>Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways
of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves
in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so
memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain
to brain via a process which, in the broad sense can be called imitation.
If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to
his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures.
If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading
from brain to brain. … memes should be regarded as living structures,
not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme
in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle
for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize
the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking—
the meme for, say, “belief in life after death” is actually realized
physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of
individual men the world over.
I guess so.
