MEMES OVER GENES

When I was a kid, back in the 1960s, Halloween wasn't a thing. At least not in the UK: what we all looked forward to was November the 5th, Guy Fawkes night, when we got to have a big bonfire and loose off some fireworks -- and maybe a limp barbecue afterwards that mostly consisted of jacket potatoes. We had little idea what the Gunpowder Plot was all about, or why we were remembering it. It was something that had happened so long ago it had no relevance to our young lives -- and like most such things, even Xmas, had long lost any historical meaning: it was simply an excuse for a celebration. But by the time our children were old enough to get involved, the Guy Fawkes meme was all but over. People did still have Bonfire Night, but the energy and passion we'd put into making and dressing a guy, and collecting money for fireworks, had all been transferred to getting dressed up for Halloween -- and even the adults were getting involved. Why? You could put it down to the influence o...

We've all seen them. People walking down the street apparently talking to themselves, oblivious to their surroundings, gesticulating and grimacing as they go. They may look mad, but they're simply on the phone: and though we can see them, they usually can't see us -- in their conscious minds they're somewhere else, lost in an imaginary space with their memories or impressions of the person they're talking to, though they may not even know where that person is. It's a stark and powerful demonstration of just how effective language is at isolating us from reality.    It happens all the time of course. It's happening to you now. As you read these words you're no longer at your desk, in the tube, on the loo, or wherever else you may find yourself as you access social media. You're with me in your mind -- even though you may have never met me -- because there's something about my words that has attracted you. That's what language does -- it gives ...

We all know about genes, don't we. They're the 'units of hereditary': the biological building blocks of our genome, signature sequences of DNA that get passed on to our children, if we have any -- or die with us if we don't. It's the same for all living things. What drives evolution is the random element of the sexual shuffle: useful new characteristics survive, others are not so lucky. But here's the thing: what most makes us human is that -- above and beyond this slow genetic churn -- we swim in an extraordinary pool of abstract ideas, ideas we absorb and pass on whenever we find them interesting. It was this pool of shared ideas that Richard Dawkins was thinking about when he coined the word 'meme' in his book The Selfish Gene  to mean 'a unit of cultural transmission': memes are the building blocks of culture. These days memes are all about video clips of cats doing weird stuff, or the latest buzz-word doing the rounds, but that's jus...

Just spent a fascinating few days listening to auditions sent in by prospective narrators for an audiobook version of my book SPEECH! How Language Made Us Human  -- which I hope will be released in mid-December (just in time for Xmas 😉). I've not done this before, and was astonished both at the range of voices sent in and the very different ways they chose to read the script I'd chosen for the audition -- the introduction to the book. As a writer, you inevitably hear your own voice as you write, so it's a rather odd experience to hear your words being read aloud not just in another voice, but even in a different persona. It must be even more extraordinary for a playwright or a scriptwriter, as their words are not only translated into different voices, but are literally brought to life in ways they may never have imagined.  They say a work of art no longer belongs to the artist once it is finished, because people will interpret it in different ways. It certainly felt like...