We started this discussion about the meaning of photography and of images as memes with the basic question whether we are more or less connected today compared to people of the past.  I think that you can guess where I stand on the issue.  Overwhelmingly, I believe that we are more connected.  Photographic images are representative of memes and the more we share photographs and other forms of information and memes, the more we are connected as a global community.

So if you are engrossed in your communication with a larger community than just the people around you, then you are more connected.  I emphasize the word just.  Don’t ignore the people you are with.  You are interacting directly with them in a much more human context than can ever be achieved electronically.  Indeed, failure to do so can, for example, totally ruin your love life.  You are treading perilously close to what William Congreve (1670-1729) (not William Shakespeare) said in his “The Mourning Bride (1697):”

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

If you to any degree believe in the concept of memetic evolution, then you accept, to that degree, the view that this kind of replication through social communication of ideas (and images) is essentially a manifest destiny.  We are meant to do it and must do it in order for our culture (a global and interconnected culture) to evolve.

This said, it must be pointed out again that technology expands choices.  It does not make ethical decisions.  There is as much misinformation as valid information on the internet.  I am constantly dismayed by the foolishness on social media – doctored images and false “facts” to name but two.  It is as if everyone’s brains had turned to mush!

As we reach for the for a better world through communication of images, memes, and ideas; as we literally reach for the stars, we must remember what, this time William Shakespeare, said:

“The fault, …, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Yesterday, I wrote about images of the Challenger disaster and how the event, and by connection the images of the event, became sacred.  Not surprisingly, sacred memes and their connected images are a quintessential element of human culture.  The example given spoke directly of God.  But it is very important to point out that while the sacred as it relates to religion and numinous deities is certainly a widespread class of cultural memes, there are other memes that we hold sacred.  We hold family sacred. We hold country sacred.  We hold our political systems and institutions sacred.  We hold our cultural traditions, our literature and our legends all sacred.  These are all memes, and whenever an image resonates with a sacred meme it strikes a chord with which we relate very deeply.

Our religions seek to explain our place in the universe.  And, in a sense, anything that serves the same role we also hold sacred.  If we are overwhelmed by the beauty of nature, we hold that sacred.  If we stand in respectful awe at ancestors who defended our nation and way of life, we hold them sacred.  In the past couple of weeks, I showed images of several scientific greats: the Curies, Einstein, and Tesla.  All of these individuals sought to explain the place of men and women in the universe, and in a very real sense we hold them sacred.

The role of photography in all of this is defining.  Look at the images of these people, we can almost touch them, and the hair may rise on the back of our necks.  But in all cases these people are gone from us, replaced, extended, and redefined by palpable and cogent memes.

It is significant to point out that the sacred is culturally specific.  In his magnum opus “The Masks of God,”  Joseph Campbell points out that God does not appear to the native American, in the sweat lodge, in the robes of Jesus, but rather in the form of an eagle.  But we believe that the context is universal.

I  have seen this mask effect first hand.  I was once in a museum looking at a painting of a woman in a shower of gold coins.  It seemed very strange, and I read the label “Zeus Seducing Danaë in a Shower of Gold.”  We hold very dear and sacred the myths of the Greeks and Roman.  Judging by our art, it is almost as if they are part of our religions.  But this image, this meme, so clear in the renaissance was lost to me.  The story is from Ovid’s “The Legend of Danaë.”  At least I recalled that she was the mother of Perseus set adrift in a box (like the Meme of Moses).  When Acrisius consulted the oracle(ever up to mischief) he was told that he would have a daughter, whose son would grow up to kill him.  Now that was a big “uh oh” in Greek mythology, otherwise ever ripe with matricide, infanticide, and patricide.  So he cast his daughter Danaë in a subterranean dungeon so that she would not meet any suitable men.  So along comes Zeus, who to impress the maid appears as a shower of gold coins.

Another example of meme lost or meme mutated is when we attempt today to read Shakespeare.  Hamlet says: “Time is out of joint.  Oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.”  We have come to believe in an ever rapidly changing world.  To the Elizabethans the universe was static and unchanging.  Hit them with a comet and watch out.  Hamlet knows that to mess up the order of the world put you in serious trouble with the big guy upstairs.  However, his uncle has upset the world order, and it is Hamlet’s responsibility to fix it.  But this very act of fixing it, he is messing it up again.  It’s kind of a Shakespearean “Catch 22.”

What we are ever seeking is to understand our place in the universe and in that context, we are ever seeking the sacred and images that resonate with sacred memes.  Let’s be clear what we mean by resonate.  You move a bow across the a string on a cello.  The bow attempts to impart all sorts of tones to the string, but they are almost all damped out.  The bow may even attempt to get the string to vibrate laterally, which it refuses to do.  All of the frequencies or tones fall victim to the damping forces except for the very few that have just the right frequencies (those that have nodes on either side of the string).  These are the resonances: pure and clear and loud.  So too, images that resonate with sacred memes are the ones that effect us the most strongly.

And while we seek and gravitate towards those memes that are particular and defining of our own individual culture, we search forever for the universal memes, those that define what it fundamentally means to be human.  Some years ago I visited Chartres Cathedral and I was amazed to see a stained glass window depicting a man with a tree growing out of his loins.  It struck me at the time that this was an image depicting Vishnu living in a lotus blossom that grew out of the navel of Brahma.  Each night the lotus would close up.  Each morning it would open up again.  A life had passed.  I wondered why was this Hindu meme to be found at this holy christian site.  Of course, that wasn’t it.  It is foretold in Isaiah:

“11:1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

11:2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.”

This is the lineage of the Christ.  But you see, the meme of the world tree the central axis of the world is one of those universal memes.

The Cathedral of Chartres is one of those truly amazing universally sacred places.  Needless-to-say, I didn’t take any photographs that day.  If I had been a better photographer, I might have found a way resonate my images with all of the sacred universal memes that define that site.  I was in awe.  And the great Hebraic scholar Joshua Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) has taught us to look for the sacred in the awe.

Figure 1 – The Challenger Disaster. Photograph from the Wikicommons and NASA in the public domain.

On January 28, 1986, I had gone with a friend and colleague to lunch.  We had gone a bit early because we wanted to watch the space shuttle take off.  What we saw, what we will never forget, it is the image shown in Figure 1.  Seventy-three seconds into the flight the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, killing all on board.  If ever an image was a meme,  this is it.  Whenever you mention the disaster by name, this is the image that comes to mind.  I think of those people and the terrible experiences they went through.  It is one of those shared gruesome and terrible moments that haunt the collective memory of our culture.

That night, President Regan went on television to speak to the nation and he said something truly remarkable:

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.”

Regan associated the image of the disaster with our image of God.  He associated the image, associated the meme, with the sacred.  He elevated the ordeal of those lost souls to an epic plane. And now whenever the subject of the disaster is mentioned not only do I see that image and think about the astronauts and their suffering, but I hear those words, and I try to imagine the image or meme that those words create in my mind, in our collective minds.

We have a set of memes in our culture that define the sacred.  And whenever an image, a photograph, touches upon the sacred, it is elevated.  It resonates with what is most deeply human.

In yesterday’s blog, I discussed the parallels between memes and genes.  I spoke about how memes are shared and spread.  I also spoke about the role of photographs both in the acceleration of the memes they represent and in the maintenance of their fidelity.  So wait, memes are shared, they spread,and they mutate!  This is to say that memes are self-replicating and that they evolve.  The evolution of human culture is driven by memes, just like the evolution of species is driven by genes.

The important point is that human beings have evolved a whole new form of evolution.  They are no longer strictly held captive by genetic evolution.  Primitive man developed a simple tool, say a sharpened rock.  Each individual from each generation didn’t have to come upon this meme himself.  It could be past on, replicated, between individuals and across the generations.  The meme “tool” evolved until we find ourselves no longer banging rocks together, but rather banging away at the keyboards of our computers.

Some have argued that it is not speech, nor language, nor the size of our brains that separates us from other animal species, but rather our development of a whole new form of evolution that frees us completely from the slavery of genetic evolution.  This has always struck me as a bit self serving and arrogant.  Are we truly different from other species in a way that truly sets us apart? As we pollute our planet and slowly raise its temperature, as we approach that point when the ocean currents that control our climate will shut down, I think that the jury remains out as to whether we will, as all other species, eventually go extinct.  However, the powerful role that memes, and images, as a dominant form of meme, play in our lives and culture still ring true.  They have given us the ability to develop technology at breakneck speed.

So we start to see why human connectedness in a digital age, where images can and are shared at blinding velocity, is such a force in our lives and cultures.  Images as memes are unifying.  They connect us with what is our common perception.  Herein, I believe, lies the meaning of image and photography.

Figure 1 – Cute cuddley (yummy?) puppies. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Today, I want to speak about images as memes.  The subject is a little abstract, but actually kind of fun, not to mention revealing.  The term meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.”  When we look at an individual: a person, animal, or plant, what makes them an individual is their particular make-up of genes.  Biologists call this defining make-up a phenotype.  A meme is meant to parallel the gene, but to refer to human culture.  Just as genes define an individual’s biological make-up, memes  define an individual’s cultural make-up.  They are the elements of culture.

If you haven’t come across this concept before, it can sound a little strange; but let’s consider a meme in relation to photographs.  If I show you a picture of some puppies then you might say; “Aw, how cute!  Show the same picture to someone in a different culture, they might say: “Yummy!” (Sorry dog lovers.)  And if I show the picture to an alien from another planet they might not have anything to say at first.  They just don’t know how to relate to puppies.  The concept has no cultural context or meaning to them.

Figure 1 – Albert Einstein, 1947, From the Wikicomons and in the public domain because copyright not renewed. Photograph by Oren Jack Turner, Princeton, N.J. – Modified with Photoshop by en:User:PM_Poon and later by User:Dantadd.

To the alien, the puppy picture is something new.  As a meme it starts out as a question mark.  However, it quickly evolves and changes in the alien’s mind.  How, depends upon whether the puppies try to befriend him, or bite his finger (if he has fingers), or even if the alien tries to eat the puppies.  He communicates to all his alien friends (ET phone home!) that this is something sweet, or something scary, or something yummy.  And all the alien’s friends associate these qualities first with the picture and then with the real puppies that they encounter during their sojourn on Planet Earth.  The important point is that the meme is shared.  One person or alien has the experience and he passes it on to everyone else.  It, the meme of puppiness, becomes an element of the alien culture.

If I say the words “Albert Einstein”, they have an immediate meaning to us, and we conjure up in our minds a picture like that of Figure 2.  Your brain starts firing away all of the things that it associates with Albert Einstein.  Funny looking genius physicist with wild white hair.  You might reflexively think “theory of relativity” or “E=mc² ” even if you don’t really know what they are or mean.  It’s culturally memetic.  The man is long gone.  His meme lives on in our minds.

Of course, photographs and images are not the only form that memes take on.  If I say to you cinnamon, what does that conjure up?  An image of a brown powder, or a rolled reddish brown bark? More likely it conjures up the smell of cinnamon and the reassuring sense of cuddling up on a chilly fall day with hot mulled cider or apple pie. 8<)

Indeed, the photograph itself is not the meme.  The meme is what is stored in your head and in the head of the other members of your culture.  But the photograph is very important to the meme.  It serves to accelerate the spread of the meme and it serves as a filter to keep the meme to a certain extent pure.

We’ve talked about the fact that the human eye is not a camera, and that the human brain is not storing JPEG files.  Cover up the picture of Einstein for a moment.  Now tell me whether his top button is buttoned.  Tell me about the nature of the fabric.  Is he looking left or right? There is a furrow that runs up his forehead.  Is it centered?  You might not  notice any of these details.  Adrian Monk would.  Sherlock Holmes would.  But you might not.  These details are not culturally significant. They do not contribute to the meme that is Albert Einstein.

OK, so look at the picture closely again.   Is there something disconcerting – something that Mr. Monk or old Sherlock would certainly pick up on?  The picture violates another mime.  Albert’s coat buttons right to left.  This mime, in western culture, tells us that he is wearing a woman’s coat.

On Sunday, I spoke about the bombing of the Boston Marathon and of the capture of its perpetrators in the context of shared and collective image.  This touches on the profound question of what is the fundamental meaning of photography and imagery.  And perhaps not surprisingly, this takes us, in turn, to the profounder still question of what it means to be human.  This seems like a good jumping off point to take on these deeper questions; so I will attempt to address them over the course of several posts.

For me, these questions relate to an ongoing discourse (argument) that I have been having with a dear and brilliant friend about whether people (the word young is silently implied as a modifier to the word people – those whipper snappers!) of today are more or less connected than in the past.  If you see someone in a store not interacting with the people immediately around him or her, but instead texting and exchanging images with a cadre of distant friends has (s)he become abstract and disconnected or is (s)he more connected by virtue of his or her cyber network?

To ask the question differently, is the cell phone ruining the young people of today?  My immediate response is reflexive.  Well, we’ve heard that question before.  Before the cell phone it was the internet, before the internet it was the video game, before the video game it was television, before television it was radio, before radio it was the bicycle.  Yes, you heard me right – the bicycle ruining the moral fiber of society, corrupting young people to a life of decadent intellectual stagnation and decay.  Somewhere between accusing my friend of being a Miniver Cheevy* and pointing out that science and technology do what they have always done – namely present expanded options, I suddenly realize that this is really a pretty profound question, deeply engrained in our biology, and touching on our very meaning.

So, let’s consider this question of greater or lesser connectivity in the context of photography and the meaning of image, and image as the meaning of mankind.  We have previously discussed the very important point that the human eye is not a camera and the human brain is not storing a RAW, TIFF, or JPEG image.  Photographs and images in general must be considered in the context of human neurobiology. To proceed further with these questions of meaning, over the course of several postings I need (want?) to consider.

• Image and the concept of the meme
• Image and memetic evolution
• Image and the meaning of the sacred

Dangerously, this all sounds complicated.  However, like all elegant knowledge, we in the end recognize it as pretty straight forward.  Oh, and please remember that this is my opinion and perspective.

* Miniver Cheevy

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON