The Meme Machine

158 THE MEME MACHINE
cultural relatives’. For example, you might follow the rule ‘Be good to your
cultural descendants’. If people have already taken on other memes of yours and
in general are known to copy you, then they are more likely to take on your
beneficent rules as well. Since kindness to them is likely to increase their
cultural fitness they may also pass it on to someone else and so the rule will
thrive. This process would apply to biological parents and their children, in
which case it would be hard to distinguish from kin selection. It becomes more
interesting when applied to non-kin, and Allison considers the example of
professors and their graduate students. Professors who are generous to their
students (in time, effort, and so on) increase the cultural fitness of their students
and hence the chances that all their memes, including the beneficent rule itself,
will be passed on to yet more students. This makes sense, because a caring
professor who works hard for her students’ welfare will certainly attract more
students – and better students – who in turn are likely to do the same.
Note that it is the rule that benefits here, not the professor. Perhaps rationally
the professor should not be so generous, but because these norms thrive and she
has picked them up, she will be. Allison does not use the term ‘meme’ but his
beneficent norms clearly are memes, for he specifies that they are passed on by
imitation and teaching. His analysis shows how taking the meme’s eye view (or
‘norm’s eye view’) can explain behaviours that cannot easily be explained in
terms of rational choice theory or genetic advantage.
Note that Allison’s scheme best accounts for acts of altruism directed
towards cultural relatives and, as he points out, it cannot account for altruism
directed at large groups of people, or at people in general. In contrast, memetic
altruism based on ‘copy-the-altruist’ can explain just this kind of generalised
altruism.
Memes versus genes
Any act of meme-driven altruism potentially lowers the actor’s genetic fitness.
In other words, the arena of human altruism can be seen as a competition
between memes and genes. Kev’s behaviour will make him friends but it may
reduce his chances of survival, or the chance of his children’s surreal, by
reducing their share of the meat. His genes only ‘care’ about his generosity if it
serves in the long run to pass them on, and they have equipped him with feelings
and behaviours that generally serves their interests. But his memes do not ‘care’
about his genes at all. If they can get copied they will. And they will, because