Which is more powerful: the gene or the meme?

Answer 1

In spiral dynamics they say that the meme is much more powerful then the gene and I do agree with that.
Which meme have you adopted? I am sometimes yellow, green and also turquoise.

Answer 2

I'd say the gene--barely.

Bad DNA can make you dead. Bad ideas or concepts, *in and of themselves* can only make you *wish* you were dead.

However, I will be the first to admit that people *do* take bad ideas too far (search the phrase: "Darwin Awards"). Still, I'd also submit that things like untreated cancer, heart disease, untreated depression, diabetes, and so on, kill off a lot more people worldwide than mere stupidity does.

Where it gets interesting is.....in the field of "epigenetics". And I put that term in quotes so you can search it via copy and paste, no typing required. The idea is, on rare occasion an organism's lifestyle *can* trigger changes to DNA by acting *above* the genome, by first altering the protein and RNA side of the chain of genetic command....eventually reverse transcriptase will kick in much as it would for a retrovirus, and you'll get changed DNA.

Why does it get interesting? Because we do know that a lot of what passes for thought in our brains comes courtesy of neurotransmitters and amino acids that *are also* part of the protein chain of command. And we also are *beginning* to understand that some of the neuro-transmitter and amino acid metabolisms of the nervous system are, to a degree, reversable on occasion.

So.....in *theory*, it might just *maybe*, on an outside chance, as in a one in a *million* shot, be possible that memes, if pursued by an organism obsessively enough long enough, could be sufficient to cause epigenetic changes to DNA.

However, that kind of obsessiveness has a *much* more high-percentage chance of leading to a Darwin Award than a self-inflicted mutation. And even so....many forms of *cancer* are also in the realm of "self-lnflicted mutations" too.

But hey....there are six billion plus of us on the planet, and our pollution situation worsens each day, as does our situation regarding global warming, the earth's magnetic field....any number of things we *need* to pay attention to but aren't. So I'm not going to rule out the power of memes, ok?

I'm just saying that *prior precedent* points to DNA being more potent....for now. ^_^

Thanks for your time. ^_^ Good Question!

Answer 3

hahahaha wtf, powerful in what sense?