The Meme Machine

122 THE MEME MACHINE
number of our genes into the next generation. We do not buy those magazines
in order to have babies. We have largely divorced the act, and joy, and
marketing of sex, from its reproductive function.
There are two major ways of accounting for this divorce. The first is
sociobiology’s answer: modern sexual behaviour is still gene-driven and our use
of birth control is (from the genes’ point of view) a mistake, made possible
because the genes could not anticipate how we would use our intelligence. The
second is memetics’ answer: modern sexual behaviour is meme-driven.
Although our basic instincts and desires are still genetically determined, and
these desires in turn influence which memes are successful, the memes
themselves are now dictating the way we behave.
I am going to explore both these views and consider their strengths and
weaknesses. At the risk of gross oversimplification I am going to lump together
as ‘sociobiology’ much of the work on sexual behaviour stemming from
biology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. In spite of some
differences, they all agree that the fundamental driving force for sexual
behaviour is natural selection acting on genes. They do not consider a second
replicator, and in this respect differ clearly from memetics.
Sex and sociobiology
The essence of the sociobiological view is that the genes have set up a system
that has worked historically but is not entirely appropriate for today’s situation.
The reason is simple enough. Because genes have no foresight, they can never
track environmental changes precisely. Natural selection can ensure that
organisms are more or less well adapted to the conditions prevailing at the time,
and as times change selection pressures change, so that the better adapted
organisms survive. This ensures that tracking is quite effective when conditions
change slowly – and extinction is always a possibility when tracking fails. But
nothing in the evolutionary process can produce precognition. We are in effect,
like all other creatures, products of past selection in past environments.
On this sociobiological argument it is not surprising that our behaviour does
not always maximise our genetic fitness. Past evolution has given us a brain that
is set up to deal with sex, food, and power, and these ideas are prevalent in our
society because these factors all contributed to the survival of our genes in the
past. We enjoy sex because animals that enjoyed sex in the past passed on their