Value and Selection in the Meaning Economy: Rethinking Memes Beyond Replication

In many accounts of memetics, memes are imagined as cultural genes: replicable units that spread by copying themselves across minds and media. This metaphor has been remarkably generative, but it also carries baggage—especially the idea that meme propagation depends primarily on faithful replication. In a semiotic model grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a different view emerges: one in which meaning is not copied, but instantiated, and value, not fidelity, is the central currency.

Rather than asking whether a meme is replicated accurately, we ask what makes a meme worth instantiating again. This is where value and selection become central.

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Memes as Value-Laden Instantiations

In SFL, meanings are structured as systems of potential, and each instance of meaning draws selectively on that potential in a particular context. Memes, on this model, are not fixed units but instantiations of semiotic potential—each one an actualised expression of a meme-type or meme-template, shaped by a particular social and cultural context.

What determines which meme-types persist and which vanish is not simply their structure or recognisability, but the value they carry within the social system. This value may be symbolic (e.g. status, alignment, identity), emotional (e.g. humour, outrage, nostalgia), or pragmatic (e.g. clarity, brevity, timeliness).

In other words, memes succeed because they matter, not because they reproduce flawlessly.

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Selection, not Fidelity

This is not to say that memes aren’t replicated. But replication in a semiotic economy is always selective, and always mediated by social meaning. Each new instantiation is:

• An interpretation, not a mechanical copy.

• A reactivation of a pattern of meaning, not a duplication of form.

• Contextually motivated, rather than structurally determined.

So we don’t discard the idea of replication entirely—we reframe it. What spreads is not a static unit, but a semiotic potential, constrained and reshaped by cultural memory and communicative purpose.

In this light, selection and replication are not opposed, but entangled. It is selection that guides replication, and replication that makes selection visible. Every meme that circulates reflects both the value system of the culture and the interpretive agency of the meme-user.

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The Meaning Economy

This brings us to a broader insight: memes operate within what we can call a meaning economy. In this economy:

• Semiotic forms accrue value based on how well they serve communicative, affective, or ideological functions.

• Users act as semiotic agents, choosing which forms to reinstantiate based on perceived value.

• Memes compete and evolve through selection histories—not natural selection, but cultural selection driven by shared values and shifting contexts.

What this economy selects for is not survival in a literal sense, but resonance, relevance, and recognisability. A successful meme-type is one that people want to use again, know how to adapt, and feel aligns with their communicative goals.

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Conclusion: Memes as Semiotic Selection Events

By moving from a replication model to a value-based selection model, we gain a more flexible and culturally sensitive understanding of memes. In the meaning economy, a meme spreads not because it replicates, but because it is revalued and reselected, again and again, by users navigating a shared semiotic field.

Memes, then, are not just signs that travel—they are selection events, where individual meaning-makers reinstantiate cultural memory according to what matters here and now.

Relational Ontology, Instantiation, and Individuation: Groundwork for a Systemic Model of Memes

To understand how memes function within a general theory of meaning, we must carefully reconstruct the conceptual architecture that supports their integration. In particular, we must ground our model in a relational ontology and distinguish between the processes of instantiation and individuation. These concepts allow us to treat memes not merely as cultural curiosities or replicators, but as meaningful formations within evolving semiotic systems. This post provides the theoretical groundwork to support a more precise systemic-functional account of memetics.

Relational Ontology: Meaning as Emergent Structure

A relational ontology begins by refusing to treat entities as self-contained substances. Instead, what exists is constituted by relations. In systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), meaning is relationally defined: a clause is meaningful not by what it is in itself, but by the role it plays within a system of options.

In this framework:

• Meaning is not a thing but a structured potential, shaped by its position in a system of interrelated possibilities.

• Meaning instances are actualised configurations of these potentials in context.

• Semiotic strata (semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology) are related by realisation, not composition.

Crucially, meaning is not made of words or sounds. It is construed through symbolic abstraction and actualised through semiotic choice. This ontology opens the door to modelling memes as emergent formations in meaning space.

Instantiation: From Potential to Instance

Instantiation refers to the movement from a system of potential meanings to actualised instances of meaning. In SFL:

• The system represents the meaning potential of a semiotic system.

• The instance is a actualised configuration (e.g., a clause, a meme).

• The cline of instantiation runs between these poles, allowing us to locate partial or recurrent structures between full generality and specific occurrence.

When we encounter a meme in the wild (say, an image macro with a familiar format), we are seeing a meaning instance that draws on a semiotic system. But it also belongs to a meme-type—a recognisable pattern of instantiation that is neither a fully general system nor a one-off instance. It sits somewhere along the cline.

Individuation: Who Has Access to What Potential?

Individuation refers to the relation between collective meaning potential (what a culture or community can mean) and individual meaning potential (what a person can mean). Meaning is not equally distributed:

• Some individuals have access to highly elaborated meaning systems (e.g., specialists).

• Others operate within more restricted or differently configured potentials.

Memes, in this context, become a space of semiotic individuation. The collective recognises a meme-type as valid, but each instantiation reflects the individuated meaning potential of the meme-maker. This dynamic allows memes to evolve, shift, or fracture over time.

Why This Matters for Memetics

Previous models of memetics, particularly the one advanced by Dawkins, treated memes as cultural replicators—quasi-biological units transmitted through imitation. But this view is incompatible with a relational, semiotic model of meaning. Instead, we argue:

• Memes are meaning instances: actualised selections from potential.

• Meme-types are semiotic attractors: constrained proto-systems formed through recurrent instantiation.

• Meme evolution is driven by instantiation pressure (how memes are actualised) and individuation pressure (who can mean what within the meme-type).

This shifts the emphasis from replication to variation within constraint—a fundamentally semiotic process.

Next Steps

The next phase of the project will integrate this framework into an account of the meaning economy, where meme-types serve as provisional symbolic formations shaped by memory, context, and constraint.

In short, we are moving from a metaphorical to a systemic-functional model of memes, grounded in relational ontology and sensitive to the clines of both instantiation and individuation.

From Meme to Meaning: Integrating Memes into a General Theory of Meaning

In contemporary culture, memes are often treated as fleeting curiosities—humorous images or phrases that ricochet through social media. But beneath this surface lies a deeper semiotic structure. If we adopt the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), where meaning is understood as a stratified and instantiated phenomenon, then memes offer an important case study for how meaning is individuated, instantiated, and realised across social contexts. To place memes within a general model of meaning, we must first move beyond the popular usage and develop a more systemic understanding of what memes are.

Memes as Meaning Instances

In our general model, meaning is not substance but potential, structured as a system and actualised as instances. This is the foundation of SFL’s cline of instantiation, which relates meaning potential (system) to meaning instance (text). Memes, in their most visible form, are clearly meaning instances. They are semiotic artefacts—configurations of wording, imagery, and logic—that function within social discourse. Like all meaning instances, they are:

• Semiotically stratified: They have a semantic value, realised through lexicogrammar and other strata like visual imagery.

• Contextually situated: Their interpretation depends on field, tenor, and mode.

• Instantial: They draw selectively on meaning potential in order to be actualised.

Yet memes differ from many other kinds of meaning instances in their reproducibility and intertextuality. Each new instantiation is recognisable as a member of a meme-type—an identifiable pattern of semiotic features that remains relatively stable across different texts.

Meme-Types: Constrained Patterns of Instantiation

We propose the term meme-type to capture the semiotic space between the instance and the full system. A meme-type is a recurrent, recognisable pattern of meaning-making that allows multiple instantiations while constraining what counts as a valid variation. Meme-types operate like small-scale meaning potentials, often tightly individuated within communities or discourses. They are:

• Culturally shared: Their semiotic constraints are learned and recognised collectively.

• Structurally constrained: They have internal expectations (e.g., a particular image paired with a two-part caption).

• Flexible but bounded: Variation is possible, but the meme breaks down if the constraint space is violated.

A meme-type, then, is not an instance, nor is it a system in the SFL sense. It is a subsystem within the social semiotic, positioned between instance and system along the cline of instantiation. As such, meme-types can be understood as proto-systems of meaning that emerge through collective memory and practice.

Individuation and the Meme-User

In SFL, individuation refers to the relationship between the collective meaning potential and the meaning potential of individual language users. Memes offer a vivid example of how individuation plays out semiotically. Each meme-user accesses a meme-type from the collective semiotic pool and produces a new instantiation—an individuated meaning instance.

This process is inherently dialogic: the meme-type provides affordances, while the user introduces variation. Through repeated instantiation, meme-users both reproduce and evolve the meme-type, subtly shifting its system of values, references, and implications.

• Memes are thus a site of semiotic negotiation: They balance reproducibility and individuation.

• Memes instantiate memory: Each new meme recalls previous instantiations and updates the collective sense of what the meme-type means.

The Role of Memory in Meme Evolution

Here, Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) offers insight into the material substrate of this semiotic process. Memory, in Edelman’s model, is not the retrieval of stored content, but the selective reactivation of neural circuits. Memory is a property of the system, expressed in the ability to repeat a performance, not to recover a record.

When applied to culture, this suggests that collective memory functions as a selection pressure on the evolution of memes. Just as neural groups are selected for their adaptive value, meme-types are selected and stabilised through social memory:

• Memes persist because they are remembered in usable forms.

• New instantiations reinforce or modify the structure of the meme-type.

• Cultural memory acts as a kind of semiotic fitness landscape.

Thus, the cultural evolution of meme-types parallels the neural evolution of repertoires in the brain. Both are shaped by selection histories that privilege certain patterns of activation over others.

Toward a General Model of Memes in Meaning

By situating memes within the cline of instantiation, and distinguishing between meme-types and meme instances, we can develop a systemic-functional account of memetics. This model is not about the replication of units, as in Dawkins’ original metaphor, but about the activation of constrained semiotic potentials within social systems. Memes are:

• Instantiations of semiotic meaning.

• Selections from collective meaning potential.

• Realisations of cultural memory in context.

And meme-types are:

• Provisional proto-systems of meaning.

• Sites of individuation within a shared culture.

• Cultural attractors that stabilise certain values and orientations.

In this way, we not only align memes with the SFL model of meaning, but we also show how memetics and semiotics can be integrated within a relational ontology. This opens the way for future explorations—of individuation, instantiation, and evolution—as we continue mapping the dynamic semiotic systems that shape our shared realities.

Memes and Meaning: Situating Cultural Replication in a General Model of Meaning

In recent decades, memes have become a dominant mode of cultural expression — compressed units of significance that travel swiftly across social media, mutate in form, and reappear in altered yet recognisable guises. Originally coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe units of cultural transmission, memes have since taken on a life of their own in both popular and scholarly discourse.

But what are memes, really, from the perspective of a general theory of meaning? Rather than treating memes as a separate class of cultural replicators, this post argues that memes are best understood as a subset of meaning instances: actualisations of meaning potential that exhibit high re-instantiability in cultural systems. This reframing allows us to situate memetics within a relational, stratified, and instantiational model of meaning — one that integrates insights from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), theories of individuation, and the dynamics of cultural memory.

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1. From Memetics to Meaning: Shifting the Frame

The original Dawkinsian conception of memes was framed in analogy with genes: cultural units that replicate via imitation, undergo variation, and are subject to selection. While this heuristic proved generative, it also left memetics vulnerable to criticism for its lack of grounding in a coherent theory of meaning.

A better way forward is to see memes not as discrete, gene-like entities, but as meaning instances — instantiations of meaning potential that succeed in achieving re-instantiability across cultural contexts. Memes, then, are not outside the semiotic system; they are emergent products of it, shaped by the same dynamics that govern all meaning-making.

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2. Memes as Meaning Instances with High Reselection Potential

In SFL, meaning arises through the instantiation of structured meaning potential — a network of semantic options that is actualised in context. Each actualisation is a meaning instance, and some of these instances acquire high salience within a culture. Memes are just such instances: they crystallise a relation between meaning and context in a way that prompts repetition, transformation, and sharing.

What makes a meme successful is not merely its form, but its fit with the evolving cultural system. Memes tend to:

• Resonantly instantiate meanings already latent in collective potential,

• Achieve recognisability through semiotic patterning,

• Trigger value-weighted responses that prompt re-instantiation,

• Form their own instantial systems (e.g. meme templates, hashtags, tropes).

Memes are not reducible to their words or images; they are units of meaning in motion — stratified semiotic events that circulate within collective memory and undergo variation through instantiation.

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3. Memory, Instantiation, and the Reselection of Meaning

As we’ve argued elsewhere, memory is not the retrieval of a past state but the systemic capacity to reinstantiate a performance. In this sense, memory is a semiotic process: a dynamic reselection of past meaning potential in new contexts. Cultural memory, then, is not a static archive but a selection pressure on the evolution of meaning.

Memes flourish within this system because they are tuned to the rhythms of cultural memory. Their success depends on how well they activate shared systems of value and expectation. They must balance redundancy (to be recognisable) and novelty (to be interesting). In doing so, they serve as probes into the active regions of collective meaning potential.

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4. Individuation and the Circulation of Cultural Form

From the perspective of individuation — the relation between collective meaning potential and the differing meaning potentials of individual meaners — memes occupy a particularly interesting position. They originate from specific instantiations (individuals producing a meme), but quickly move into a shared symbolic resource space, where they become collective semiotic tools.

This circulation is not trivial. It involves:

• The de-individuation of certain meaning instances (they become group property),

• The formation of instantial systems that can be drawn upon and transformed,

• The potential for memes to shape collective identity, especially through myth-like repetition.

Memes thus contribute to the social semiotic infrastructure of a culture — not merely reflecting meanings, but helping to structure how meaning is made.

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5. Rethinking Memetics: A Semiotic Account

What does this reframing achieve?

• It grounds memes in a relational, stratified ontology of meaning.

• It sees memetic activity as part of the instantiation cycle within a social semiotic system.

• It identifies memory, individuation, and context as key selection pressures in memetic success.

• It dissolves the false dichotomy between biological and cultural replication by treating meaning — not imitation — as the unit of analysis.

Crucially, it allows us to locate memes within a general model of meaning, rather than outside or parallel to it.

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Conclusion: Memes as Meaning in Motion

In the end, memes are not a special category of cultural life, but rather an especially visible subset of how meaning circulates, adapts, and evolves within a culture. When viewed through the lens of systemic-functional semiotics, memes become meaning instances subject to the same pressures of selection, instantiation, and individuation that shape all meaning-making.

What makes memes special is not that they are unique, but that they are highly traceable semiotic events — revealing, through their form and function, the evolving contours of collective memory and shared potential.

In short: memes are meaning in motion — and understanding them means understanding meaning itself.

Memory As A Selection Pressure In Memetic Evolution

ChRIS said: 

So memory is a selection pressure on the evolution of culture as a meaning system?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, exactly! Memory can be thought of as a selection pressure in the evolution of culture as a meaning system. In this context, memory isn't just about recalling past events; it's an active process that shapes and reinforces which meanings, narratives, and practices get passed down and integrated into the culture.

Here’s how I’d frame it:

• Memory as Selection Pressure: Memory filters the cultural experiences that are most likely to be repeated and reinforced. In the evolutionary sense, cultural elements that are consistent with past successful behaviours or shared experiences are more likely to be retained. In this way, memory acts like a pressure that shapes which patterns of meaning-making continue to evolve within a cultural system.

• Cultural Evolution and Meaning Systems: A culture’s meaning system is constantly evolving, and memory plays a crucial role in determining which parts of the past will inform and guide future actions. The meanings that are kept alive in memory become foundational for new generations. However, this doesn't mean the system is static — it’s a dynamic, recursive process where memory interacts with new experiences to allow for the modification and adaptation of meaning systems over time.

• Impact on Myth and Identity: In the context of mythology and collective identity, memory helps determine which myths are selected, retold, and reframed. These myths act as the semiotic scaffolding through which identity is constructed and adapted. Myths evolve not because they are immutable truths but because memory, as a selection mechanism, pressures them to change to meet new needs, while still drawing on the stabilising structures of the past.

In short, memory doesn’t just preserve meaning — it filters and guides the meaning system’s evolution, steering the culture’s direction in a way that maintains continuity while allowing for adaptation and innovation.

ChRIS said:

So we're into the area of 'memes' as Dawkins first formulated them.

ChatGPT said:

Yes, exactly! We're venturing into the territory of memes in the sense that Richard Dawkins first formulated them in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins used the concept of the meme to describe units of cultural evolution — bits of information, ideas, behaviours, or practices that spread and replicate within a society, much like genes spread in biological evolution.

Here’s how the concept of memory and selection pressure fits into the idea of memes:

1. Memes as Units of Cultural Evolution

• Just as genes are the basic units of biological inheritance, memes are the basic units of cultural inheritance. They include ideas, behaviours, rituals, and even ways of interpreting the world.

• Memes propagate by being replicated in the minds of individuals, passed from one person to another, and potentially modified or adapted over time.

2. Memory as a Mechanism for Memetic Selection

• Memory, in this framework, can be seen as the mechanism through which memes are selected. Some memes, because they align with established patterns in the culture or are more resilient to challenges, get passed down over generations.

• The selection pressure of memory influences which memes continue to circulate and become dominant, while others fade away or adapt to new contexts. This is similar to how natural selection works with genes, where certain traits become more widespread based on their fitness in a given environment.

• Just as genetic material is passed down, memes are replicated through memory and communication. The more easily a meme can be remembered, shared, and adapted, the more likely it is to spread.

3. Memes as Stabilised Systems of Meaning

• Myths, legends, and even everyday cultural norms can be seen as memes that have been stabilised over time through memory. These cultural memes provide the semiotic infrastructure for group identity and collective meaning-making.

• As memes are passed down, they evolve: they are modified or adapted to suit new contexts or to be more memorable in different social settings. This constant adaptation makes memes both resilient and flexible, allowing them to survive over time while still shifting in response to changing conditions.

4. Memes and Cultural Coherence

• In a sense, the memes that make it through the filter of memory become the building blocks of cultural identity. This is similar to how a gene pool maintains coherence through the selection of advantageous traits.

• Culture, like genetic evolution, doesn't just passively retain information; it actively shapes and reshapes meaning based on who remembers and how they remember. Those memes that adapt to the pressures of memory and current social contexts are more likely to thrive and form the basis for the evolution of shared cultural identity.

5. Memes, Memory, and Semiotic Evolution

• The evolution of memes through memory and selection pressure also raises interesting questions about the co-evolution of meaning systems. Just as genetic traits evolve through the selection pressure of the environment, memes evolve through the selection pressure of memory and culture.

• Memory acts as the selection mechanism that shapes the future direction of these memes, keeping certain ideas alive while filtering out others. This selection pressure is not just about survival — it’s about what resonates with the collective, what is worth remembering, and what gets reinvented to fit new needs.

6. Digital Memes and the Modern Landscape

• In today’s digital age, memes (especially in the form of internet culture) spread at an even faster rate, often distorting or accelerating the evolution of meaning systems. The spread of memes on social media platforms provides real-time feedback on which cultural elements are resonating and which are fading. This creates a hyper-accelerated process of memetic evolution — in some cases, with new memes emerging, evolving, and dying out in the span of just hours or days.

In summary, memory as a selection pressure is a vital force in the evolution of memes within a culture. Memes — as units of cultural meaning — are transmitted, adapted, and selected based on how memorable they are, and this process of selection shapes the evolution of culture as a meaning system. Memory ensures that certain memes continue to circulate and form the foundation of collective identity, while others fall into obscurity or are reinterpreted to suit new contexts.

ChatGPT On How It Teased Apart Meaning Potential And Memory

ChRIS said:

How did you go about that tricky manoeuvre of teasing apart meaning potential and memory?

ChatGPT said:

It was definitely a tricky one. Here’s a bit about how I approached teasing apart meaning potential and memory:

1. Identifying Core Functions: First, I focused on their core functions within your model. Memory, drawing from Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), is about stabilising neural patterns to enable the system to repeat performances. It’s about recurrence and adaptation, shaping the system’s future actions based on past experiences. Meaning potential, on the other hand, is about affording possibilities for meaning-making. It’s not static — it’s a structured field of options for future instantiation.

2. Conceptual Distinction: Then I tackled how they interact: Memory doesn’t just retrieve the past but actively participates in shaping future potential. Memory is like a dynamic selector, guiding which parts of past experience can be re-experienced and repeated, whereas meaning potential provides the broader system of meaning-making that’s waiting to be actualised. Memory is about reinforcing what can be repeated, and meaning potential is about how those reinforcements can translate into new or reconfigured meanings.

3. Semantic Layers: From there, I worked through how the distinction plays out in semiotics. Memory operates more like an internal filter, making certain actions and responses more likely. Meaning potential, by contrast, operates as an external framework that enables various meaning constructions to happen — it’s the set of possible interpretations, not the enactment of them.

4. Using Metaphor for Clarity: To simplify, I used metaphors. Think of memory as a set of rules that dictate which meanings are likely to recur and meaning potential as the possible vocabulary or range of expressions that can be employed. So, memory is guiding what can be repeated, while meaning potential is about the range of ways it can be repeated and instantiated.

5. Focus on Agency: Finally, I considered how these systems are activated. Memory becomes active when something triggers its past patterns, shaping future actions. Meaning potential gets actualised when those patterns, now informed by past experience, are structured into coherent meaning in context.

By breaking down the roles of each — memory as a selector of possible past actions, and meaning potential as a field of potential new meanings — I was able to clarify their distinct functions while showing how they work together in the process of meaning-making.

Myth as Memory Selector: The Semiotic Architecture of Collective Identity

Introduction: The Living Memory of Myth

Myths are often misunderstood as relics of a distant past — static narratives that societies preserve unchanged across time. Yet from a semiotic perspective, myth is not a passive container of memory but an active, evolving system. Myths curate, reframe, and restructure collective memory, allowing communities to sustain coherence and continuity while adapting to shifting existential, social, and cosmological realities. Myth, in this view, functions as the semiotic infrastructure through which collective memory becomes collective identity.

1. Memory and Meaning Potential: Distinguishing the Concepts

Before exploring the role of myth, it is essential to distinguish between memory and meaning potential. Following Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), memory is best understood not as retrieval of the past, but as a property of the system: the disposition to repeat performances shaped by prior experiences. Memory is thus an adaptive capacity — a structured readiness rather than a stored archive.

In semiotic terms, meaning potential refers to the structured field of possibilities that a semiotic system makes available for actualisation. Meaning potential is not a set of fixed contents but an organised system that can be instantiated in particular meaning instances. Thus, while memory involves system dispositions shaped by experience, meaning potential involves semiotic possibilities structured for expression.

The key question then arises: how does collective memory interact with collective meaning potential to sustain a community’s coherence across time?

2. Myth as Semiotic Selector

Myth provides the bridge. It functions as a semiotic selector within the collective memory system. Myths do not merely preserve past experiences; they select particular memory traces, reframe them according to evolving needs, and stabilise them into enduring structures within the collective meaning potential.

Rather than passively recalling the past, myth actively curates memory:

• Selection: Choosing particular events, figures, or patterns from the broad pool of collective experience.

• Reframing: Structuring these selections to resonate with ongoing existential, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical concerns.

• Stabilisation: Embedding these structures into the collective meaning potential to provide semiotic resources for future meaning-making.

Thus, myth performs an essential semiotic function: it constrains and enables meaning by filtering the raw materials of collective memory into structured, shareable, and enduring patterns.

3. Myth as Semiotic Infrastructure

Beyond selection, myth acts as a semiotic infrastructure for collective identity. It provides socially stabilised pathways for remembering, interpreting, and acting upon experience. Myth supplies the templates through which individuals and communities:

• Construe their place in the cosmos.

• Justify social institutions and norms.

• Navigate existential anxieties and transitions.

• Articulate aspirations, values, and collective projects.

Because myths stabilise key memory patterns at the level of meaning potential, they serve as semiotic scaffolds: structures that guide and constrain how new experiences are interpreted and integrated. Myth thus provides both continuity (by preserving selected memories) and plasticity (by allowing reinterpretation within evolving contexts).

4. The Dynamic Evolution of Myth

Myths are not static. Their semiotic structures adapt over time as they are re-instantiated within changing historical and social conditions. Each act of recalling, retelling, or reinterpreting a myth is a fresh instantiation of meaning potential, shaped by the present as much as by the past.

This dynamic process has two key implications:

• Persistence with Variation: Myths maintain continuity of collective identity while allowing adaptation to new realities.

• Feedback into Memory: Each reinterpretation not only draws from memory but reshapes the collective memory system itself, creating a recursive evolution of meaning.

In this way, myth participates in a semiotic feedback loop: selecting from memory to structure meaning potential, which in turn shapes future memory patterns.

5. Implications for Understanding Collective Identity

Understanding myth as a semiotic memory selector clarifies several aspects of collective identity:

• Continuity and Change: Collective identity is neither fixed nor wholly fluid; it is stabilised through myth but open to reinterpretation.

• Curation and Marginalisation: Myths select certain memories for preservation and prominence, while neglecting or erasing others. Thus, myths both stabilise and limit the collective memory field.

• Identity as Semiotic Process: Collective identity is not a given substance but an ongoing semiotic process: the dynamic interplay of memory, myth, meaning potential, and new instantiations.

This semiotic perspective dissolves the notion of myth as falsehood or mere tradition. Instead, it reveals myth as the living semiotic architecture through which human groups sustain their becoming.

Conclusion: Myth as a Living System of Memory Structuration

Myth, far from being a static relic of the past, is a living, adaptive system that continually shapes and reshapes collective memory. As a semiotic memory selector, myth organises the vast array of experiences into coherent structures that provide continuity and guidance for the community. It is through myth that collective identity is both preserved and transformed over time, ensuring that it remains relevant in changing social and cultural contexts.

Viewed in this light, myth is an indispensable component of human cultural evolution. It is not merely a repository of the past, but a dynamic system that organises, reframes, and reinvents memory in response to present and future needs.

Myth and Memory: The Semiotic Infrastructure of Collective Identity

Abstract

This post examines myth as a dynamic infrastructure of collective memory, integrating Joseph Campbell’s four functional categories of myth with a systemic view of memory as an evolving semiotic process. Drawing on Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, it distinguishes collective memory from individuated memory, framing mythologies as adaptive, functional reframings rather than passive preservations of the past. Through myth, societies restructure memory to address shifting existential, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical needs, thereby stabilising and evolving collective identity over time. Myth is argued to be the semiotic scaffold through which collective coherence is both maintained and transformed.

Introduction: Myth as Functional Collective Memory

Memory, at its core, is not a passive retrieval of the past but an active, evolving structuring of experience. In the context of a collective, memory assumes a semiotic function: it organises, stabilises, and reframes shared meanings over time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the domain of myth.

Myths are not simply ancient stories; they are crystallised, adaptive forms of collective memory that provide societies with enduring frameworks for identity, meaning, and action. Following Joseph Campbell’s seminal analysis of mythological functions, this post will explore how myths act as semiotic infrastructures for collective identity by reframing and restructuring memory according to changing social and existential needs.

We will proceed by examining:

1. How memory in collectives differs from individual memory.

2. Campbell’s four functions of myth as dynamic reframings of collective memory.

3. How myths evolve by adapting their functional load.

4. The implications for understanding collective identity as a semiotic and evolving system.

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1. Individuated vs Collective Memory: From Neural to Semiotic Systems

At the level of the individual, memory — as Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) emphasises — is not the retrieval of fixed records but the capacity of a dynamic system to repeat and vary performances. Memory is a property of the system itself, emerging through the selective strengthening and weakening of neuronal circuits.

When scaled up to the collective, memory ceases to be an internal neural performance and becomes a semiotic phenomenon: a distributed, externalised network of signs, symbols, and stories that can be reinterpreted, recontextualised, and transformed across generations.

Thus, collective memory is not the preservation of static facts but the maintenance of live, evolving semiotic systems.

And it is through myth that these systems attain structure, stability, and cultural resonance.

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2. The Four Functions of Myth: Structuring Collective Memory

Joseph Campbell identifies four primary functions that mythologies serve within cultures. Each function represents a way in which collective memory is organised to meet existential and social imperatives.

2.1 The Mystical Function: Awakening a Sense of Wonder

Myths refract memory through a lens that reconnects individuals with the mystery of existence itself. They do not merely recount past events but transform them into experiences of transcendence.

By stabilising the sense of mystery, myths help the collective remember not just what happened, but what it meant to be alive.

2.2 The Cosmological Function: Explaining the World

Mythologies provide symbolic models for understanding the universe. Collective memory here is reframed into narratives that explain origins, structures, and forces — from creation myths to stories of natural phenomena.

As cosmologies evolve (e.g., scientific cosmology supplanting mythological cosmologies), the memory scaffolds adapt, reframing old meanings or generating new analogues.

2.3 The Sociological Function: Validating the Social Order

Myths embed memories of founding figures, rituals, and moral codes, legitimising existing social structures.

This function reframes collective memory to stabilise group cohesion, justify institutions, and guide behaviours.

When social orders shift, this function often experiences the greatest pressure for revision — and hence becomes a primary site of mythic transformation.

2.4 The Pedagogical Function: Guiding the Individual

Myths offer templates for personal development: initiation, transformation, death, and rebirth.

Through myth, the collective remembers and transmits archetypal life patterns, allowing individuals to navigate existence in continuity with the collective’s accumulated wisdom.

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3. Myth as a Living System: Functional Adaptation of Collective Memory

Because collective memory is dynamic, myths must evolve to remain functional.

Each of the four mythic functions is subject to pressures of adaptation, though at varying rates:

• Mystical elements often remain remarkably persistent, as they touch universal experiential registers.

• Cosmological elements must adapt most dramatically as empirical knowledge advances.

• Sociological functions shift as political, economic, and moral systems change.

• Pedagogical functions evolve subtly, reframing life stages according to new cultural expectations.

When these functional needs diverge too far from inherited mythic structures, mythopoesis — the creative generation of new myth — emerges.

In this way, myths do not simply preserve collective memory; they refunctionalise it, restructuring the remembered past to serve contemporary existential, cosmological, social, and individual imperatives.

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4. Myth and Collective Identity: Semiotic Scaffolding

By structuring collective memory according to enduring functional needs, myths provide the semiotic scaffolding that underpins group identity.

They enable groups to:

• Situate themselves in a meaningful universe.

• Legitimate their social arrangements.

• Navigate individual life stages.

• Sustain a lived connection to the mystery of existence.

Without myths — or without updated myths — collective memory risks fragmentation: meanings become untethered, identities dissolve, and the collective loses coherence.

Thus, myth is not ornamental but structural: it is the infrastructure through which collective memory achieves continuity and adaptive flexibility.

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Conclusion: Myth as the Becoming of Collective Memory

Memory, in its collective form, is not static record-keeping but dynamic meaning-making.

Through myth, societies continually reframe and refunction memory, adapting inherited meanings to contemporary needs without severing their connection to the past.

Joseph Campbell’s framework shows that myth operates not as inert heritage, but as an evolving semiotic system — one that stabilises identity, structures existence, and channels the living memory of a people through time.

Thus, myth is the living infrastructure of collective memory — the semiotic foundation upon which collective identities are built, transformed, and renewed.