I was reading some topics in sociobiology and evolution and came across
the latest thing called "memetics". It inspired this poem. While
mimetics is a nice characterization of ideological and religious
brainwa****ng, it reduces human beings to robots (or "membots")
transmitting cultural information. For more on mimetics, read the note
below.
ON CULTURAL MEMETICS
All bull**** travels, so it seems,
In basic units known as "memes"*.
While poets think that they create
An individual world template,
But, in reality, what they do
Is pass their viruses to you.
And being its host, you're blind
To the infection of your mind,
As you just replicate each day
Some tired cultural clich=E9
Of pompous meme-enamored fools,
Who think they're brilliant and cool.
But bull****'s bull**** in the end,
That changes with each fad and trend,
Through meme mutation it's unseen
By mind's emerging meta-memes,
Which knows it can't fight with it--
For there is no vaccime for this ****.
You now feel trapped in a rubber room,
Where memes float by and go boom
Within the cells of tortured brain,
Drunk with conceptual champagne--
Like Buddha going through Hell,
That salivates to Pavlov's bell.
Where is my brain? Where are my shoes?
Where is the world I loved and knew?
Only these toxins of the mind?
Have I gone mad? Have I gone blind?
Have I forgotten what it means
To be a man with will and dreams?
And I walk out of the cave,
This land of freaks, this home of knaves,
This desert of conceptual hell,
Where love is gone and bull**** sells,
Yes I walk out once again--
Not as a membot, but a man.
September 5, 2006
--Alexander Shaumyan
http://www.shaumyan.com
NOTE: The term "meme" (rhymes with dream), coined in 1976 by Richard
Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information that can be
transmitted from one mind to another. Dawkins said, Examples of memes
are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fa****ons, ways of making pots or of
building arches. A meme propagates itself as a unit of cultural
evolution analogous in many ways to the gene (the unit of genetic
information). Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated
cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or
meme-complexes. The idea of memes has proved a successful meme in its
own right, achieving a degree of penetration into popular culture rare
for a scientific theory.
Some proponents of memes suggest that memes evolve via natural
selection--in a way very similar to Charles Darwin's ideas concerning
biological evolution--on the premise that variation, mutation,
competition, and "inheritance" influence their replicative success. For
example, while one idea may become extinct, other ideas will survive,
spread and mutate--for better or for worse--through modification.
Some meme-theorists contend that memes most beneficial to their hosts
will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes which replicate the
most effectively spread best; which allows for the possibility that
successful memes might prove detrimental to their hosts. --From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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