September 27, 2016 Mile 2292.4-2314.6 22.2 Miles Resupply is the same old story: I can’t make decisions and it takes ten times as long as it needs to. I finally finish, take a shower, check out, and head down to the store to have some breakfast and coffee and wait for Roadside. On the walk down, someone pokes me from behind. I jump a little. I didn’t realize anyone was there. “Oh, hi Rainbow!” “Hi, did you stay in the motel last night?” “Yeah.” “Can I use your shower?” “Oh crap, I just checked out. I think Roadside is still up there, though. He’s in room 7. I’m sure he’d let you use his.” Now that I think about it, it was a pretty dumb move to check out so early. There will probably be more hikers at the store who are eager to take a shower. As it turns out, there’s no one else at the store except for a couple of old local guys. Roadside shows up as I drink my third cup of coffee, and by the time we are done eating, I’ve had four. We walk the road together, but once we get to the trail we go at our own pace, which means that he disappears behind almost immediately. I am hopped up on caffeine and donuts. My legs are moving at breakneck speed, and so is my mind. When someone reads this far in the future, they might think that I have been saying that memes can are conscious. I’m not. Of course, I’m not saying that they aren’t conscious, either. There’s just no way of being able to tell, given the limits of our own consciousness. What I can say is this: structures that replicate, replicate. Structures that don’t replicate, don’t replicate. It’s a tautology. Which means that over a long period of time, we’re left mostly with the structures that replicate. Once there are enough replicating structures, any one that requires resources will have to compete for those resources, assuming they are limited. Resources, at their essence, are the means of longevity, replication, and copying fidelity. In the case of genes, they require energy and raw materials for cell division, as well as the inherent fidelity of the structures themselves—for example, the shorter a gene sequence is, the more likely it is to be copied with fidelity. In the case of memes, the resources can be anything with the capability to transmit information. Computers, books, mathematics. And of course, human beings. What makes memes so interesting is that, much like genes, or lines of code, they contain instructions that lead to real-world actions. Imagine a book with instructions to replace another book with a copy of itself. As long as the librarian faithfully executes the instructions, that book is more likely to proliferate than a book that doesn’t hold those instructions, even if the library starts with only one copy. In the world of genes, the self-replicating codes gradually emerged over long spans of time, but in the world of memes, there was already a framework with the capability to follow out, alter, or create new memes: the human mind. The interesting thing is that the memes aren’t just held by the mind, in many ways they are part of it. Memes about identity and beliefs. As an imperfect metaphor, think of the brain as the hardware, memes about identity and beliefs as software, and other memes as programs. Some of the programs can rewrite the software, and some can make changes to the hardware itself. Someone who grows up in a conservative religious household can later become a liberal atheist if exposed to the right memes. That’s not always easy, though: some of the memes have defensive measures, such as distrust of people from outside the tribe. Religions that promise damnation for people who leave the church, for example, are large meme structures practicing inoculation from opposing ideas. Memes can explain some of our ideas about status, too. As a music teacher, much of my status came from memes within the music teacher tribe: ensembles that played in tune and knew how to decode rhythms were important to the tribe. My status was based in some part around the community itself. In wealthier communities, schools had more money for instruments and parents were more involved in setting up practice routines with their students, so the ensembles were better and it made me look like a better teacher. In a poorer community, the opposite was true: old, shoddy instruments and students that didn’t practice as much. My status was less, despite the fact that I was the same teacher. Out in the wild, none of that status matters anymore. The only tribe is other hikers, and they are so loosely aligned that it really depends on who you are hiking with. Some hikers base status on how many miles you can hike each day, others on how light your base weight is. There’s even a saying that “he who stays on trail longest, wins.” It’s these varying, often conflicting memes that have led to the saying “hike your own hike.” In other words, choose your own definition of status. Don’t be infected by the memes that other people try to impose on you. Hours have passed. I find myself hungry and at a river. I take my time with lunch, but Roadside never shows up. I continue on, sad that I may have lost him. A ranger stops me to see my permit. He tells me I need to start filling out local permits for each of the special use areas ahead. It seems silly that I need another permit on top of this one, but I agree. I’m startled nearly out of my skin by a giant Elk hiding among the trees right beside the trail. He just stands there, so I try to take a picture, but when I stop it spooks him and he runs off. Uphill. Another stop for water. I fumble the filter bag and spill water all over my right foot. I almost succumb to frustration, but it’s not worth it. Just accept reality as it is. A connection is made, and I realize that anicca (pali: as it is) is also a meme. It has had utility in managing my emotions, and that utility has led me to adopt it and replicate it again and again in my own mind. Anger and frustration have some utility, too, but anicca has superceded them in my mind. Is it a meme I have chosen, or has its utility given it an advantage in the tangled web of my mind? Is there another meme within me that decides whether something is useful? Is it in my hardware, or is there actually free choice here? I finish the climb, come over a ridge, and Rainier dominates the view. It is a massive white mound trying to shove its way through the blue ceiling. I stop for a snack break. Elk are calling to one another, a tumbling alien sound that I recognize as the out-of-tune upper tones of the overtone series. Something else catches my ear, and I look back up the trail to see Roadside emerge from the forest.
“There he is!” I say. He grins at me. “I thought you were long gone.” “I waited for a long while at lunch. I was afraid you had passed me when I went to the bathroom.” We stick together the rest of the evening, tromping over ridge and through thick trees, then stopping early for dinner. We speak softly and sparsely during dinner, not wanting to disturb the strange magic of the elk as they call to each other, near and far.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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