PBS ran a program, this past Sunday, 16 Sept, 2001, on the evolution of intelligence, thinking and the basic units of thinking called memes. There are several points in the program that are of interest to symbolic interactionists and social psychologists who would try to understand the deep structural meaning of the 11 Sept. attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

And, as with the 19 hi-jackers who gave their life to destroy the icons of American economic imperialism in the global economy, George Bush, Colin Powell together with most Americans haven't a good grasp upon the deep structural meaning of the attack. Let's think about it from the perspective of memetic evolution.

First, the program made much of the great increase in brain functioning some 50,000 years ago...the physical evolution of the brain lead to a basic transformation in evolutionary processes...our second point.

Second, genes are the carriers of physical/organic evolution; memes are the carriers cultural meaning. Sue Blackmore (?sp), a very bright woman laid out the basic theoretical point in yesterday's PBS tutorial. She said that, for most of human history, the evolution of genes drove organic evolution; including the evolution of hominids. As we know, there is a competition and struggle for survival between specific genes which render some new organisms a bit better suited for their environment. This process is one of natural selection among organisms competing in a given biodome.

For Blackmore, memes include every cultural artifact; insulin, football, marriage, divorce, property rights, prayer, charity, burglary, rape, voting, mass marketing, Sunday services and air travel.

Steven Jay Gould makes a point on the program worth keeping in mind as we think through the implications of Blackmore's thesis; evolution is not oriented to the development of superior creatures; merely plants and animals better adapted to survive in a given environment; change the environment and the notion of better changes. Bear this in mind when we talk about memetic evolution.

With the great explosion in brain capacity, memetic evolution joined genetic evolution to drive the behavior and fate of one special hominid; homo Sapiens. Just as genes use human beings as the weapons in the struggle of survival, memes use groups.

Indeed, the PBS program made the point that one great advantage of thinking was its meaning for group evolution rather than individual evolution as has/is the case with genetic evolution. It turns out that most memetic exchange has to do with fitting the individual into a set of social relations rather than, as in the case of genetic evolution, into a given ecological niche.

So, Sue Blackmore made the case that there is a competition and struggle for survival among memes...the operative question for social psychologists is what are the tactics of memetic selection. It turns out that one cannot control memetic selection as one can control genetic selection among, say cattle, tomatoes, dogs or apples by careful cross-breeding.

Memes dwell inside a culture and cannot be easily selected in or out. Those who talk of freedom of speech, the marketplace of ideas and academic freedom try to loosen cultural restraints on memes. Those who burn or ban books, force loyalty oaths, fire radical professors, punish heresy and ban dissent try, not too successfully, to control memetic evolution.

While it is very difficult to attack a given meme, it turns out that the WTC and the Pentagon are unique cultural memes; their destruction is a rare drama in memetic evolution. Had the fourth hi-jacked airplane managed to hit the US Capitol Building, it would have been an even greater drama...and for me, a much greater tragedy.

Bush and his administration try to make the case that the set of memes in question are bettween those oriented to freedom and democracy on the one side and those oriented to jealous, savage, demented and status-deprived carrriers of religious memes on the other hand.

There is a better, less partisan view. And if I may extend the Blackmore thesis, central to a symbolic interactional understanding of the attack is the view that the competition is, centrally, between free market memes on the one and hand Islamic memes on the other.

More generally, the struggle between sets of memes involves pre-modern vs modernist and post-modernist sets of memes. Laced into the struggle is a set of memes carrying feminist politics which vie with the patriarchal memes.

And it is not Islam alone which carries these pre-modern memes; fundamentalist Christianity, Islam and Jewish religions share stories of creation and social relationships which are so much at odds.

The first few books of the Christian Bible are variations on stories of creation and upon God's Laws for social living; the old testament, the Koran and the Torah all have similar sets of memes to guide the thought and the behavior of those who live in the culture produced by those sets of memes. The parallel books in Judaism and Christianity are

The Koran has 124 suras/chapters/books which set forth the teachings of Mohammed. The Suras contain many of the stories of the Torah and old Testament as well as original teachings of Mohammed.

The basic memes of all three traditions which form the deep semantic structure of the WTO attack are

1. There is one true God and one true religion

2. There will be a judgment in which sinners will be punished and

3. the Just will find eternal bliss.

There is one Sura, the 4th, which gives the law on the treatment of women and children. A key meme for patriarchy is

[4.34] Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.

For the 500/800 million muslim males who pray five times a day, these memes are foundational. Those having to do with punishment of sinners/non-believers and with eternal bliss ground a willingness to die in the battle against the unjust.

The Western memes which so offend Allah are, according to Islamic critics of the USA including the use of drugs, alcohol, sexual license, intractability of children, uncontrollability of crime, independence of women, individuality of men, materialism of all and marginalization of religion in schools, churches, politics and economics.

So, given these negative sets of memes in Western culture, what drives the great success of Western/modern/postmodern memes around the world??

I think one has to go to macro-economics for answers to questions of this magnitude and, one day soon, I will. But for now, I want to offer this new and intriguing approach to the attack on the icons of US hegemony in global memetic evolution...for your thought and constructive criticism.

TR Young

Scholar in Residence, The Red Feather Institute for Advanced Studies in Sociology

Visit the Red Feather Institute at http//www.tryoung.com/