Human Views In Susan Blackmore's Strange Creatures

In Susan Blackmore’s “Strange Creatures” she describes the concept of the “memes eye view”. She claims the “memes eye view” is what makes humans different from animals, meaning humans can imitate therefore must be different from animals. As a reader dwells more on the thought of the “memes eye view” they can relate it to life experiences and other works of literature. For example, the “memes eye view” can be seen very clearly in “Bumping into Mr.Ravioli” by Adam Gopnik. In Gopnik’s work he describes how his daughter started to pick up the busy life style that her mother, brother , and father had adopted just by watching them through the "memes eye view". The busyness of New York is required and if the concept of humans learning by imitation …show more content…
In more threatening areas a child can be exposed and subdued to the memes of drugs, and violence more often than the memes of studying and good habits. Many of the adults claim they can’t get out of the projects because of the environment, which is a sensible argument seeing that people are products of their environment. There is no real way to isolate the children from the bad memes without secluding them in a boarding school or homeschooling the children. But doing this would put their quality of life down and overall rob them of the human experience, which is learning through observation. For example, look how humans learn curse words. We would never hear them from controlled environs like school and home, but rather when we are out with strangers who will eventually become friends. We as humans imitate until we understand and then we make the choice to keep imitating or blaze a new meme. A strategy that is offered by "Bumping into Mr.Ravioli" is to move to a safer environment (out of New York in their case). But even that has its potential downfall because everywhere you go has their bad memes, the south might yield to a bit of a racist meme, out west might yield to a social justice warrior meme, the east might make a person cold and bitter but efficient. This is because "when you imitate someone else, something is …show more content…
It can be seen in the development of almost all children including Adam Gopnik 's daughter, Olivia Gopnik and his son. The concept of the "memes eye view" can be seen anywhere at any time because it is based off the nature of what it is to be human. And because it is based on this nature it is able to be observed within all pop culture and classic literature it is to be seen as a basic fact of nature, viewable from all angles and hidden in plain sight. It is what makes us different from animals but makes all of us alike enough to enjoy the products of others and enjoy each other company. As a fact of human nature, there is no way to limit the bad parts of it or the good parts of it, because it is nature. As science states nature cannot be stopped, therefore there is not a single solution to preventing bad memes that does not lessen the quality of