Memetic explanations for why an individual must have sovereignty over interpretation.

When we say that companies, brands, cities, and states live, does this mean that they should express the same sovereignty as humans? If we say that companies live their own life, does that mean that they compete with individuals in the field of freedoms? 

If they are really alive, it seems that their sovereignty follows necessarily. We can even find a kind of proof for such a claim in attacks of today’s majority on companies for “sucking the blood from the veins of their workers”. Companies are pictured as monsters that are treating individuals as slaves, as if they were alive, and as if they had sovereignty over individuals. It seems that if one accepts that human collective structures, such as companies, municipalities, and states, do live, one cannot avoid the totalitarian nature of society. 

In this post, I attempt to reconcile the dynamic nature of companies and brands with the supremacy of the individual over the collective.

Life and emergence

I’m well aware that whenever I say brands and companies are living creatures, those listening consider my statement as metaphorical. I know this from their eyes. When Peter Senge took companies as living creatures back in ’90 (The Fifth Discipline), even I understood his claims as interesting approximations. I guess we all took (take) as granted that life can only be tied to amino acids and DNA replication. We were (and we to some degree still are) strongly tied to the biochemical nature of life as an exclusive one.

When science tried to explain phenomena that could not be directly linked to biochemistry, emergence emerged. Consciousness, for example, which can only exist within something alive, was (is still) understood as an emergent property of something that is material (biochemical).

The emergent property was (and still is) a kind of Deus ex machina. Emergence was coined by philosophers already in the 19th century, but really flourished only by the end of the 20th century with complexity theory applied to biology, physics, and life sciences. However, for instance, Stuart Kauffmann attempted to approach emergence by explaining it as spontaneous self-organization, but this only replaced one vague explanation with another.

All of us who use “emergence” in our thought experiments know that we, in fact, do not know what kind of mechanisms or procedures drive emergence. My first book focused on emergence, presenting certain phenomena as emergencies without explaining emergence itself. It was better than nothing, as it presented at least another reality of something alive, albeit not biochemical, in various existences. And I was not alone in finding emergence as something important but not really rationally explainable.

Memes as problem solvers of the sovereignty

Looking back 12 years, it’s amusing to realize that I didn’t know at the time that I’d devote a significant portion of the book to memes as second replicators, and that the solution actually lies in memes. Then I still did not understand memes as machines that power emergence. Even less was Peter Senge able to explain life within organizations, as he was not even aware of memes. And what is even funnier, Richard Dawkins, who was forced to introduce memes as second replicators in 1976 (The Selfish Gene), later completely abandoned this disruptive explanation of that part of life that is not biochemical. Following the logic of genes, he had to fill in memes in the last chapter of his cardinal book to be consistent. That he later mistook memes for religion is already a colossal tragedy for a scientist who produced such magnificent work until the year 2000. In the crusade against religion, he took all that is of a non-biochemical nature as speculative, anti-scientific, and thus refutable in principle. He abandoned memes completely, and with that, he started his anti-scientific part of his life. A paradox that the majority of stubborn pre-1976 scientists still do not recognize.

What we know now is that memes as basic units of what is colloquially called culture (in the broadest sense) replicate and that the success of their replication rests on fidelity, fecundity, and longevity, as it does for genes. Successful memes inhabit more individuals over a longer period and have a higher rate of replicability. They rest on biochemical brain structures of the grey matter, mostly, but as such, they live on their own as various types of consciousness expressed in many forms, like words, music, pictures, and so on. They reside mainly in the frontal and parietal lobes as more recent brain structures, but are of course linked to more ancient limbic structures of the brain as well. That is why we do see potential in some animals to behave like humans. They have biochemical structures evolved in lobes, albeit on a lower level than human brains, and such brains could be occupied by memes as much as human brains. But being potential is not enough. Memes do not occupy animal brains, or at least not in such quantities that would allow the formation of complex memetic structures with enough energy to reproduce; in other words, with enough energy to live.

Memes and the agency

Energy. The second law of thermodynamics. Memes and their brain structures are not enough. One needs enough of them to start reactions that counteract the second law of thermodynamics. Life, in essence, is a counteraction to the second law, which is nothing but a description of unavoidable death. Death of a human. Death of a Universe. Consequently, memes become agents of life only if they are in such quantities that produce fission of memes. We can indeed compare conditions for their reactivity/activity with conditions for nuclear reaction.

Given that the only possible places where they live and reproduce are individual brains, does this imply that brands, companies, and states are not alive? On the contrary, all mentioned entities are memetic structures. They do exist only as human cultural/memetic entities. As such, they obey all memetic laws with one exception only: they cannot reproduce without human brains. At the moment they form complex structures, they develop the potential to reproduce, but in fact, they reproduce only on the substrate of human brains. They are alive, but as such, they depend on humans.

And when we talk about humans, we have to be very cautious since there is no such thing as “humans” existing. What really exists is always one particular brain of one particular human. No biochemical entity, such as human brains or universal biochemical brains, exists. Only our brains exist on a biochemical level, so only a particular place for meme replication exists. But as I have already proved, that does not mean that collective structures would not be alive. They only lack sovereignty of reproduction.

So all religions are right about an entity that is alive above each individual. All memetic structures, whether living, collective, or individual, reproduce only when attached to a particular human brain. Gossips, for instance, exist as a social memetic structure and is, as such, alive and literary, but it reproduces only within one specific individual brain.

An individual facing collective memes

Now we see that although collective entities are alive, every single individual has full executive authority over even the most powerful collective. Thus, whenever the United Nations or WHO tells you what to do, be aware that it is only up to you whether you will reproduce a memetic structure that such an organization tries to implant. Collective is a memetic structure formulated by a larger quantity of individual brains. Still, since fidelity of meme reproduction is very low in the long run and over a vast distance, it is up to you only whether you will reproduce such a memetic imposter in accordance with abstract interests, or you will follow your own interests. 

One should be aware that memes that seem to originate from collectives come from individuals from such collectives, but are at the same time detached from individuals that co-constructed the, For co-construction of memes within collectives follows the rules of complexity namely that the result is not a sum od memes nor a sort of average of memes, but a new, emergent entity devoid of any deductive connection to originators.

Imposter collective memes have only an implicit connection to the individuals who constructed them. More than memes are collective; the more their fidelity (connection to individual interests) vanishes.

And this is the fundamental difference between humanism and homonism. Humanism advocates for replicating memes based on abstract collective impostors, whereas homonism prioritizes the sovereignty of interpretation and reproduction of memes, placing it on each individual as the sole agent.