Having Mr. Garrison shit in his hand and throw it at him in South Park was surely Dawkins finest achievement.

(It's interesting the lack of fidelity in the 'meme' meme.)

I think the point about the meme meme having a lack of fidelity or copying accuracy is well made and rather interesting. Doesn't invalidate the observation about the necessity of copying fidelity in ideas though.

To play devil's advocate for a moment - couldn't one argue the meme theory is possibly Dawkins least useful contribution.

It's not a theory that adds anything beyond what we already know, it merely phrases the problem slightly differently; and in a way that could be seen as simplistic and vague - 'like a virus'.

Oh come come Colman.

Yes the concept is inprecise, but it is only 30 years old and the study it memetics is in its infancy.

In truth Dawkins has let his idea go for others to work on - he is far more concerned with evolutionary biology and in unpicking the religious mess we are in. So maybe it is his least useful contribution, but only because the rest of his work is so important.

Personally, I find the idea of the basic building block of the mind being memes as the basic bulding block of our bodies are genes, devastatingly good. More than that it think the idea that our minds serve our memes as our bodies serve our genes fascinating.

I for one am a ghastly manifestation of my memes and a particulalry bizare memeplex - that is unfortunately too often on show in this blog.

In fact maybe that explains why we blog - it is not us but our rampant memes desperately trying to 'infect' others.

Discuss

See http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html for some good reasons why Dawkins' militant atheist stance is not always so clever.

Even as a lifelong atheist I see Eagleton's point: that Dawkins seems to miss the point, having stepped out of his area of genius.

When it comes to God I can't resist going back to Freud who said that God is a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity...

Jon Ronson (Guardian) had an interesting take on Dawkins' book: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1937479,00.html

[Saw you in the park on Sun with your better half and monkeys but funnily enough was too shy to come and say hi....]

Sorry Beeker but what a load of old twaddle from Eagleton. Anyway I am not evangelising atheism here I am doffing my professional cap to Dawkins.

Asi,I was indeed monkey wrangling on the heath this weekend - next time I will look up from the inanities and dribble.

I know. I get that's it's more about memes. And that Dawkins is a geezer. Of course. I also don't agree with everything Eagleton says. But I do think Dawkins' critique of religion is bullying in parts, and capable of appealing only to converted atheists. So what's the point? To make us feel better?
Anyway, quite enough on religion.

Come on yourself!

Your point merely begs the question 'what is the mind?'

The other problem with memes is that they can explain almost anything, yet predict very little.

I think The God Delusion is a tour de force. It shouldn't appeal to just atheists, but anyone who takes reason over faith.

'Anyone who takes reason over faith' - that's a definition of atheists isn't it? Which is my point. Dawknis uses reason in a way that appeals to fans of reason, not fans of religion.

It's all very well us rationalists (I count myself as one most of the time) patting ourselves on the back when we read Dawkins on religion, but I presumed he was trying to change minds. Not congratulate those who've changed already/were atheists in the first place.

Besides all of which if absolutely everything is reduced to the rational, life becomes a sorry thing. (Not the same as saying I'm a fan of religion.)

So I'm definitely off the meme point. I'm going to say 'come on' to myself and zip it properly this time.

last riff for today...
Back in March, Dawkins was here to clebrate 30 years of the Selfish Gene. There was a fantastic event at the LSE with great speakers which you can read the transcript here:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublicLecturesAndEvents/pdf/20060316-Darwn@LSE.pdf

we can never rationalise or truly understand religion.....Equally, we never really understand why an audience opts for one brand over another.

In both cases it is a leap of faith. The fabric of our existence, part of our survival.

Sometimes planners need to spend less time observing and more time experiencing.

But Beeker there are lots of people in between. Who aren't quite sure, who think there might be something 'bigger' out there, who haven't thought rationally about it, who haven't heard all the arguments against God. Who slowly let religion seep into more and more aspects of politics and religion, and who do nothing about it.

I think they are worth making the argument to. Don't you?

Also, why is a rational life a 'sorry thing'?

Ok, I'll give you The Waverers. But have you heard anyone praise it who wasn't utterly decided before they began reading?

The rational life thing is a pet topic that I roll around in my head a lot. I've got so much to say on it that I'll post something so as not to clog up Richard's space.

(Personally I think your Um Bongo stance is much more of a problem.)

a rational life is devoid of anything meaningful.

Surely if we all lived rational lives, brand's would carry very little status...

Why does everyone ignore the fact that rational stuff makes you feel something? Sometimes something very profound. Seeing as we're supposed to be talking about Dawkins, have you read 'Unweaving the Rainbow'?

Agree that brands are to an extent irrational, or at least they encourage people to make irrational decisions - to pay more for a parity product for example.

However, it is increasingly clear that brands without substance, where the image is inflated incomparison to the delivery of the product are incredibly vulnerable.

Innocent do make great smoothies, Apple do make great MP3 players, Dyson do make great vcuum cleaners.

In everycase people are paying for the brand but if the product was without substance they would soon reject the whole edifice - Hoover for example.

I have no wish to talk about religion here (this is an ad blog) but maybe persistent over promising in the face of a clear lack of product delivery or of any substance is starting to trouble humanity.

I have nothing against rational thinking since it reflects my own personality, but most exercises in rational thinking conlude with a logical viewpoint or peace of mind that you can control. What happens when it can't be controlled? Where does logical reasoning and rationalisation take us?

Brands like religion are deeply irrational because they promise to enrich our lives..at a premium or an another 'unreasonable trade off'.

Or, a sacrifice which may well be worth it??

Apple make great iPods, but technically they are no superior to other MP3 players. Innocent produce a healthy great tasing range of smoothies;no different to PJ's or retail own brands. Dyson on the other hand, provides a tangible benefit -something we can rationalise - it does a better job.

But like religion, there is a paradox - it's not the brand that is the problem, but the manner in which it is enforced, delivered and rammed down peoples throats. And then to add insult, fails to deliver.

And judging by the state of the nation, brands, like religion will have a lot to answer for...

Memes are still interesting. I always find it useful to remind myself that the succesful ones are self spreading - so memes like, say, religion, have their own propogation built into them - in religion it's proselytising - so part of the idea is the need to spread the idea.

Which is not a bad thing to attempt to build into communication ideas.

Although that's not the same thing as having a 'send to a friend' button ;-p

Isn't it our job to make people believe that one parity product is better than another? And aren't people are adliterate enough to know what our job is? They also like to shop so its not as if we are manipulating them in any evil way.

And if I decide to buy an iPod because I believe that it is the coolest mp3 player in the world is that not a rational decision given that I place some value on being cool?

And when the value of a company's brand is calculated into the market value of the company, is that not a rational action since the company is indeed worth that amount in the the market?

Frankly, I've never really the point of the reason/religion debate. We are an intelligent species that nevertheless needs to believe in something.

Karl Popper posited (I love this blog because I get to use words like posited) that scientists, the arch rationalists that they are, tend to become irrationally attached to theories even when refutations start piling up in their pigeon-holes.

The communists built a whole world without God but found that it was a bit easier to control if they made Stalin a God substitute.

People want to believe that they are leading special and unique lives. Some brands help them do that. Those brands are part faith and part science.

What role does community play, then? One of the most appealing aspects of religion is the access to community that it provides.

Brands also provide a sense of community - the folks with apple logos plastered on the backs of their cars as asserting their membership as much as those with the little Jesus fish on the bumper.

Meditation on the nature of brands and the often esoteric analysis of thought and ideas and culture that the community around this blog and others like it exchange is also not unlike the way religious scholars or adherents discuss their theology.

I stay interested in advertising because of that, the way passion, community, humanity and seeking creep in and change things.

where is the rationality in being cool?

A rationalist, could simply deduct being attached to a brand for personal esteem is decidedly uncool.

Consumers buy brands because they have hope, not faith. That's why we spend so much time reassuring them post purchase.

Oh yes I like the hope word.

I suspect Dawkins would think 'cool' is not rational but adaptive; helping you succeed in attracting more/better sexual partners?

I spent several fruitless years researching memes, there are lots of academic books and papers on the subject. As Paul C says there is lots of explanation, very little prediction. Mny have said it is a perspective rather than an actually theory.

You could live with that if was a 'subtle-iser' like semiotics, deconstruction or phenomenology. But many 'insights' from the world of memetics tend towards the unsubtle; eg 'Mormonism is growing fast as a religion because it tells its followers to have as many offspring as possible'. 'The Y2K bug succeeded because it was urgent'. I think the acid test might be that having known about it for many years, written about it, thought about it, I have never found it any actual use, as least in what we do.

Ultimately it derives from a mechanistic view of nature. One in which complex patterns have simple causes, objectives or directions. I much prefer the 'emergent/adjacent possible/systemic/ecological' view of evolution, let alone human culture.

If I recall correctly MEME was a throwaway comment by Dawkins originally; a suggestion that style of pottery, dance steps and hair styles might conform to similar patterns of selection and propagation to genes.

As for his book on religion... I am also looking forward to Deepak Chopra's next pronouncments on quantum physics ;J

It sounds like memes suffer from the same handicap as semiotics - a neat way of explaining what has already happened but useless for creating anything new.

But I don't know, I'm a waverer and I've never read Dawkins just in case there is a God and I make him angry.

But lets face facts chaps - you named an agency after a christian saint. We know which side you are on.

That was only because of potential legal/copyright issues around using the original and in many ways superior "Saint Elsewhere" ("a hospital for sick brands"). Other than that we were mostly a bunch of pagan idolaters with a thriving cult of "goats".

nb it's another thread but I think semiotics is helpful though. Certainly injected the requisite amount of wierdness into Pepperami and Tango briefs...? Maybe it is that semioticians and similarly inclined planners are helpful I suppose.

I did a little on semiotics around the judith williamson book.

Tango was ruled by a semoitic rod of iron in the good old days - thanks to David O'Hanlon.

I am less obsessive about it, but I still think it is a fantastic discipline for understanding how ads create meaning and in ensuring that you police the body language of your advertising.

If I remember right, there was an alternative to St Elsewhere: St Jude's - patron saint of lost causes. I liked that but for some reason people thought it might put clients off.

I can see how semiotics can help decode what is happening within an existing campaign and so provide pointers on how to take it forward.

In saying all that, Mary Douglas's Thought Styles has a chapter called All Shopping is Protest which argues that people make shopping decisions based upon rejecting everything that they wouldn't be seen dead in. To me that's punk rock semiotics: the creative process of destruction.

if anyone wants an overview from the horse's mouth, there's some Youtubes of Dawkins lecturing from Lynchburg, VA, reading excerpts from 'The God Delusion' in Pt.1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe7yf9GJUfU

an entertaining Q&A session in Pt.2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_z85O0P2M&mode=related&search=

via metafilter
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/56510

In todays Times Literary Supplement if anyone is still interested.

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2552017,00.html