There have been some serious efforts to uncover and compare "memes" (rhymes with "seems" and "beams") in human life. The idea is that a thought or quote or some other unit of human mind or society sometimes travels from person to person, nation to nation, generation to generation, just as genes do. With more communication and covering the globe, there is bound to be faster change in expressions, styles and preferred activities and tools to complete them.
I first ran into the concept in the Christopher Moore novel, "Fluke, or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings." That is a weird but memorable book about oceanography and Hawaii and academic field research. The expression and concept derive from The Selfish Gene by the well-known British biologist, Richard Dawkins. I gather that Dawkins explored the angle of explanation that takes the gene as the basic unit of life and plants and animals as the genes' way of perpetuating itself.
I am interested in cliches, especially faddish ones that come and go. I can recognize them when I hear them, probably because I didn't used to hear them or because they are a clever construction, if overused. Two that I have dredged up are
- "Don't go there" or "Don't even go there" - meaning "get off this line of discussion because I don't want to talk about it"
- "You got that right" - meaning "Right on, Brother, I totally agree". This phrase was used to good effect in the very funny novel "Big Trouble" by Dave Barry.
Now that I write that, I am reminded that when I was growing up, I heard people say "Right!" meaning "very correct" but I never heard the "on" added. The first I heard "right on" was on a firing range, where the spotter with a telescope reported a shot dead in the center of the bull's eye. I also never heard people answer a roll call with "Yo" until summer camp. Now, I hear "Yo, John" and "Hey, John" in place of "Hi, John" or "Hello, John".
I am slowly getting accustomed to being told "No problem" when I expect "I would be happy to..." or "You are quite welcome." My wife and I find that being told we are not or were not a problem often seems to be saying that had we been a problem, we would not have been helped.
