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One of the criticisms being leveled at the budding science of memetics is a valid one: what is it good for? Can memetics explain historical facts any better than existing theories? Can it make better predictions? If not, it can hardly be called a science, let alone a paradigm shift in understanding culture. To the rescue comes philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, deliverer of the first Charles Simonyi Lecture at Oxford last week. What does memetics explain that we otherwise have no clue about?

Music.

Traditional evolutionary theory -- not taking memes into account -- boils down to the idea that in the end, everything is about improving an organism's chances for reproducing its genes. While there has been ample speculation as to the biological function of music, most people thinking along traditional lines of evolutionary theory have concluded that it's at best some kind of not-yet-understood social-group bonding mechanism and at worst a mistake that hasn't been caught yet by Mother Nature. Given enough time, they say, genes for liking music will be out-competed by genes for something more productively related to reproduction.

Dennett proposes that music has less to do with genes, and more to do with much-quicker-evolving memes. Memes may actually be directing the evolution of genes to suit themselves much the way we breed dogs so they look and behave the way we fancy them. When one looks at the sex lives of popular musicians, that's not so far-fetched a thought, is it? Why is it that rock stars have so many adoring admirers? What possible genetic function could it serve to want to mate with a singer?

Dennett weaves a tale of how it might have happened, beginning with caveman Og pounding with a stick on a log. Some of the rhythms he pounds, for whatever reason, are more catchy than others. The ones that are catchy get picked up by other cavemen. These rhythms are mental information patterns: early memes.

Now this pounding evolves for awhile, and it turns out that some of the rhythms that get pounded out are more pleasing than others, and crowds tend to gather around when someone pounds them out. Since the crowds gather around, the meme spreads faster. As a byproduct of this, the best rhythm-pounders gain in social status and therefore get more chance to spread those genes that give them the knack for rhythm.

Eventually, pounding gives way to more complex music, and all the while the better musicians attract more attention, spread the memes better, and as a byproduct get more mating opportunities. It's all driven by the memes, which evolve so much faster than genes that unless the direction the memes take is so toxic to the genes that we find ourselves wiped out -- by global nuclear war, for example -- the genes can never catch up.

So by the time we reach 1999, our genes have evolved a bit, perhaps, over thousands of years, to make us enjoy music more. But look at how music has evolved in only the last thousand years! We've gone from Gregorian chants to Bach to Tchaikovsky to Celene Dion! (OK, it's not always an improvement.) But the point is that the music evolves to push our buttons -- to draw our attention and compete with everything else out there that wants our attention too.

Does this mean it's bad to listen to music? Of course not. As with everything, the key is consciousness. Are you spending your time on what's most important to you or on what's unconsciously demanding your precious time? Like a pet dog, the memes in your life can be a source of delight and can be kept on a leash.

The question is, who's pulling the leash: you or your memes?

[Daniel Dennett's latest book, Brainchildren, is now available through Amazon.com by pointing your web browser to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262540908/memecentral ]




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 :={outKasted}      13.10.2008 - 00:46:02 , level: 1, UP   NEW
• Fab four 'created passive teenage consumers'
• Academic prefers mods and folk revivalist

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday October 9 2008

John Lennon controversially declared they were bigger than Jesus, and the levels of fan hysteria and devotion they engendered made them synonymous with the youth culture of the swinging 60s. But a Cambridge University historian today argues that the Beatles were not heroes of the counter-culture but capitalists who cynically exploited youth culture for commercial gain. David Fowler claims: "They did about as much to represent the interests of the nation's young people as the Spice Girls did in the 1990s."

Fowler claims that many commentators during the 1960s saw youth culture as being all about the Beatles. But he says that just because they were fantastically popular - maybe bigger than Jesus, as John Lennon said in 1966 - it did not make them leaders of their generation.

Instead Fowler identifies a dreamy, folk-dancing rural revivalist Rolf Gardiner, the father of conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, as a true youth culture pioneer of 20th century Britain.

Fowler, himself a student in Manchester during its heady 1980s Hacienda days, makes his claims in a study published today called Youth Culture in Modern Britain.

He believes that much that has been written about the Beatles, that they were at the forefront of a cultural movement of the young, for example, is untrue. "They were young capitalists who, far from developing a youth culture, were exploiting youth culture by promoting fan worship, mindless screaming and nothing more than a passive teenage consumer."

Fowler points out the Beatles were appearing on TV shows such as the Morecambe and Wise show in 1963: "In effect, they were family entertainment, rather than at the cutting edge of youth culture."

As well as debunking what he sees as myths about the Beatles, Fowler also examines the mods, a movement which began in north London suburbs such as Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington and over three years (1964-67) extended across Britain, although northern mods apparently wore their hair longer so as not to look like the southern mods appearing on Ready Steady Go! every week.

Fowler argues that "the mods were a more important cultural phenomenon than the Beatles because they generated the first geographically mobile, national youth movement that empowered thousands of youths and young females".

Bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Fowler argues, were just not interested in acting as mouthpieces for young people.

Indeed, Mick Jagger said as much in a TV interview with William Rees-Mogg. They were interested in selling records.

"The Beatles did not generate a youth culture at all; merely a youth audience of passive teenage (mainly female) fans who became superfluous when the group stopped touring Britain in 1965."

A large chunk of the book is devoted to Gardiner, who Fowler maintains was a true youth culture hero.

While at Cambridge in the 1920s Gardiner formulated ideas for a "cult of youth" where young people could express themselves more freely and challenge the opinions of their elders.

He was fascinated by the Jugendkultur growing in Weimar Germany - with its rigorous youth hostelling, hiking and naked javelin throwing - and tried to build bridges with German youths by taking his troupe of young English folk dancers there for a tour of cathedral cities.

At Cambridge Gardiner was not averse to skinny dipping in the river Cam and was up at 6.30am to do his exercises in the nude.

The DH Lawrence-loving intellectual was trying to mix high culture with peasant culture and also took his dancers completely out of their normal comfort zones into English mining communities.

"He took these very genteel students to places like North Skelton in North Yorkshire and Durham and the local civic figures were transfixed by him. He was trying to develop a youth culture and youth communities across the social classes," said Fowler.

Gardiner made many friends and miners were among the guests at his posh society wedding.

However, his reputation has been somewhat tarnished over the years by claims that he was a Nazi sympathiser.

Fowler disagrees: "He has been written off as a Nazi sympathiser but that is very, very misleading.

"He was trying to build up friendships. He was an idealist."

Nor was he a sandal-wearing crank, argues Fowler, another barb which has been thrown Gardiner's way. "People like Rolf Gardiner were true cultural subversives - pop stars before pop stars even existed."