.............Bad Memes .............

In the last blog I talked about how we sometimes have goals in life that aren't necessarily 'good for us' so so to speak. Some of these goals naturally occur because of our evolutionary heritage. The poor pacific salmons quest to reproduce, which ultimately results in rapid deterioration and death is an extreme example of this. A less extreme example in humans is the finding that having children makes people seemingly less satisfied and happy in life, during child rearing years. This blog discusses similar goals or ways of living that won't necessarily be good for us, but for some reason we have acquired and believe in. The difference is that these ways of living or ideas are determined as a result of cultural transmission. We learn them through our experiences in the world, rather than being born with them. In popular psychology and science they are also sometimes described as 'memes'.

Memes are numerous and all around us. An example of one that a significant proportion of people adhere to is the idea of 'a healthy body houses a healthy mind'. This is an idea or way by which we should live life that has been culturally transmitted. It's first appearance dates back to a philosopher/poet of ancient Rome (Juvenile). Thus, over the centuries, individuals have donned spandex and ran around quite a lot. This turns out to be a pretty accurate meme. Exercise is thought to be preventative in developing depression and as early as 1984, McCann & Davis reported findings from a large scale clinical trial that indicated enrolling in intensive exercise classes can be rather useful in combating depression.

But there are of course memes aren't always entirely accurate. A good example is the idea that eating lots of fruit will reduce the risk of you catching flu, because of all the lovely vitamin C inside of it. For the royal college of GP's, Joshi (2007) reviewed studies involving around 11, 000 participants and the data indicated that regular consumption of vitamin C had no effect on common flu incidence. What was found was that a large daily dose of vitamin C could have a very small effect on the length of a cold once you've got one, but it certainly doesn't look like it can prevent flu and nor is it a cure.

The vitamin C is a good example, because many common beliefs about illness and health are confused or just complete rubbish (carrots and night vision for example). But are these really a problem? Unless you are paying big money for vitamin C, these probably aren't real problems for people like me. There are some terrible reports from Swaziland concerning a belief that blood or body parts coming from an albino person can cure HIV. This is a super bad meme; both in terms of its accurateness and effect it has had on innocent people who happen to lack skin pigment. This blog will instead talk about one meme that we, as well off middle class and educated white westerners are more likely to come across in life. My main focus is modern day religion.

The problems with most modern day religions are numerous. First of all; which to choose? They can't all be right, and some of the practises in one directly disobey practises of others. Secondly, things often don't addup. Catholicism and Christianity adhere to the gospel and although it is a lovely little book, it doesn't match up to reality. We know a fair amount about our past in terms of the age of the Universe and earth and there also appears to be strong evidence for an evolutionary account in explaining how we got to where we are today. Unless somebody made a lot of copying and pasting errors, the bible is just wrong on many things; the age of the earth is ridiculously wide of the mark. Nor can it account for evolution. Furthermore, should we base our entire lives on a collection of stories that were written by numerous different authors, at different points and such a long time ago? How do we know it is accurate? What we do know is that a lot of it is inaccurate.

There are many arguments as to why you should believe in a god or somekind of higher transcendence and I am still to come across a good one. You will sometimes hear 'how could there be so much beauty without a creator?' as an argument. One obvious reply is how can there be so much misery and pain? Another is that things happen by chance, but us humans don't much seem to like the idea of chance and randomness. Occasionally the condensation on my window makes a pretty picture. I rarely find myself wondering how could something so beautiful occur without a creator.

If people really want to be religious regardless then fair enough. There is good reason probably. Religion can give structure and meaning in life. These are the types of things that make people happy. Religion can also help us avoid worrying questions about what happens after death. Religion often results in strong social networks and support groups, which are again useful. Yet, if one thinks about things rationally and not driven by 'faith' then there is surely only one real answer to whether any of the modern day religions stand up to the test. Religion is a 'bad' meme in the sense that it's fundamental preachings are very unlikely to be true. In many ways religion does possess strong and valiant messages; love thy neighbour, be a good Samaritan and so on. Generally speaking these are 'good'. But do we need religion to lead prosperous, satisfying and 'good' lives? I think we don't and I also think living ones life to a lie feels wrong.

Most religions instruct us to live our lives in certain ways. Catholicism hasn't liked condoms for a very long time and condemned the use of them. Catholicism was and is quite widespread in Africa. As is HIV. The bible directly promotes homophobia - "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.". Jewish religious law prohibits eating of a whole host of foods. Sausages taste nice. My mother remembers moments of her childhood when she couldn't sleep at night because she was struck with worry that her father wouldn't get into heaven, as he didn't attend church on a Sunday regularly. This is a bit cute, but still wrong. There are enough real worries in the world we have to tackle. The list of laws by which religions instruct people the correct and incorrect ways to live are endless.

Thus, religion really is the super meme. What it promises and preaches just isn't accurate. Attending church services regularly increases the chance of eternal life to a similar degree to regular attendance of neo-nazi white power rallies. One might argue that unless religious people are less happy than non religious people, then it isn't a bad meme after all. But living ones life by what seems most likely to be a lie doesn't seem right. Truth feels important in life.

Although religion probably helps to provides strong social support and structure and meaning in some cases, these can be achieved elsewhere in pursuits that aren't shrouded in falsehoods. One can find social support and make close friends though a shared interest for example. One can find meaning through belief in their job. If one loves teaching or caring for others, then one can form meaning and value in life from the belief that what they are doing is inherently right. Furthermore, education and nursing don't condone homophobia and don't arbitrarily denounce all manner of other seemingly inoffensive behaviours.

If the ideas in this blog are interesting, then I think it is because they introduce the idea of the meme and might make us think more carefully about what we do and don't subscribe to in life. As the study of human behaviour and emotions, psychology should be able to highlight what memes may let us down, so to speak. For example, the meme that lots of money will make us happier in life is very questionable (http://psychologyshared.blogspot.com/2010/09/show-me-money.html), but is nevertheless believed by some and will shape the way those people choose to lead their lives, maybe for the worse. So how can one spot a meme? A lot of memes sound fairly convincing and perhaps because of this they are even more likely to be believed; as one feels less compelled to test or question their credibility. Careful evaluation and consulting science when possible (now highly accessible on the web), would seem like good places to start.

Overcoming Evolution

If one is to lead a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ life and achieve whatever it is one wants from life, then understanding what causes us to behave the way we do would seem like a good place to start. This blog discusses some causes of behaviour that we are thought to have acquired as a result of our evolutionary heritage. Generally speaking, evolution is a well supported theory that tells us how we got to where we are today. Perhaps the major point of interest for this blog is that we have developed certain behaviours and traits because they were adaptive for the replication of our genetic make up. They did the job, so to speak, and were advantageous for the survival of our genes.

Yet, genes essentially use human bodies as a form of vehicle in which they can travel and replicate. Certain behaviours or traits are useful in ensuring gene replication (i.e. through sex or looking after our children) and when we reproduce they appear in future generations. The key idea here is that our evolutionary history produces behaviours that are ‘good’ for our genes, but not necessarily for our happiness or life satisfaction. A very good example of how genes could be described as ‘selfish’ is the pacific salmon.

The pacific salmon has a relatively short life and at the tender age of 4 it embarks on a monumental journey to mate, because they are hard-wired to do so as a result of their genetics. Over several months they travel 3000 miles in an attempt to return to mate in the fresh waters in which they were hatched. Although this sounds romantic, it really isn’t. The course of their journey leads millions to be killed by killer whales, stella sea lions, salmon sharks and bald headed eagles. If they are lucky enough to make it to fresh waters, then the risk of parasites and infections is huge, even in the fresh waters they battle against powerful torrents before reaching the spawning ground.

When they finally arrive they are tired and their battered bodies are easy prey for patrolling bears, but their hard wired behaviour means they won’t leave the spawning area until they have mated. Yet, the very water which they are drawn back to will eventually kill them. Kidneys and organs adjust to lack of salt water, resulting in a physiological response which renders appetite obsolete. After eggs are laid and fertilized, most salmon have (at the most) two weeks of rather uncomfortable life left in them, before their bodies which have been rapidly deteriorating for weeks, finally give up on them.

To me, this is a bit of a sad story. Genetic drives cause these salmon to undergo what would seem like tremendous suffering if human. I in no way think that salmon have thoughts and feelings, so maybe it isn’t all that sad. But we too are like salmon, in the way that often of our life can be driven by behaviours that might be useful for our genes, but not necessarily ‘us’. Many modern thinkers have described our genes as ‘selfish’, as they don’t really care about our happiness or life satisfaction and as the case of the pacific salmon underlines, they would happily cause much suffering if it meant there replication and survival was significantly increased. In this blog we will discuss some evolutionary drives and how they can get in the way of us leading ‘better’ lives.

Children. Perhaps the strongest evolutionary drive is to make some cute little kids. Women start to get very broody at 30 and warm to the idea of having another person living inside of them for 9months and men start to imagine how great it would be if they had a son who was a professional footballer. Although the popular conception is that children = great joy in life, this isn’t necessarily accurate. One thing that children do seem to do is have a big negative effect on how happy one is in their marriage. And as spousal relationships have a big impact on general life satisfaction this is fairly significant. This isn’t particularly new news.

Walker and colleagues (1977) report data which shows that marital satisfaction drops dramtically once the stork makes his drop off and doesn’t tend to recover until they have buggered off to university and flown the nest. Furthermore, Kahneman and colleagues use a very clever method of sampling how much joy individuals feel moment by moment and show that women tend to be significantly less happier when caring for their children than when shopping or watching T.V for example! This thrown in with the tremendous financial strain and stress children cause is perhaps somewhat saddening news (I have even heard that childbirth is a little bit painful as well). What this might suggest is that for some people children mightn’t be that good an idea. Does this reduce the genetic drive to reproduce? And do our genes care about this? The answer is no to both.

A further drive that has been proposed is our need for social acceptance and belonging to those around us. Pin pointing whether this is a definite evolutionary drive is difficult. Baumeister & Leary (2000) believe there is good reason to think there may be, as achieving such things would be helpful in aiding survival. If magnified, the need to be accepted and respected by others can be problematic. Although only speculatively, Baumeister and Leary (2000) go on to suggest that the reoccurring pattern of victims of domestic violence returning to their abusers may be testament to this. In addition, there is thought that the now all too familiar appearance of individuals working ridiculously long hours in stressful jobs for money that they don’t even need may be due to a similar mechanism, as such positions are coupled with elevated social standing. Furthermore, the extra income that such jobs provides is likely to have little effect on life satisfaction and happiness. If you were to ask yourself: what is more important? My life satisfaction and happiness or the extent to which others think I am at the top of my game? I would guess that on the balance of things most people would be picking the first one.

The first two examples are quite interesting but perhaps difficult in knowing what to do about. Are children for me? is a difficult question to answer. Yet, the final example is perhaps a bit more practical and straight forward. Humans appear to be quite neophobic about food, when young. We are risk averse and sometimes don’t like new things that we try. This would seem sensible, as new things can be dangerous or be toxic and until we have learnt about them we shouldn‘t probably take the risk. A fine example of evolution in action is our pickiness over vegetables. Naturally occurring toxins and poisons often are bitter tasting and previously if we had come across such foods when foraging, eating them would have been potentially fatal. It is because of this, it is thought that we have inherited a dislike and avoidance for bitter tastes in general.

Yet, many vegetables are bitter tasting. Although I personally love vegetables, a lot of people don’t and choose to avoid them, children even more so. However, many studies have shown that eating vegetables might good for a lot of things; significantly reducing the risk of heart diseases and maybe even promoting longevity if enough are eaten. Although slightly less dramatic than the pacific salmon example, this shows how our inherited tendencies aren’t always so good for us. There is good news concerning vegetables though. Our evolutionary past has also left us with fairly useful memory systems, by which we can learn from our past experiences and use such information to guide behaviour in the future. For example, Lakkakula and colleagues (2010) have shown that repeated taste exposures to vegetables increases their acceptance in school children (eventually learning that veg isn’t all that bad), which suggests that we can overcome such inherited obstacles with enough persistence.

Application

Don’t bother with children; get a micro-pig instead. They are cheaper, cuter and have funny little curly tails.

Avoid bitter tasting foods when foraging, they may contain toxins.

Befriend a pacific salmon and have a serious chat.