The Meme Machine

‘AN ORGASM SAVED MY LIFE’ 131
night. Charlie Chaplin was short and far from good looking but a great sexual
success story – as, apparently, were Balzac, Rubens, Picasso, and Leonardo da
Vinci. The biologist Geoffrey Miller argues that artistic ability and creativity
have been sexually selected as a display to attract women (Miller 1998; Mestel
1995), but he does not explain why sexual selection should have picked on these
features. Memetics provides a reason – that creativity and artistic output are
ways of copying, using and spreading memes, and hence are signs of being a
good imitator. I would predict that if these things could be teased out, women
would, other things being equal, prefer a good meme-spreader to just a rich man.
Note that I have couched this argument in terms of female mate choice.
There is some sense to this because, as previously discussed, females need to be
more choosy over mates than males do, and, in general, sexual selection is
driven by female choice – as in the examples of peacocks’ tails and other fancy
plumage. However, this imbalance is not necessary for the argument I am
pursuing here, and we may find that men too have tended to mate with women
who are good imitators. Also, in today’s technologically advanced societies,
women can spread memes as well as men can. So we may expect many more
changes in sexual behaviour and mate choice as women increasingly take
control over the spread of memes.
My suggestion that we should mate with the best imitators is central to the
theory of meme-gene coevolution and memetic driving; so it is an obvious one
for testing. The predictions are quite straightforward: that people should choose
mates according to how good they are at copying, using, and spreading memes.
Experiments might be designed to hold genetic factors constant, and manipulate
memetic factors, while measuring perceived attractiveness. More subtly, we
might explore the interactions. I would expect that an ugly and impoverished
man might still be perceived as attractive if he were a great meme-spreader – but
just how much ugliness could one get away with? Even in today’s meme-rich
society, women very rarely choose men who are shorter than they are.
Obviously, there is a limit to how far memes can overthrow genetic
considerations, and this provides a fascinating area for research.
Memes are now spreading farther and faster than ever before and this has
powerful effects on everything in our lives, including sex. The second way in
which memetic theory differs from sociobiology is in the way it accounts for sex
in the modern world. It is time to return to those sexy, magazines and the
quandaries of celibacy, adoption, and birth control.