Memes rarely live alone.

They support, trigger and protect one another.

A fashion includes clothes, vocabulary, gestures, music, places and identities.

A profession includes practices, jargon, values, rituals and status symbols.

Religions, ideologies, artistic movements and institutions can contain enormous interconnected systems of culturally transmitted elements.

Such complexes are often called memeplexes.

Something is encountered.

Something is reconstructed.

Something is expressed again.

Another person encounters it.

Replication does not require perfect duplication.

Misremember it.

Translate it.

Improve it.

Simplify it.

Exaggerate it.

Parody it.

Combine it with another meme.

Every transmission is an opportunity for mutation.

Some variants disappear.

Some are remembered.

Some are repeated.

Some fit a particular medium particularly well.

Some become part of institutions and persist for centuries.

Cultural environments select.

easy to remember?

easy to reproduce?

emotionally intense?

funny?

useful?

beautiful?

shocking?

socially rewarded?

already familiar?

And are these the same properties that make a meme good?

A communication system optimized only for replication may reward whatever replicates best.

But the fastest-spreading cultural environment is not necessarily the most desirable one.

Memethical engineering asks how environments might instead preserve:

diversity · autonomy · transparency · reflection · plurality · resilience