms too disconnected from the biological-have formed a new social context, and humans need new memes to deal with it.

Notes

1. Some birds, and maybe even octopuses, may be using a rudimentary form of memetic processing. Studies have not been done to specifically examine this possibility, though anecdotal accounts suggest it is likely.

2. The best studied area of the left cortex that processes and retains sequences is Wernicke's Area, which is involved in language.

3. Refinements in genetic (and memetic) responses occur via natural selection.

4. This is the demand side of basic economics.

5. From http://www.nafta-scc-alena.org/cnglish/nafta/chap- 111.htm #A1101: Article 1102: National Treatment, point 4 of NAFTA states that: "For greater certainty, no Party may: (a) impose on an investor of another Party a requirement that a minimum level of equity in an enterprise in the territory of the Party be held by its nationals, other than nominal qualifying shares for directors or incorporators of corporations; or (b) require an investor of another Party, by reason of its nationality, to sell or otherwise dispose of an investment in the territory of the Party." Also, Article 1107: Senior Management and Boards of Directors states that:

1. No Party may require that an enterprise of that Party that is an investment of an investor of another Party appoint to senior management positions individuals of any particular nationality.

2. A Party may require that a majority of the board of directors, or any committee thereof, of an enterprise of that Party that is an investment of an investor of another Party, be of a particular nationality, or resident in the territory of the Party, provided that the requirement does not materially impair the ability of the investor to exercise control over its investment."

6. Both The Gates Foundation and Ted Turner's environmental efforts are engaged in global endeavors. Both, though, are focused on supporting existing humanitarian efforts and not building infrastructure.

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Alan R. Kahn, M.D. and Kris Austen Radcliffe

Human Dimensions, Inc.

1414 West 24th Street

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55405

USA

Dr. Alan R. Kahn is a physician and engineer who has dedicated the last 50 years to applying biomedical engineering to clinical uses. In addition to leadership in industrial positions, including serving as Senior Vice-President of Medtronic, Dr. Kahn has personally generated a variety of inventions, patents, and scientific publications. During the past 20 years, Dr. Kahn turned his attention to studies of the development of cognition, leading to an unusual perspective on our relationship with the social institutions in which we participate.

Kris Austen Radcliffe is the co-author with Dr. Kahn of two books about human cognition. She holds an interdisciplinary degree from the University of Minnesota and has worked on a broad range of information and communication issues, including work as an Associate Editor for the Enterprise Systems Project and The Office of Information Technology at the University of Minnesota.

Copyright Professor of World Peace Academy Mar 2004

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