Love is a meme. The Beatles made great music is a meme. Smart clothes is a meme.
Smart is a meme. Clothes is a meme. Depression, as a description of a weather system,
is a meme. Weather system is a meme. Weather is a meme. System is a meme. Depression,
as a description of a mental state, is a meme. Mental is a meme. State is a meme.
Schema is a meme. Meme is a meme.
And, if you take this in and believe it, then meme is one of your schemas! (The plural
of schema is sometimes referenced as schemata.)
Schemas and memes are arguably two
reflectors of the same concept - ideas! (from the instinctive and unspoken structural
to the metaphysical abstract) - in different contexts. The theories around both terms
emphasise the enormous impact of ideas upon the human psyche.
A schema can be defined as any cognitive structure or encoded packet of infomation
in the mind-brain. A meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice
or idea, that is contained in a medium of communication - eg: a book - or is transmitted
verbally or by repeated action (behaviour) from one mind to another.
Unfortunately, despite their importance to understanding how humans make sense of
and interact with the world, there is a lot of confusion about 'memes' and 'schemas'.
Some of this has been created by the *experts* themselves! More often than not schema
is seen as internal. Yet Hiroko Nishida (1999), for example, has talked about 'cultural
schemas' - in other words, memes. Susan Blackmore (1999), arguably the world's leading
proponent of Memetics (the study of how memes are transmitted between people as virus-type
'infections' of the mind), has argued that memes are internalised in the brain as
neurobiological structures - in other words, they become schemas.
So are the terms interchangable? The answer is: not entirely. There are situations
where schemas exist internally in someone's thoughts and and are never transmitted
out (via speech or behaviours such as writing) to become external memes; and there
are containers for memes independent of the human brain - eg: unread books.
How one individual's schemas become memes, infect others and change the schematic
structures in the recipients' mind-brains is a key component in understanding how
people persuade each other and how both Informational and Normative Social Influence
are created.
Chris Cowan & Natasha Todorovic (http://www.spiraldynamics.org/faq_memetics.htm#02,
2006) put it succinctly when they talk about “memes playing out as schema - actions,
beliefs, behaviours, mental scripts and anchors for perceptions”.
The
criticality of schemas
Immanel Kant, the great 18th Century German philosopher, is
usually considered to be the first to use 'schema' in the sense it is used here.
Kant argued that schemas interdigitate between properties of the mind (the a priori
categories) and raw sensory data (of a posteriori experience). "This representation
of a universal procedure of the imagination in providing an image for a concept,
I entitle the schema of the concept." (1781)
Leading early 20th Century British neurologists William Halse Rivers & Sir Henry
Head (1908) established structural biological bases for schemas in the brain; and
Jean Paiget, the pioneering child developmentalist, (with Valentine Châtenay, 1923)
conceived the idea of a biological schema developing through interaction with the
external environment. The concept of the schema in contemporary Cognitive science
is perhaps most directly traceable to the work of British Cognitive psychologist
Sir Fredrick Bartlett (1932). Bartlett, a onetime student of Head, was interested
in memory, and in particular in the notion that the context of an experience had
crucial effects on what was retained and how well this was recalled. From his famous
'War of the Ghosts' experiments, Bartlett saw a schema as a component of memory which
is formed from encounters with the environment, and which organizes information in
specific ways.
From Bartlett's work, schema theory has become keystone in explaining how we represent
literally everything to ourselves - at both conscious and unconscious levels. The
subsequent work of Aaron Beck has become particularly important in demonstrating
how maladaptive schemas - those which don't represent reality and can lead us to
try to function off distorted views of ourselves and others - can result in personality
disorders, most especially Depression. (For further information on this line of thinking,
see 'Can vMEMES cause Clinical Depresson?'
Schemas are incredibly powerful in influencing what we think, how we feel and what
we do.
The
spread of memes
In contrast to the relatively-long history of the 'schema', the 'meme'
was only invented in 1976 for Richard Dawkins' book, 'The Selfish Gene'. However,
the study of the meanings used in communication in a culture has been at the heart
of Symbolic Interactionism since its foundings in the 1920s.
Dawkins was postulating the idea of a second replicator - ideas which beget ideas
- following the first replicator of Evolutionary Theory: genes. (Hence, memes rhyming
with genes.) From Dawkins' ideas came the neo-science of Memetics.
Others - not least Susan Blackmore! - have taken Dawkins' ideas much further, especially
in terms of developing Evolutionary Psychology.
One of the key ideas Blackmore has put forward, to reduce it to basics, is that the
infection (input) of ever more complex ideas and the need to digest and work with
such ideas has, over many millennia of time, driven the evolution of the human brain.
In other words, bigger ideas require bigger brains. This ties in with but extends
exponentially Tim Crow's (2000) theory that the acquisition of language was the real
driver in the development of brain size and human intelligence.
When Don Beck & Chris Cowan (1996) developed Spiral Dynamics from the work of Clare
W Graves, they used the term 'vMEMES' for the distinctive and systematic core ways
of thinking Graves had identified. They saw vMEMES (or Value Memes) as the organisers
or attractors of memes. So, for example, the PURPLE vMEME will relate to ideas about
safety and belonging, RED will favour concepts about power and self-expression...and
so on.
This reflected Graves' original thinking, though he used themas for the systems he
identified and schemas for the cognitive concepts which related to each thema.
To avoid confusion, it is proposed in Integrated SocioPsychology that the external
idea - how ever contained and transmitted - is considered to be the meme and that
the idea embedded biologically inside a person is the schema.
The
Selectivity of vMEMES
The schematic below shows how the schemas of others infect us
as memes through speech and behaviour. So, for example, someone from their own schema
can speak the meme: "The weather is depressing." If that meme infects another mind-brain,
it can be internalised as the schema: "I find the weather depressing."
So how is it that some memes replicate better than others and some memes even 'die'?
Songs that get heard but not many sing. Or books that get partially read and are
then abandoned.
Graves (1971) gave us some of the answer to this when he argued that each thema related
to preferred schemas. Don Beck & Chris Cowan made this more explicit by renaming
themas 'vMEMES' and linking the Gravesian systems to Memetics and the replication
of memes.
Thus, it is possible to understand why the memes of a philosophical and reflective
film like 'Ghandi' would appeal to people with high GREEN in their thinking but wouldn't
have the excitement, action and power displays to sustain RED's interest . Similarly,
the wanton slaughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger's enemies in his early movies would
delight RED; but GREEN would find the contempt for human life displayed offensive.
Memeplexes
Susan
Blackmore points out that the more memes are clustered and linked together to form
a bigger and more complex structure of ideas - a memeplex - the more likely they
are to replicate. For example, the memes of It's wrong to kill, You musn't steal,
Sex with children is wrong, etc, link together to form the memeplex of Morality.
The memeplexes of Morality, Spirituality, Rituals, etc, can link together to form
the even greater memeplex of religion. In this respect, the meme-memeplex hierarchical
structure is an example of the holon-holarchy concept first identified by Arthur
Koestler (1967) and taken over by Ken Wilber (1983). (According to Koestler, a holon
is something which is both complete in itself and a part of something else.)
Obviously, certain memeplex structures fit much more with certain vMEMES than others.
For example, organised religions such as the Roman Catholic Church or Sunni Islam
are driven for the most part by BLUE. The memes which comprise the memeplex of Capitalism
are fostered mostly via the ORANGE vMEME.
So when we are faced with conflicts of ideas, philosophies, religions, etc, in order
to understand what is going on, we need to analyse them in terms of memeplexes and
the structure of those memeplexes - the lesser memeplexes within the greater memeplexes
and the base level memes underpinning the whole structure. We also need to identify
which vMEMES are driving the memeplexes.
For example, someone wanting to follow the correct memeplex procedure for getting
seated and served in a high-class restaurant is likely to have BLUE strong in their
vMEME stack at that point in time. In the case of a visitor from a different country
having dinner at your house for the first time, their PURPLE is likely to be trying
to ascertain your meal-time customs so the visitor will find acceptance.
The ultimate memeplex, according to Blackmore, is 'I', the cognitive awareness of
self - who I am, how I think, what I feel, what I believe...why I am the way I am.
Effectively the key confluence of schemas gives individuals their sense of identity
or identities, Blackmore labels this the ‘selfplex’.
Memes
can move vMEMES
vMEMES ebb and flow up and down the Spiral according to the Life Conditions
people experience in their different Environments.
Effectively this means the memes with which they have to deal. Incoming memes either
fit with our vMEME stack and the schemas we operate with - assimilation, according
to Jean Piaget (1937) - or are ignored - even to the point of failing to impinge
upon even short-term memory. However, what happens if a meme repeatedly challenges
us by preventing us from having some element of fulfillment or even by threatening
us?
In accordance with Albert Bandura's (1977) concept of Reciprocal Determinism - ie:
we operate on the Environment and the Environment operates on us - we must change
if we are to deal with the challenging meme(s) which can cause real discord in our
schemas. Stress!
The process of an incoming meme challenging a schema to the point where the schema
has to be amended, Piaget & Inhelder called accommodation.
If the accommodation takes place within the existing vMEME stack pattern, then this
is what is termed 1st Order Change. However, if the accommodation requires a different
vMEME stack pattern - perhaps including the emergence of a new vMEME - then this
is called 2nd Order Change. So, in a person with full capacities, they may go up
or down the Spiral to meet their changed Life Conditions, if necessary.
What happens when someone accesses a new vMEME for the first time? Susan Blackmore
has proposed that successfully-replicating memes can cause brain development. This
would mean that exposure to challenging memes in the right circumstances could activate
the neural circuitry for the new vMEME to work.
Click here to learn about Integrated SocioPsychology ‘open’ workshop programmes which
incorporate schemas and memes as key concepts.
Schemas/Memes Links
