DRMacIver's Notebook

Thinking in memes

Published: 2024-01-11

Another draft bankruptcy post, though I’m going to continue this on for a bit as it’s really more of the prompt for a post than a full abandoned draft.

Some of you get annoyed when I write very culturally bound things that rely on a lot of shared context. Like Shaka, when the walls fell, you will not enjoy this post. You may or may not wish to bear with me anyway.

Anyway, this is a post about memes. Mostly of the internet sort, not the Dawkins sort, although a little bit also of the Dawkins sort.

All part of the pattern

It was indeed a garden, like a lot of other gardens you got in areas like Clay Lane. The gray soil was nothing more than old brick dust, elderly cat mess, and generalized, semirotted dross. At the far end was a three-hole privy. It was built handily by the gate to the back lane so the night-soil men didn’t have far to go, but this one had a small stone cylinder turning gently beside it.

The garden didn’t get much proper light. Gardens like this never did. You got secondhand light once the richer folk in the taller buildings had finished with it. Some people kept pigeons or rabbits or pigs on their plots, or planted, against all experience, a few vegetables. But it’d take magic beans to reach the real sunlight in gardens like this.

Nevertheless, someone had made an effort. Most of the spare ground had been covered with gravel of different sizes, and this had been carefully raked into swirls and curves. Here and there, some individual larger stones had been positioned, apparently with great thought.

Vimes stared at the garden of rocks, desperate for anything to occupy his attention.

He could see what the designer had in mind, he thought, but the effect had been spoiled. This was the big city, after all. Garbage got everywhere. The main disposal method was throwing it over a wall. Sooner or later someone would sell it or, possibly, eat it.

A young monk was carefully raking the gravel. He gave a respectful bow as Sweeper approached.

The old man sat down on a stone bench.

“Push off and get us two cups of tea, lad, will you?” he said. “One green with yak butter, and Mister Vimes will have it boiled orange in a builder’s boot with two sugars and yesterday’s milk, right?”

“That’s how I like it,” said Vimes weakly, sitting down.

Sweeper took a deep, long breath. “And I like building gardens,” he said. “Life should be a garden.”

Vimes stared blankly at what was in front of them.

“Okay,” he said. “The gravel and rocks, yes, I can see that. Shame about all the rubbish. It always turns up, doesn’t it…”

“Yes,” said Lu-Tze. “It’s part of the pattern.”

“What? The old cigarette packet?”

“Certainly. That invokes the element of air,” said Sweeper.

“And the cat doings?”

“To remind us that disharmony, like a cat, gets everywhere.”

“The cabbage stalks? The used [condom]?*”

“At our peril we forget the role of the organic in the total harmony. What arrives seemingly by chance in the pattern is part of a higher organization that we can only dimly comprehend. This is a very important fact, and has a bearing on your case.”

“And the beer bottle?”

For the first time since Vimes had met him, the monk frowned.

“Y’know, some bugger always tosses one over the wall on his way back from the pub on Friday nights. If it wasn’t forbidden to do that kind of thing, he’d feel the flat to my hand and no mistake.”

“It’s not part of the higher organization?”

“Possibly. Who cares? That sort of thing gets on my thungas, it really does,” said Sweeper.

This passage is one of various things the world has chucked over the wall into my mind. I like to imagine that the garden has been raked around the rubbish in the same way as it would any large rock or intrusion into it.

This is often how my mind feels to me. Things appear in it from the world and stay there, patterns radiating outwards, interfering and interacting and creating something unique and sometimes beautiful patterns, but it often starts from garbage.

Trekkies, watching Darmok

The “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “Darmok” is about a race of aliens whose communication style does not correctly translate, because everything they say is in terms of analogy to previous events.

Editor’s note: I think I stopped writing this post because this section was boring. Please insert any one of various standard takes about how the way we communicate on the internet is like this.

The associative value of memes

Because what I actually wanted to talk about was the use of memes for thinking rather than about how we talk with them.

Some of this is just the usual straightforward way that any language is a tool for thought: Having a concept for a thing allows you to think about the thing.

But memes have an unusual sticking power, because of the richness of the concept. They usually have an image with a quite specific vibe associated with them. Sometimes they undergo enough evolution that they leave the image behind, but even there there’s a whole web of associations that helps make them feel really accessible and live.

I’ve talked about a related phenomenon in Reading philosophy for the examples, where having a whole rich example for a concept makes it much more relevant.

Even in that post the images help. I’ve still got a concept for duck guy that feels quite live,I still don’t really know how to talk to him, though I suspect I’m better at it than most. and Danny at the Grand Canyon also sticks around, but I had to look up the rest.

The particularly useful function of memes as a tool of thought though is the way they spring unbidden to mind.

For example, a useful meme to acquire recently has been “Stop. Look. Think. Are you eating yourself?”

Buy the T-shirt here

When stuck in unhelpful patterns, it’s helpful to remember this goofy little guy and ask if I’m currently eating myself.

Another good related tool comes from catchy songs. Discord got a bit obsessed with the song Diggy Diggy Hole for a while:I can’t imagine how this could possibly have happened and definitely accept no culpability in it…

It became a bit of an injoke for a while to come up with many variations of this to the tune of verby verby nounI am on discord and I’m verbing a noun. verby verby noun. verby verby noun., but the one that’s really usefully stuck is that when you’re caught in that annoying state of endlessly browsing the internet, doomscrolling, etc. you’re in a clicky clicky loop.Clicky clicky loop. Clicky clicky loop… Having this concept available is often enough to break you out of it when the music starts playing in your head.

And of course, there’s the eagle that makes me go outside whenever I think about it:This hasn’t actually worked very well recently, but in my defence it’s been cold and dark and wet and I don’t like. Admittedly this is also the eagle’s vibe so this isn’t much of a defence.

An eagle going on a stupid little daily walk for it stupid physical and mental health.

I partly think of these posts as my stupid little daily writing for my stupid mental health.

No private language

I think an important feature of memes is that they’re social. Very few of these things would have stuck without a community of people reinforcing them.

Partly this is because talking about the meme makes it more salient, part of this is because I think a group is much better at building memes that are optimised to work.

I think there are probably useful magical practices (sigil creation etc) that do pull off this sort of trick privately, but personally I’ve never got them to work. I think it’s important to me that eagle and ouroboros are shared concepts for the things they represent.

Maybe this is something communities should do a bit more intentionally though. Crafting and selecting memes for their common problems. I’m not really sure what this would look like, but it’s worth thinking about.