Memes Memes are habits, skills, behaviours, or stories that are copied from person to person by imitation. Like genes, memes compete to be copied, but instead of being chemicals locked inside cells, they are information that jumps from brain to brain, or from brains to computers, books, and works of art. The winning memes spread across the world, shaping our minds and cultures as they go. Memes club together to make vast memeplexes. Many of these enhance our lives, such as financial systems, scientific theories, legal systems, and sports and the arts. But others are more like infections or parasites that jump from host to host, such as quack remedies, cults, chain letters, and computer viruses. Their basic structure is an instruction to ‘copy me’ backed up with threats and promises. Many religions use just this structure, which is why Richard Dawkins calls them ‘viruses of the mind’. Roman Catholics are urged to pass on the memes of their early indoctrination, especially to their own children. Praying, saying grace at meals, singing hymns, going to church, and contributing to impressive buildings all serve the interests of these memes, and are encouraged with untestable threats of everlasting hell and promises of heaven. Similarly, Islamic law protects its memes by prescribing severe punishments for those who break the faith. Belief without evidence is admired and doubt discouraged. A religion’s memes can therefore be successfully replicated whether or not the central beliefs are true or valuable in any way. At the extreme we find memes that kill 127 The evolution of consciousness The future of consciousness The confusion we have reached is deep and serious, and I suspect it reveals fundamental flaws in the way we normally think about consciousness. Perhaps we need to throw out the most basic assumptions and start all over again. There are two really fundamental assumptions that almost everyone makes. The first is that experiences happen to someone; that there cannot be experiences without an experiencer. This need not imply a fixed or unchanging self, but it does imply that the ‘you’ who is now conscious of reading this book is the same one who went to bed last night and woke up this morning. This has to be thrown out. their carriers, as in martyrs who die for their faith, or that divert people’s energy away from bringing up children in favour of spreading the memes, as in celibate priests. Traditional religions have largely survived by vertical transmission (parent to child). Memetic theory should allow us to predict how they will cope with increasingly fast horizontal transmission, and also which newly emerging religions and cults are likely to survive. The self could also be a memeplex; a group of memes that thrive together and is strengthened every time the word ‘I’ is used. Phrases such as ‘I want . . . ’, ‘I believe . . . ’, and ‘I know . . . ’ all fuel the false idea of a persistent inner self who has conscious experiences. Really there are just words being copied, and memes competing with each other to make us who we are – deluded meme machines.