Just For Hits: Richard Dawkins' Evolving Memes Electric Daisy Carnival

modern rock star of atheists

Many people have a least heard about biologist evolutionist Richard Dawkins, the modern rock star of atheists, especially since the publication of his excellent book ‘The God Delusion’. I know he is getting on the nerves of many believers (what about all believers?) but as says Ricky Gervais, it’s not because you are offended that you are right. Seriously, Dawkins is a brilliant mind and if you have ever tried to teach science and evolution, you probably share his passionate and endless fight against obscurantism (meaning religious believes).

At Cannes festival, Richard Dawkins opened Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase, which features the very best new directing talent. Although I have no idea why they picked him this year to represent this year’s theme, ‘Just for Hits’– they try to focus on a different theme each year – what happened was described as ‘a visual and oral extravaganza featuring the world-renowned British evolutionary biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins’, connecting ‘the world of science and academia, with the world of film and the Internet’.

In the video below, the ‘show’ starts as any Dawkins’ lecture about evolution, then he begins to explain what is a ‘meme’, a sort of unit of cultural transmission and a concept he came up with in his famous and very successful book ‘The Selfish Gene’, then, after 5 minutes, everything goes wild! Dawkins’ talk turns EDM, repeating stuff like ‘Memes spread through human culture, genes spread through the gene pool’ with electronic dance beats,… wow Richard I had no idea you had some Diplo-Skrillex envies? The rest of the video – which tries to demonstrate how creativity evolves through the internet, the ultimate incubator of shared and ever evolving ideas – is plain psychedelia and seems to OD on ecstasy like a girl at Electric Daisy Carnival. But please, stay till the end to see Dawkins play this electronic clarinet as if he were the new Kenny G.

I bet Dawkins’ enemies are going to jump at his throat and parody him to death for this new trippy and offensive video, errr, didn’t he compare religion to a virus of the mind?… But all I can say after watching it again, is Dawkins going all Timothy Leary on us now?