I recently revisited a fruitful redundancy conversation between Richard Dawkins’ on ‘memes,’ conjoined with Spiral Dynamics, by Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan. During this reread, I noticed connections between Clare Graves’ evolving spirals, Julian Jaynes ethological theory of bicameral mindbody development, perhaps the more nutritional behavioral-neural roots of Positive Psychology. Mapping all these together as one interdependent ecopolitical evolutionary empowerment of ecoconscious Right with ecologically language and deductive Left, Spiral Dynamics looks both newly refined, but also disturbingly redundant of Buckminster Fuller’s Synergy, informed by William Thurston’s and Gregori Perelman’s (et. al., Group Theorists) 4 prime bilateral dimensions of spacetime and (0) soul dipolar co-arising theorems, respectively.
However, the esoteric octave and fractal rhythms of nature and math beg for more immediate Climate Health and Earth Rights economic, ecological, and political empowerment. In Spiral Dynamics speak: How do we fast-forward into Turquoise, the land of Milk and Honey Enlightenment of (0) Zen Interdependence, balancing holonic empty-null universally diastatic sets of memes, or nomials, binomials, polynomials, health regenerative trends, refining less economic-ecologic-political-social-cultural-psychological-biological pathology, as we progress, develop, more maturely optimize our regenerative-integrative polypathic DNA/RNA folding/unfolding climate structures.
Memes, like genes, are regenerative, self/other nondual replicating nutritional patterns. In Buckminster Fuller’s terminology, genes are about convex-physical universe, while memes are their concave-metaphysical ecopolitical-ecological co-arising nonduality. Genes produce physical things that can be nouned, labeled, nomialed. Memes produce metaphysical relationships of health-regenerate power-with cooperation and/or power-over competitive monoculturing pathologies of nutritional imbalance, climate imbalance, landscape and paradigmatic relational imbalance, cognitive-affective dissonance. These operate at the individual, species, and meta-cultural interdependent exterior ecopolitical climate levels of endo/ecto-symbiotic evolution, within as without, concave metaphysical as convex physical ecologies of mindbodies.
Memes have integrative viral reproductive potential for health and for appositionally bilateral pathologies, not enough, too much, too soon, too late for resonantly redundant mapping onto global ecoconsciousness, co-empathic trust/distrust—confluence of exegetically etched abundant light between dualdark extremes of either-or LeftBrain dominance. Both interdependent developmental stages of LeftBrain development, and language-empty Elder Right hemispheres together dipolar co-arise Turquoising/UltraViolet climate health balance.
In previous selective readings from Beck and Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics, I had skipped (pp. 30-33) “Genes and Memes: Circuit Riders on the DNA.” No such bad luck this time. What follows is direct quote, with all my handwritten notes inserted in brackets, drawing in the larger ecopolitical-ecological climate health map drawn with Jaynes, and Fuller, and Bateson, and Thomas Kuhn evolutionary influences.
“[W]hat biochemical genes are to the DNA [thermodynamic balance prime relational fractal-function], memes are to our psycho-[eco]cultural ‘DNA.’ Genes are the information [and exforming] units of our physical nature derived from genetic contributions of mom and dad and properties inherited from our species [borrowing phylogenic properties from even older species, borrowing functional digestive/nutritional health v pathology ecopolitical properties from even older plant species, spaces and places in time both regenerative and decomposing into bilateral past/future cause/effect encoding meme-ories]. Memes are born, Csikszentimihalyi notes, ‘when the human nervous system reacts to [learns from] an experience.’ (Evolving Self, p. 120) They are the information [exformation storage and labels, icons and ionic-bionic function] units in our collective consciousness and transport their [health/pathology sensory climate/chemistry] views across our [ecoconscious co-identified co-empathic] minds [with still-learning bodies].”