Part of being human is being able to cope with the reality we are forced to face every day, thus we like to pretend that before this moment in time nothing truly happened. All the little things that we give almost no thought to today had to come from somewhere, but very few people care to actually trace the history of things like memes.
Memes are things that are now acknowledged as strange little clichés derived from pop culture, but I had never really thought about God, Religion, or Love containing memes before reading Gleick's book. If memes are categorized as anything that has been repeated enough to become part of normalcy then there is very little about the world that is not a meme. Even down to the emotions we have put names to... perhaps happy became the word that acknowledges what may have once been described as 'in a good mood and having a bright outlook on life'.
We are all a product of memes, and maybe we are nothing but memes ourselves. Maybe we are just something generated enough times that everything we are down to our names are nothing more than a meme to which our parents were drawn. That being said, what we find unique about ourselves may not be unique at all. We could be drawn to things that already fit the meme of who we are.
Something to think about right?
This reminds me of conditioning children. Depending on how their raised, they will instill the repeated lessons they learn and those lessons affect their character. I also never considered religion as a type of meme until Gleick talked about repetition. The lords prayer became a type of meme for our family and when it is referenced briefly, the length of it is understood. Memes have existed forever and it's memes that influence our characters, and ultimately, our thoughts.
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