The Meme Machine (33 page)

If the idea of exchanging goods for taking on memes seems unfamiliar, we might think of the bartering of memes that goes on all around us. We are used to the idea of paying for the information we want, by buying books or newspapers, paying our TV licence, or buying tickets to the cinema, but if people want to impose their ideas on us then they have to pay to get our attention, like advertisers and politicians do. I shall return to this in considering the way that information is put onto the Internet at the cost of the provider, not the user.

All these exchanges could be investigated. Imagine an experiment in which James expresses some unpopular idea, or solicits people to join his organisation, or whatever. Among a group of people present, Greg gets up and publicly agrees with James. Now James should feel obliged to Greg and so be more likely to act generously towards him than to the others. Such experiments could find out whether exchanging memes could become a kind of currency like exchanging goods.

Other experiments might bring together people of opposed viewpoints, or people who disagree about the right way to do something, and find out what methods they actually use to change one another’s minds. Studies of attitude change have often been done where material gain is at stake, such as in advertising and political persuasion, but this theory predicts that people will, if given the chance, be more generous to people they are seeking to convince – even when there is no material gain involved. In addition, there is no point being generous to people who already agree with you, nor to those whom you judge as being beyond conversion. The greatest altruism should be shown to those who are capable of being convinced (Rose 1997).

The effects of reciprocation are a little more complex, however. Imagine the following experiment. Just two people are involved (though in practice we would need to repeat it with many pairs). Janet is asked to express her opinion on some controversial topic while Meg listens in silence. Janet now acts generously in some way towards Meg (perhaps by buying her a coffee or offering to help with something). Meg is then asked to say how much she likes Janet. We should obviously expect that Meg will express greater liking for Janet when she has been generous towards her than when she has not. Now we give Meg the chance to say what
she
thinks about the controversial topic and again measure her liking for Janet. The theory makes two predictions. The first is more obvious, that Meg is more likely to express agreement when Janet has given her something. The second is less so, that expressing agreement acts as a kind of repayment of the kindness. So we should predict that if Meg now publicly agrees with Janet (whether that is really her opinion or
not) she will now like Janet
more
than if she does not. In other words, Meg likes Janet not only because she was kind to Meg, but because Meg has paid off her debt by agreeing and so need no longer feel under any obligation to Janet.

This is an extremely artificial situation but I have tried to keep it simple. More realistic ways of taking on someone’s memes might be to copy their actions in some more concrete way, to agree to pass on information to someone else, to write down what they say, to join a group they belong to, and so on, but I hope the principle is clear – that liking for a generous model would be
increased
if the subject were given the chance to imitate her, because the sense of obligation was reduced. This is, I suggest, a counter–intuitive outcome that could not readily be predicted or explained on any other theory.

If these predictions are correct they suggest that memes and resources can be bartered against each other in all sorts of ways. We should be able to pay people to accept our ideas, agree with people to pay off debts, and force people into agreement by what appear to be generous actions. There are interesting implications here for the power of money to coerce people into agreement. Some of the predictions are fundamental to the processes underlying meme–driven altruism and therefore, if they do not work out, my theory is wrong.

CHAPTER 14

Memes of the New Age

One day in 1997, a young student came to interview me for his media project. After several predictable questions he said ‘Dr Blackmore, you are well known for your theory that alien abductions are really a form of sleep paralysis. Well I have experienced sleep paralysis
and
I have been abducted by aliens, and I can tell you they are not the same thing at all’

It was my turn to ask the questions. Over many hours he told me of multiple abductions, starting when he was five years old and continuing into his adulthood. He told of aliens landing in the fields outside his house, of their visits to his bedroom and of operations they performed on him inside their spaceship. To top it all he showed me a tiny metallic object that the alien creatures had implanted in the roof of his mouth and which he had removed after two weeks of discomfort. Would I, with my ‘closed mind’ on UFOs, be prepared to analyse it scientifically?

Naturally I said yes. My own sceptical view of abductions was open to test by just this kind of object. There have been thousands of claims that people have been abducted, and several well–known academics prepared to support them (Jacobs 1993; Mack 1994). The stories are fairly consistent, and the people who tell them are known to be of at least average intelligence and education, and generally psychologically healthy (Spanos
et al.
1993). But absolutely no convincing physical evidence has ever been provided, unless you count some stained clothing and a few previous ‘implants’. But you never know, this one might be it – every scientist’s dream – an object of unimaginable consequence – a piece of technology from an alien civilisation. Of course I wanted to analyse it.

The analysis was simple and so was the answer. The mysterious object, though it looked very much like other ‘implants’ under the electron microscope, turned out to be made of dental amalgam. The young man was partly disappointed and partly relieved, but as far as I know he is still convinced that he has been abducted, even though he is not now so frightened of the creatures implanting more objects in his body.

So what is going on? Accusing these people of either making up their incredible stories, or suffering delusions, is unfair when many of them (and I have met many) appear perfectly ordinary, sane people. They have
clearly been frightened by something that has happened to them, and are convinced that aliens are to blame.

Alien abduction as a memeplex

I suggest that the aliens are a memeplex; a memeplex consisting of the idea of four–foot high skinny, large–headed creatures with big black eyes, an image of the ships they come in and the operations they perform, their intentions in visiting our planet, and all the other details we are fed through the media. As Elaine Showalter argues in her book
Hystories
(1997), such epidemics are spread by stories (though I would not describe them all as
hysterical
). Interestingly, the alien intentions vary with the group you favour. Followers of John Mack are inclined to the ecologically friendly type of alien who is coming to warn us of impending catastrophe, while followers of the Jacobs’ school are abducted as part of an alien breeding programme making half–human-half–alien babies to invade our planet.

The memetic approach to alien abductions is to ask why these ideas should propagate so successfully, when they are not true. There is no mystery about why true and useful ideas should propagate successfully -they do so because people want and can use them. So memetics does not provide much advantage over other ways of looking at the world when it comes to understanding the success of good scientific theories or accurate news. However, memetics does help when it comes to explaining the spread of untrue, bizarre, and even harmful ideas. One such is alien abduction.

One key to alien abduction experiences is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. During dreaming sleep most of our muscles are paralysed so that we do not act out our dreams. By the time we wake up this paralysis has usually worn off and we know nothing about it (unless experimenters intervene). However, the mechanism that keeps waking and dreaming apart can sometimes fail, especially in people who work shifts or have very disrupted sleep. Sometimes people wake up, can look around and think clearly, and yet are quite unable to move. Common sensations accompanying the paralysis include buzzing and humming noises, vibrations of the body or bed, a powerful sense that there is somebody or something in the room with you, and strange lights floating about. Since sexual arousal in dreams is common this can also persist into the paralysis. Sometimes, people feel as though they are being touched or pulled or even lifted from their bodies. If you recognise the symptoms, and can keep your cool, the best response is to relax and wait; the
paralysis wears off within a minute or two. If you try to struggle you only make matters worse.

If you have no idea what is going on, the experience can be terrifying, and a natural reaction is to blame someone or something, or to seek an explanation. In previous periods of history and different cultures, various ‘explanations’ have been available. The incubus and succubus of medieval times were evil spirits sent to tempt the wicked into sexual activity. Until the early twentieth century, people in the south of England blamed witches for what they called ‘hag–riding’, and even today there are people in Newfoundland who have been visited by the ‘Old Hag’ who comes at night to sit on their chests and stop them breathing. Kanashibari in Japan, Kokma in St Lucia, and the Popobawa in Zanzibar are just some of the other current sleep paralysis myths. These myths are all successful memes.

Our culture is now full of stories of outer space, spaceships, UFOs, and sinister aliens. If you suffer from sleep paralysis and do not know what it is, your mind supplies the most readily available ‘answer’. Once you start to think about aliens in a terrified and paralysed state, the aliens will seem all the more real. No wonder people think they have been abducted.

This explanation is supported by evidence that abductees suffer sleep disturbances, including sleep paralysis, more often than control groups (Spanos
et al.
1993). I would expect, although it has not been tested, that people who understand the psychological basis of sleep paralysis are unlikely to have abduction experiences, because they already have a better explanation for their experience.

Some people have only faint memories of disturbing experiences and are left wondering what happened. If they come across a hypnotist who specialises in ‘recovering memories’ of alien abduction then they are encouraged to relive the experience again and again until the story they tell comes to be indistinguishable from a real memory and is full of details of the aliens and their craft.

But this is not the whole story. The myth of abduction is a successful set of memes for other reasons too. For one thing, it is extremely hard to test, which has protected it from being demolished. The aliens, after all, are so clever that they can slip in through your ceiling without disturbing the plaster, whisk you away, do their wicked experiments and put you back, all without anyone else seeing you, or them. They are also adept at suppressing your memories of the abduction, and you may be left only with a fragment of uncertain memory and a tiny unexplained scar on your leg or nose. It may take an experienced hypnotist (who has plenty of experience with other abductees and knows just what questions to ask) to bring your full ‘memory’ back. The aliens are rarely captured on radar or
successfully photographed because they have such advanced technology. And if you want to know why no government has evidence of alien landings, well you know the answer – there’s a conspiracy. Governments do, of course, have whole spaceships and even frozen alien bodies in store but they employ lots of people to ensure the evidence is concealed and the public is never allowed to know. If you wonder why none of these employees has ever let on, this just proves how powerful the conspiracy is. Interestingly, evidence that might appear to be
against
the myth, such as demonstrating that a claimed implant is really a filling, has almost no effect. Strong believers quite rightly point out that one piece of negative evidence cannot disprove their beliefs, and non–believers never thought it was an implant in the first place.

The abduction memeplex has been enormously successful and we can now see why. First it serves a genuine function. That is, it provides an explanation for a scary experience. I suspect that if my student had known about sleep paralysis before he had his first abduction experience, it never would have turned into an abduction experience. Second, the idea appeals in modern American (and to a lesser extent European) culture. Humans, like many of their primate relatives, have evolved to defer to high–status males and to be afraid of them. God thrives on this natural tendency but so too do the more modern powerful beings, who use the trappings of our scientific world and prey on genuine fears of technology. Third, the idea is promoted by television companies who have viewers eager to watch sensational programmes, and participants eager to tell their amazing, unique, fantastic, first–hand, real–life stories and to feel very special (and possibly even get rich) by doing so. And finally, the idea is more or less irrefutable, and protected by a more or less plausible conspiracy theory.

Just how good the protection is will determine how long the memeplex lasts. Like a virus, it will spread to infect as much of the susceptible population as it can reach and then, like a virus, stop spreading. Because its only genuine function depends on people being ignorant about sleep paralysis, the dissemination of scientific understanding of sleep may undermine it. Also, as many people ask for concrete evidence and none is forthcoming, the claims may eventually wear thin. Since this kind of television feeds on novelty and surprise, the producers will not keep asking abductees to come and tell their amazing stories forever. This particular memeplex, although successful, has a limited life. Others look a bit more secure.