Memes,fears and suicide

To the Editor

Memes are described as units of cultural transmission, evolving and undergoing natural selection following the same Darwinian principles as genes, exerting a ‘second evolutionary force affecting human development’ (McNamara, 2011). Rapidly expanding social networks and plummeting costs of data (resources, R) are enriching the memetic pool by bringing cultures in contact, adding newer variations and providing memes with a fertile ground to reproduce and propagate. However, in absence of infinite R, ensuing evolutionary pressure is likely to produce a struggle for survival and select variations which are ‘advantageous’ for the host. Given the substrate-neutral nature of evolutionary processes, it is not difficult to extrapolate some of the key features of genetic evolution (Holdcroft and Lewis, 2000) to determine memetic fitness of a population.

Lester (2009), while discussing suicide, characterised successful memes with ‘longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity’. Because memes are psycho-sociological entities, they should ideally be influenced by emotions; akin to genes by phenotypes. Memes evoking emotions which provide survival advantage for the host should propagate and copy itself, gaining edge over more mundane ones. Based on this premise, we briefly discuss the role of fear in effecting positive memetic selection, and its possible role in suicide.

Fear is a powerful and primordial emotion, noted throughout the evolutionary tree. Protecting against self-annihilation via avoidance behaviour, with an ability to attract attention and streamline cognitive resources; memes which invoke fear are thus well-suited to successfully compete for R – more extreme variants surviving the best and ‘grabbing headlines’. Propagated through common imagination and sometimes surviving for centuries, they become integrated into folklore, socio-political and cultural rituals, affecting multiple facets of life.

Researchers have often grappled with explaining Suicide and invoked altruism as a likely explanation for this evolutionary paradox. Its universal nature hints at powerful underlying memes and demands an explanation for their apparent success. There is a possibility that in these individuals, biology is subservient to memes. This ensures that the concept of ‘what-not-to-do-to-harm-oneself’ survives by invoking fear and grabbing attention at a population level; by setting an example to the contrary, claiming a few unfortunate victims and being ‘selfish’ in the process. The more fear it evokes, the wider is its propagation (celebrity suicides). This could also explain the Werther effect as instrumental in introducing small-scale variations, fine-tuning memetic fitness and enforcing selection in face of limited R. If true, this could potentially inform suicide prevention strategies by stimulating research and memetic engineering.