Enacted Memes
A culture, philosopher David Deutsch writes, is "a set of ideas that cause their holders to behave alike in some ways."
These ideas—shared values, languages, skills, philosophical concepts—are memes: ideas that replicate from person to person.
But unlike computer programs, memes cannot simply be downloaded from one mind to another. "A meme cannot be downloaded like a computer program," Deutsch writes. "If it is not enacted, it will not be copied."
Each meme, he explains, must exist in two physical forms alternately: as a memory in the brain, and as behavior.
The recipient cannot see the representation of the meme in the holder's mind. They can only observe the behavior. A poem must be recited. A skill must be demonstrated. A value must be lived. "It is that behaviour, and only that behaviour," Deutsch writes, "that effects the replication." The idea sitting dormant in your mind, never expressed, never enacted, dies with you. The meme that survives is the one that becomes behavior—the one that shows itself to the world.