Memes have many different meanings to people and are a complex subject, but in the simplest sense they can be thought of as ideas that are replicators.  The reality though is much deeper than that because in essence they embody all the abstract explicit and implicit knowledge we posses.  They are in fact an emergent phenomena of our reality that enables information to flow in ways that are partially analogous to the evolutionary process.  Memes have profound cultural implications and depending on the type of meme, they can lead to the growth or knowledge or it's inhibition.

Similar to genes, memes contain information that humans are essentially the host for.  Unlike genes, memes need to include their own replication mechanism to survive.   David Deutsch's conception of memes states that they exist in two different physical forms: a mental representation and a behaviour.   A meme is therefore selected for it's ability to cause behaviour that gets it replicated into new hosts, and so forth.

Deutsch divides memes into two different categories, rational and anti-rational.  A rational meme relies on the recipients critical thinking to cause it to be replicated, while an anti-rational meme relies on disabling the recipients critical thinking to get it replicated.  A scientific theory with great explanatory power, like the theory of evolution, is an example of a rational meme, while a literal belief in heaven and hell could be considered an anti-rational meme.  Both are abstract mental representations and both cause behaviours that encourage their replication.  This dichotomy of rational and anti-rational memes has profound implications within the context of cultures and their evolution.

The evolution of culture is the central ingredient of our growth in knowledge and civilizational progress.  Much of human history has been characterized by slow progress where humans have existed in static cultures that were dominated by anti-rational memes and therefore changed very little.   We are currently in an unstable period where Western civilization is transitioning from static societies to more dynamic societies consisting of more and more rational memes.

 

Looking at meme theory in this context is in itself a rational meme that has caused me to write this summary in my own words.  Hopefully this meme will infect others who read this and can value it for it's rationality and perhaps improve upon it or extend it in other rational ways before passing it along to others.