It's all in the Meme

During mid November 2011, the “Kolaveri” song by actor Dhanush was released and it instantly became viral on social networking sites. Within no time the song became the most searched Youtube video. As on today it has 60 million hits in Youtube.

I am surprised to see, even the word “Kolaveri” is being used by some of the TV panelists during serious discussions. The word seems to be gradually sneaking its way into English dictionaries.

“Is Kolaveri a classic case of Internet Meme?”

Meme and the Cultural Evolution

In his hugely successful book “Selfish Gene” Richard Dawkins, had introduced a new theory similar to Darwin’s theory of evolution. While Darwin’s theory dealt with the evolution of the living species, Dawkins’ new theory was about the creation, propagation and evolution of “cultural properties”. 

“Meme” is a unit of cultural information that propagates from one mind to another forming the basis of a cultural evolution. This is similar to how a “gene” propagates from one organism to another, as a unit of genetic information forming the basis of a biological evolution. 

Richard Dawkins describes the concept of Memetics as follows: 

“Examples of Memes are tunes, videos, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, icons, beliefs, thoughts, ideas, ways of making pots or of building arches etc. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process, which in broad sense can be called imitation. 

“Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind, you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell”

Like genes, memes also vary in their fitness level to survive in the human intellectual and cultural environments. Some fashion memes are short lived, whereas some memes such as religious concepts survive for generations. Memes can also be defined as “contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern.

According to Dawkins’ memetic theory successful memes will survive and procreate while failed memes will become extinct like genes. “Faith in God” is one of the most successful Memes that survived thousands of years of cultural evolution that resulted in several religious concepts that became part of human cultural ethos.

Another example for a very successful meme is “wearing clothes”. Our prehistoric ancestors discovered the benefits of “wearing clothes” compared to “living naked”. So meme of “living naked” had failed and almost become extinct. 

This implies that our present culture itself is a product of successful memes. We can never be sure whether all the contemporary memes will remain successful and survive in the future. Man is the sum of genetic and memetic properties. Darwin’s evolution theory and Dawkins’ meme theory combined together can explain all aspects of human behaviour.

The above thesis proposed by Dawkins, a respectable Evolution Biologist, was quite refreshing but extremely bold, and academically challenging for accommodating it within the conventional Darwinian framework and hence was rejected by many geneticists as ‘pseudo-science. But many others argue that Memetics is rather a complementary concept to the theory of evolution than a conflicting one. Interestingly most of the proponents of Lamarckian theory seem to have no hesitation in adapting Meme theory.

Dawkins’ theory proposes two metaphors for the Meme – Meme as Gene and Meme as Virus. I think the Internet Meme works as a virus.

Internet Meme as a mind virus

Internet Meme is an extension of the concept to the cyber world. The phrase Internet Meme is defined in Wikipedia as “A term used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads in a faddish way from person to person via the Internet”.

Like a “meme” procreates and propagate through the cultural ethos of humanity an Internet meme spreads through the Web, using the methods available such as e-mail, blogs, forums, social networking sites, file sharing sites, instant messaging etc. Internet memes may evolve by mutation through adaptations, imitations, parodies etc.

Many a time it is inexplicable why some of the memes become extremely popular and survive; and why some others die out soon. Sometimes even the rumours and hoaxes spread through the Internet get embedded in the pop culture and attain the memetic status.

The Internet Meme, in its true sense, has the dangerous potential to infect the human minds with Meme virus. The replication strategy by oft-repeated slogans and catch-phrases could be so effective in causing chaos in the memetic ecosystem.

The recent panic due to a sense of insecurity felt by the people of North East, living in other regions of India is an example of memetic virus epidemic.

On a positive note, the concept of Internet-meme could also be used in a different way, and already is being applied in diverse fields such as marketing.

As on today, Internet Meme is a grossly misunderstood concept. The concept itself has spread across the Internet as a Meme, undergoing several levels of mutations and as a result, the Meme as conceived by Richard Dawkins and the so-called Internet-Meme (in most cases) seem to be two different things.

Coming back to the original question - 

“Is Kolaveri an Internet Meme?”  I am not too sure.

The Little Boy and the Fat Man

 At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, time stopped forever for 70,000 people belonged to the Hiroshima city of Japan. Another 100,000 people died by the end of that year.

Hiroshima city was the main target for the atomic bombing mission of the American air force and Nagasaki was the alternative target. Colonel Tibbets was the commanding pilot of the B-29 bomber aircraft named “Enola Gay” which was designated for the fateful mission to deliver the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima.

Early warning radars in Japan had detected the fast approaching aircrafts and had given a warning to the people to go to the air-raid shelters a soon as the planes were sighted.  This was a routine alert and nobody in their wildest dreams would have imagined that within sixty minutes they were going to face the worst ever man-made destruction and that the event would change the history of the world for ever.

At 7:31 the first B-29 bomber was sighted and it flew over the city at 32,000 feet and after sending a message to “Enola Gay” that the weather was clear over the target, it turned out to sea and vanished. “All clear” siren was sounded in the city and the people heaved a sigh of relief. Colonel started his bombing mission and exactly at 8.15AM the bomb known as the “Little Boy” was released. (The code name of that bomb was “Little Boy” and the code name of the bomb released over Nagasaki after three days was “Fat Man”).

The little boy had a fission material of 64 kilograms of Uranium-235. By the time it reached the detonation height of nearly 2000 feet and got exploded, Colonel Tibbs had travelled 18.5 kilometres away from Hiroshima and still he could feel the shockwaves.

The little boy was responsible for the gruesome death of thousands of innocent people including many “little boys and girls”

By the blast, more than 70,000 people were instantaneously killed and another 70,000 were injured. More than 90% of the medical personnel were killed. Entire downtown of the city was wiped out. Hiroshima city was totally cut off from the rest of the country, and all communication systems were completely dead. An officer from the headquarters flew to Hiroshima to investigate what had happened. He was shocked to witness the unimaginable destruction. He reported the terrible news to the headquarters and relief measures were started getting organized.

Japanese media announced to the outside world that “Practically all living things, human and animals were literally seared to death”

Apart from the immediate casualties, the delayed effects on those who were exposed to the radiation, especially children, included the development of Cancer and other medical problems. The foetus of many pregnant mothers had suffered brain damage. Several children born to the survivors had genetic defects and other problems.

 

No More Hiroshimas

Hiroshima is a city that stands as a symbol of human destruction and also as a beacon of hope and peace. I visited Hiroshima on 30^th September 1993 along with a multi-national group of trainees undergoing some technological training in Japan.

We visited Hiroshima Memorial Park, which consisted of various structures in memory of the atomic holocaust. In the middle of the park there was a monument that holds a cenotaph of all the people died in the bombing of Hiroshima. The “cenotaph” is defined as a “memorial built to honour people whose remains are interred elsewhere or whose remains could not be recovered”.

 

One of the important structures was the “Hiroshima Peace Museum”. Inside the museum the relics of the atomic holocaust were preserved – shredded school uniforms of innocent children, their lunch boxes with carbonized contents, charred remains of people and their belongings etc.  At the time of blast a man was sitting on the steps of the entrance of Sumitomo Bank 250 metres from the “Ground Zero”. His shadow was permanently imprinted on the stone by the intense heat. This stone kept in the museum had become known as the “stone of a human shadow”

There was a model of the destroyed city made with remarkable details, from the available photographs. There is also the well-known and intimidating picture of the giant mushroom cloud raising smoke and debris over the city. The ghastly spectacle of the ultimate human misery unfolded beneath the mushroom cloud was too much for any sensitive person could bear. It was so shocking and depressing that I hurriedly finished seeing the exhibits and came out. My hand was trembling when I tried to write my impressions in the visitors’ book kept there.

There was a domed building near the epicentre of the bomb explosion, the remains of which were preserved in the same way as it was on the day of the holocaust after the bombing. This building had become the most famous symbol of the attack on humanity by nuclear weapons. On the wall of that building there was a plaque and the engraving on it said that the ruin is “preserved to symbolize our wish that there may be No More Hiroshimas”

Arthur Koestler in his book “Janus: a summing up” writes as follows: “If I were asked to name the most important date in the history and prehistory of the human race, I would answer without hesitation, 6^th August 1945. From the dawn of consciousness until 6^th August 1945, man had to live with the prospect of his death as an individual; since the day when the first atomic bomb outshone the sun over Hiroshima, mankind as a whole has had to live with the prospect of its extinction as a species”