The Meme Machine

86 THE MEME MACHINE
imbalance is obvious. A talker will talk, and either directly, or by implication,
suggest that polite conversation is necessary, or that talking is fun, or useful. A
silent type might be converted. But the reverse is extremely unlikely to happen.
The silent type may occasionally say things like ‘I think it’s better to keep quiet’
or ‘Why don’t you shut up’ but will not, by definition, say much – and for that
reason alone is unlikely to make converts. Although single memes of this
explicitness are probably rare, there are notable examples, such as the British
Telecom slogan ‘It’s good to talk’ and the proverbial ‘Silence is golden’.
Memetics should help us understand not only why talking in general must
spread, but also how some selective environments can encourage the rarer
silence rule to succeed.
A final way of looking at the memetic pressure to talk is to consider groups
of memes or memeplexes, and the kinds of person who will nurture and spread
them. Memes that thrive in the environment of a chatty person (and contribute
to that person being chatty) will differ from those that thrive in the environment
of a silent type. The chatty person will, by definition, talk more and so give her
memes more chances of spreading. When another chatty person hears these
ideas she will easily pick them up and pass them on again. The silent person
will not talk much and so all the memes compatible with being a quiet type will
have fewer chances to spread. Of course, chatty people can be extremely
irritating, and silent types deeply fascinating, but this does not alter the basic
imbalance, the inequitable result of which is that memes for talking, or memes
that exist happily with memes for talking, will spread in the meme pool at the
expense of memes for keeping silent. These are several memetic arguments
which all conspire to have the same effect. If they are correct, it means that the
meme pool gradually fills up with memes that encourage talking. We all come
across them and that is why we talk so much. We are driven to talk by our
memes.
Memetics thus provides a very simple answer to the question – why do we
talk so much. This talking is not for our benefit or to make us happy – though
sometimes it may do that – nor is it for the benefit of our genes. It is just an
inevitable consequence of having a brain that is capable of imitating speech.
This brings us straight back to our other two major issues – how and why we
came to have speech in the first place.