Trivially Speaking: Go back to 1976 to trace the origin of the meme - Loveland Reporter-Herald

Once in a while — it’s not very often — I encounter a “new” word. My English background and reading habits limit this meeting to only a few opportunities.

Recently, I did stumble on one that I first thought was simply a misspelling of “memo.” The word was “meme.”

In my prior gainful employment I read many memos and even wrote a few. As you would know, memo is just the short version of memorandum (from the Latin, “It must be remembered”).

Most of them — even the ones I wrote — weren’t of the “must be remembered” variety. I always believed that the Latin word was just in the wrong order; it should have been random memo. However, I digress.

Anyone who has held a job in a company, school district or government knows what a memo is (but I’ll bet can’t quote one from memory).

So when I went resource-fishing for “meme” I netted something entirely different.

If you’re familiar with “memes,” hold up your hand and you can be excused from the rest of this column.

A meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads by imitation from person to person within a culture.

This is where it gets tricky. Often the meme has the aim of carrying a particular theme or meaning. The meme is the vehicle for transmitting ideas, practices or symbols from one brain to another through writing, gesture, ritual or other imitable act with a mimicked theme.

Meme is a “new” word born in my 37th year.

The word had its birth in Richard Dawkins 1976 book “The Selfish Gene.”

Dawkins cited the work of three “ologists” as his inspiration. They were an anthropologist, an ethologist and a geneticist. The studies led him into the conclusion that evolution depended on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene.

Thus to Dawkins, the meme was a self-replicating unit with relevance to explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

He did coin the word “meme” and developed his meme theory, although the possibility that ideas were subject to similar pressures of evolution as were biological characteristics was noted during Darwin’s time.

Richard may have had some help in his choice of words.

Meme could be a shortening of “mimeme,” ancient Greek — haven’t the modern Greeks made any contributions? — for “imitated thing.”

Prior to its being identified as a meme we can consider the graffito, “Kilroy Was Here!” as qualifying. It became extremely popular in the 1940s, especially in the military. Then it existed under various names in other countries. Today it’s seen as one of the first widespread memes in the world.

Some observers have likened the transmission of memes to the spread of contagions.

The internet and its vehicles have eased the distribution of memes and many days one or two pop up in communications that pass by “Trivially Speaking.”

Even Twoey has picked up on memes. As he takes his constitutionals, he pauses to leave his version of “Kilroy was here” for other wandering canines.

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https://www.reporterherald.com/2020/03/14/trivially-speaking-go-back-to-1976-to-trace-the-origin-of-the-meme/

2020-03-14 21:39:29Z
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