Out of my head you filthy memes!

Every evening, I take my vitamins and supplements. And, every evening I am treated to the strains of "Primrose Lane" as soon as I pick up the bottle of evening primrose. I find my self humming it and then I cringe.

I don't know how many of you remember that song. It is kind of an old one. However, we all have these little catch phrases in our heads that trigger memories. Phrases that lead us to songs, movies, or books. We can't stop the flood.

I can't hear the phrase "Let's find out" without thinking of "1 ... 2 ... 3" which was the next line after that in an animated commercial for Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pops from back in the 70s.

There are also songs that, if you hear a phrase or two of them, will stay stuck in your head until you hear a more powerful song to force it out. I used to take great pleasure in torturing a work friend by singing a few bars of one annoying song or another, just to get the song stuck in his head and have him yell at me for doing so. Yes, I know I have an evil streak!

This "Phenomenon" (yes, that was one of the songs) was labeled in the 70s by Richard Dawkins as a Meme. I even read a book about memes called Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie. I was fascinated by how easy it was for millions of people to share an idea or memory.

I've often wondered if the easy spread of memes is a product of our media-baased society. I'm sure it is. I seriously doubt that people living 100 years ago would have shared so many predictable programmed responses to phrases and musical bits that we all do now.

Most of our "infections" can be traced back to commercials. If you are a child of the 60s, and were raised with a television, I'm sure many of the following are still easily accessible in your cultural memory banks:

"I can't believe I ate the whole thing."
"My bologna has a first name ..."
"You're soaking in it."
"I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." (Yes, Coke Licensed an actual song, but more people were exposed to the music through the commercial than the original song had an audience for)
"And she told two friends, and so on, and so on."
"He likes it. Hey, Mikey!"

So, I guess shared culture is good. But, with the globalization of the world's economy, I think many cultures are losing their individuality. Video entertainment is exported from one country to the rest of the world (typically from the U.S. to everywhere else). Consumer products, and the commercials that advertise them, travel around the globe. It saddens me to know that as more and more societies become industrialized (and westernized) cultural diversity of the human species is ever flattened. On the other hand, even if what we are all share as cohabitants of this meme-ship Earth is shallow detris, maybe having more things in common will help us treat each other better, more like neighbors instead of strangers.

So, yeah, maybe I would like to buy the world a Coke. (However, I don't know if I can afford to buy 6 billion Cokes, so some of you are just going to have to share. Sharing will make it easier for everyone to get to know one another a little better too!)