When I was having holiday in Medan one week ago, my cousin, Sophia Liauw, lent me a very interesting book with titled "Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell.
This book discusses certain phenomena on the world, how certain event in the world, for some unknown reason start to change and affect majority of society. In the opening of the book, Malcolm Gladwell gives example of Hush Puppies. Hush Puppies is a footwear company which footwear was almost forgotten by 1990s. For some reasons, some sub urbans people start to wear Hush Puppies, and somehow more and more people start to find it cool and start to find Hush Puppies shoes. In short times, Hush Puppies fever started all over the world. This is what Malcolm Gladwell called "Tipping Point", the exponential increase of certain phenomena affecting many people. ( For Hush Puppies case, it is even more interesting, because the company does not even invest in advertising at all. )
Malcolm Gladwell, then discusses three rules of epidemics, causing this to happen:
1. The law of the few.
This is about people. Certain people has the characters, ability and influence to convince other people that certain message is good and worth following.
2. The stickiness factor.
The specific message is able to make people who receive it able to remember it for long time.
3. The power of context.
Basically the environment at that time favors this message.
There are many things to say on the content of this book and I would recommend you go and pick this book and read by yourself.
Being someone that are very interested with Buddhist Psychology, and Early Buddhism, as I'm reading this book, I can't help but recalling an essay, written by Piya Tan on this topic "Memes: How religion imprisons and spirituality liberates"
Probably some of you might not even heard about the word memes before. In wikipedia, you can find out more on this topic:
Upon pondering further, I started to realize that power of memes are encompassing our life much more than we think. My view, my idea, my habit, most of it in fact are imposed by other people to me. For example, I have similar idea of beauty as majority of guys in this world. Girls that I considered pretty and beautiful, are someone that are not too fat, and have certain complexity, certain looks. But, in fact, the idea of beauty in fact was very different in the past. I was informed that there was society in the past who think very fat girl is beautiful, and skinny girl as ugly because they are malnourished. See what I mean? even the idea of beauty that seems personal like this is in fact imposed by society and not comes from our own.
As I reflect on this, memes becomes more and more scary. As Buddhist, I know theoretically from long time ago that human beings are conditioned beings, in a way that we are conditioned by many things around us. To put it in another words, human beings do not have free will as our actions are conditioned from things that happened in the past, things that happened around us, and it is possible, as Malcolm Gladwell showed in his book, to influence the society to perform certain things. (Even crimes can be memes because by changing certain things, somehow crimes in one city like New York, can be exponentially reduced to a level that are much lower compared to the past). To put it into questions:
1. Does this mean that human being like myself has such a limited control on our thoughts, our speech and our action?
2. Does people suffer because of bad deeds (or Kamma) that they did in the past, just because they are conditioned to perform that bad deeds (and not really his free will to do so)?
3. More importantly, is there a way to be free from memes, free from conditions around us?
Luckily, spirituality path of Buddhism always offer possibility of liberation, as western psychologist, Susan Blackmore put it beautifully as follow:
It may seem strange to end this book [Consciousness: An introduction] with what looks like a religious doctrine, when ancient dogma or doctrine cannot be what we are after. It is true that, like all religions, Buddhism has accumulated a vast superstructure of memes, including texts, rituals, beliefs, beautiful buildings, sculptures and statues, music and liturgies. Yet what the Buddha saw is not a meme. It cannot be spoken of directly, and can only be transmitted by tricks of pointing or showing, or doing something to provoke another mind into letting go. This is known in Zen as “transmission outside the scriptures.” (Blackmore 2003:402)
915 I ask the kinsman of the sun, the great seer,
about solitude, the state of peace.
How does a monk, when he has seen,
become quenched, not grasping anything in the world?
916 Being a thinker (mantā), he would uproot
all perception-based mental proliferations about “I am,” said the Blessed One.
Whatever internal cravings there may be,
ever mindful, he trains himself to dispel them.
917 Whatever things he may understand,
whether within himself or outside,
he would not be stubborn about it:
for, this is not called “quenching” by the wise.
918 Because of that, he would not think he is “better,”
or “inferior to,” or “equal to,” or such like,
when touched by various forms,
he would not let his thoughts remain within himself.
919 Only within himself he seeks stillness,
A monk would not find peace anywhere else.
For one who is at peace within,
there is no self, not to say of what is not self.
920 Just as in the middle of the ocean,
no waves arise, it remains still—
even so, he would stand still, unshaking,
a monk swells not in arrogance about anything. (Sn 915-920)
Closing note: In Business, memes are very useful and highly sought because this is how corporate able to makes money. If one company is able to turn its product to be liked and attached by many people in the world, the corporates will earn a lot of money because people do not mind paying money to get what they like (think of IPhones, Hush Puppies, Louis Vuitton, etc). Religion especially God religion do loves memes because it is tools that make people be converted and turned to them, and even donates lots of money, efforts, etc to them. (think of Evangelical religions). BUT, spirituality path of Buddhism (please exclude organized religion of Buddhism), have the final goal of destroying Memes, to liberate being so that they become truly unconditioned, truly liberated, and truly free.
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