From Mary Midgley
Memes are not needed and, since they are unreal, they cannot be useful in
explanation. To understand what influences affect people we need to grasp their
actual needs and motives. This is often hard, but imaginary quasi-viruses are
merely a distraction from attempting it.
Morally, Susan Blackmore
(“Meme, Myself, I”, 13 March, p 40)
supports memification by appealing to the Humean and Buddhist doctrine that the self is a
series of shifting experiences rather than a solid substance. But this reputable
view cannot possibly be combined with treating that self as a set of solid,
substantial memes or as a product of such memes.
Substances of this kind are quite foreign to Humean and Buddhist thought,
even more so than they are to common sense. And, morally speaking, the only
possible effect of taking these sinister entities seriously would surely be a
helpless fatalism.
marymidgley@coll1a. demon.co.uk
