The Meme Machine

SEX IN THE MODERN WORLD 145
and our sexuality still shows the legacy of this long process. However, in the
modern world, the memes have taken over much of our sexual behaviour and put
it to work for their propagation instead. The technology of birth control has
been an extraordinarily successful set of memes, facilitating the sex industry and
diverting people’s energies away from lifelong child rearing. However, just like
genes, the memes have no foresight. They cannot be expected to foresee that
almost anything might happen. They might even, in the process of diverting our
energies from the genes, just wipe us out.
Actually, this possibility is remote for the following reason. If birth rates
over the whole planet fall then the total population will fall. This will be good
news for the rest of the biosphere, but bad news for the memes. At some point,
the density of population will be too low to sustain the infrastructure needed for
a thriving memetic world, and so memetic driving will slow down, and with it
the use of birth control. The genes can then take over and build up the
population again until a new memetic infestation takes place. As is seen with
the spread of many parasites and diseases, it is rare for them to wipe out their
hosts completely, and I would not expect memes to do so either.
In fact, the situation is far more complex and unpredictable than that. Given
the gross inequities between societies at the moment it is more likely that birth
rates will continue falling in the technologically advanced societies, while the
less advanced ones grow in population. Memetic influence may then shift
towards the previously undeveloped countries and birth rates start falling there.
So we might expect a swing back and forth as memes and genes battle it out to
get human beings to spend their lives replicating one or the other. This is what it
means to be creatures of two competing replicators.
Finally, the memes are busy devising ways of interfering even more directly
with the genes. We are already creating genetically engineered vegetables for
food and, memetic pressure groups notwithstanding, will probably create
genetically engineered animals that are quick growing, delicious to eat, and do
not object to their impoverished or miserable lives.
DNA testing means that paternity can be assured so that women will find it
harder to trick their partners into raising other men’s children and men will have
to pay the cost of having children by casual relationships. Our sexual desires
will still follow the dictates of genetic evolution while memetic evolution
changes the rules. Genetic engineering is already becoming commonplace, and
some of the major inherited diseases may soon be defeated by simply removing
the genes that cause them. Cloning of sheep and other large animals is also