We celebrated life and one son's high school and another's University graduations with a pig roast in the spring of 1987. It involved 15 confrontations with high school participants to not drink the college participants’ beer. I would not mix the two again.

Every celebration should involve roasting a pig except maybe a bar mitzvah. University graduates turned the pig on the spit from 7am until 2pm. They drank, philosophized about life, and speculated about the opposite sex. My Jesuit priest friend said that serious philosophical and theological discourse requires alcohol consumption.

I am feeling unbearably mortal. Nine grandchildren will carry my genes into the future. Hopefully, one of my books sends my memes into the future. The Oxford dictionary defines “meme” as: an element of culture that is passed on by nongenetic means, especially imitation (e.g. consider the Greek meme: our soul lives on after we die).

In his book, “The Selfish Gene,” Richard Dawkins defines a Meme Complex as a group of memes that thrive in each others’ company such as: political ideologies, religious beliefs, scientific theories and paradigms, and languages.

He says that genes are replicators whose competition drives the evolution of biological design. Memes are passed on by imitation and stored in brains: tunes, ideas, or catch-phrases.

Replicators have traits of longevity, self-copying fidelity and fecundity. Fecundity is the speed at which they replicate.

Reflections in this book are meme complexes. If I have been insightful and clever enough, they may spread and provide an additional small measure of immortality.

In her paper, “The Power of the Meme Meme,” Susa Blackmore suggests that once genetic evolution created creatures that were capable of imitating each other, our brains became the product of two replicators – Genes and Memes.

She says memes are governed by simple rules:

1] memes do not have foresight;

2] memes do not care about genes or people - all they do is reproduce themselves (conversations, television, newspapers, the Internet above all propagate memes)

3] memes, by definition, are passed on ONLY by imitation(learning by trial and error or by feedback is not memetic).

1. Why can’t we stop thinking? Memes encourage thoughts that compel you to keep thinking them, so we think a lot.

2. Why do we talk so much? Memes that encourage talking fill our brains because they are heard by more people than memes of a shy person like “talking is a waste of time.” .

3. Why are we so nice to each other? People who are altruistic will, on average, spread more altruism memes because they encourage their host to be friendly and kind as opposed to memes for being unfriendly and mean.

4. Why are our brains so big? Brains are 2% of body weight but use 20% of its energy and are three times the size of ape brains. Early humans learned language and imitation to make pots or knives, or catch prey. A quick learner would more easily find a mate; so sexual selection sought big brains.

5. Who am I? Our personalities, abilities and unique qualities derive from the complex interplay of meme-complexes - like religions, political belief systems and cults.

For most of human history memes evolved at much the same rate as genes from parent to child. Telephones, e-mail, fax machines and the Internet have increased the propagation speed of memes. The relative uncoupling of genes and memes may mean that detrimental memes will spread rapidly: dangerous cults, fads, political systems, copy-cat crimes and false beliefs.

We are constantly bombarded with useless memes from the spam on the Internet and television advertising. We hear clever jingles and quips to get us to buy something that we would not ordinarily think to buy; or, infomercials where testimony of satisfied customers urges you to buy their wonderful product.

Science is about discovering the truth about natural law. Consider how easy it is to get ten people to say that something is correct versus proving a scientific theory which may require a scientist 20 years of education, ten years to develop, and another ten years to prove. Most of us “know” very little for sure because it takes a lot of effort to really “know.” The danger here is the rate at which we fill our brains with useless (memetic) trivia.

For Reflection 1

For Reflection 2

For Reflection 3

For Reflection 4

For Reflection 5

For Reflection 6

For Reflection 7 

For Reflection 8

For Reflection 9