memes – Pertinent Observations

Cults and kaLsanyasis

I’ve long maintained that religion is a meme. And religions as we know it today have evolved over the last few hundred years (or millenia), though a combination of replication, crossover and mutation. I’ve argued that fun practices are necessary for religions to maintain their memetic fitness, and that people (at the margin) will choose to celebrate festivals that are more fun, and festivals need to be more fun to improve memetic fitness.

Today I came across this old article in the New York Times (possible paywall) about how the decline of cults is a problem. One of the arguments that the author Ross Douthat makes is that cults keep religions fresh, and help them continuously evolve. Yes, cults can be destructive and dangerous and could even kill, but in case they are not and they “survive”, they could even go mainstream.

He gives the examples of Mormonism in the 1900s in the United States, or Jesuits and Franciscans even earlier, as cults that over the period of time became mainstream in terms of religion.

Based on the religion-as-meme framework, you can think of cults as mutations in the religious meme code. Cults keep large parts of their “parent religion” and then experiment with important differences. If these differences prove to be popular (and not dangerous), the cults will prosper, giving rise to a new strand of the religion. Sometimes that can lead to a new religion itself.

While the article linked above is US-centric, and from 2014, India in 2020 has no shortage of cults. A number of cult leaders, such as Paramahamsa Nithyananda and Jaggi Vasudev, have become memes in themselves (apart from their respective cults trying out mutations in the Hindu meme code). Some others, such as Gurmeeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan and Asaram Bapu have been found to be dangerous and put in jail – it’s likely that their cults’ memes aren’t too fit.

And as these cults come and go, mainstream Hinduism sometimes copy from them, sometimes in a good way and sometimes not. And what the cults ensure (not willingly) is that the religion itself remains fresh, and as the religion remains fresh, more people will be inclined to follow it.

So while at the level of the individual (think of the victims of (sexual and other) harassment that is rather common in some cults) the cults may not be a great thing, at the systemic level, they make sense.

And the more we make fun of Nithyananda and the more we forward his funny videos on WhatsApp, the more the next “religious entrepreneur” will be inclined to make it big.

Evolution of sports broadcasting

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday morning when I was watching the highlights of Liverpool’s 4-0 victory at Leicester. The picture quality suddenly looked better. The production aesthetics in the first few seconds (before coverage of the actual match began) looked “American”. I doubted myself for a minute if this was actually English football I was watching.

And then I remembered that the pictures for this game came from Amazon Prime. The streaming service had got rights to broadcast two full rounds of Premier League games this season, making a small chink in the duopoly of Sky Sports and BT Sport.

Traditional media wasn’t too impressed by it. Streaming necessarily meant a small delay in broadcast, and that made it less exciting for some viewers. The Guardian predictably made a noise about the “corporate takeover” with Amazon’s entry. From all the reports I read (mostly across the Guardian and the Athletic), commentators seemed intent on picking holes in Amazon’s performance.

That said, the new broadcaster also brought a fresh production aesthetic. While there were the inevitable teething problems (I must confess I didn’t watch these games live – being midweek evening games, they were very late night in India), Amazon for sure brought some new ideas into the broadcast.

Just like Fox Sports had done when it had done a big launch into NFL broadcasting in the early 90s. Read this oral history of that episode. It’s rather fantastic. Among the “innovations” that Fox Sports brought into American broadcasting (based on its sports broadcast in Australia, primarily) was this box at the corner showing the time and the live score. The thing wasn’t initially well received, but is now a fixture.

For evolution to happen, you need sex. And that means mixing things up, in ways they weren’t mixed before. If we were all the children of a super-god and a super-goddess, we would all be pretty much the same since the amount of “innovation” that could happen would be limited. And things would be boring, and static. Complex forms such as human beings could have never happened.

It is similar in business, and sports broadcasting, as well. When you have the same channels covering the same sports, they get into well-set local optima, and nothing new is tried. There is no necessity for improvement in that sense.

When new players comes in, preferably from another market, however, they see the need to differentiate themselves, and bring in ideas from their former market. And this leads to a crossover of ideas. In their efforts to stand out and make an impact, they might also bring in some ideas never seen anywhere – “mutations” in the evolutionary sense.

A lot of them don’t make sense and they die out. Others score unexpected hits and catch on. And that way, this memetic evolution leads to better business.

The great thing about memetic evolution is that while bad ideas come along much more often than good ideas, they get discarded fairly quickly, while the good ideas live on. And that leads to overall better products.

Right now in India we have a duopoly in sports broadcasting, controlled by the Star family and the Sony family. I’ve ranted several times about how the latter is absolutely atrocious and does nothing to improve the game. Hopefully a new player getting rights of some sport here will shake things up and bring in fresh ideas. Even if some of the ideas turn out to be bad, there will be plenty of good ideas.

Check out the highlights of the Leicester-Liverpool game, and you’ll get an idea.

Once upon a time

Thanks to gifts from various sources (including the National Health Service, where we’d gone for a checkup), Berry has a few books now. Most of them have lots of pictures (the only book we’ve bought for her is simply a collection of animal pictures). Some have text as well. And it is that that is rather underwhelming.

I don’t know the target age group for most of these books, but the stories seem damn lame to Pinky and me. In my opinion, a good children’s book (or show) should not only be interesting for the child, but also for the parents – it is not often that the child uses the book or show alone. And from that perspective, a lot of these books Berry has got don’t pass the muster.

The books I had when I was a kid may not have been particularly optimised for a child. The illustrations weren’t great. The paper quality was underwhelming as well (one thing Berry can’t do with her books is to tear them! A useful quality for sure for children’s books). But the stories were fantastic. And things that I still remember.

Most of these stories came from the Panchatantra, which is a collection that “evolved” over time. This memetic evolution means that the stories that have come till today are “fit”, and fantastic. It’s similar with Aesop’s Fables – their age means that stories have evolved sufficiently to become damn interesting. And of course, this applies to the Ramayana and Mahabharata as well (and NOT to Christian myth, which didn’t get time to evolve and is thus rather boring).

Speaking of myth, I recently read Neil Gaiman’s book on Norse Mythology. It’s a good book, and I’ll make Berry read it before she is five. But the stories themselves were all rather underwhelming and devoid of complexity. Considering it’s an ancient myth, which had sufficient time to evolve being written down, the simplicity of plots is rather surprising. Or maybe it’s the way Gaiman told the story.

I’m reminded of this “one Shloka Ramayana” that I’d been made to mug up as a kid (I still remember it “by heart”. Maybe Gaiman’s book is the Norse equivalent of this?

Poorvam Rama Thapovanadhi Gamanam
Hatva Mrigam Kanchanam
Vaidehi Haranam, Jataayu Maranam
Sugreeva Sambhashanam

Bali Nigrahanam, Samudra Tharanam
Lankapuri Dahanam,
Paschath Ravana Kumbhakarna Madanam
Ethat Ithi Ramayanam

In any case, considering the lack of plots in “modern” children’s books, we’re seriously exploring the idea of bringing back truckloads of Amar Chitra Katha when we visit India later this year.