The Meme Machine

A MEMETIC THEORY OF ALTRUISM 159
people copy people they like. Thus we can imagine a human society, in which
meme-driven altruistic behaviour could spread – even if it put a heavy burden on
individuals. In other words, once people start to copy the altruists, the genes
will not necessarily be able to stop them.
Could memetic altruism get completely out of hand – and stretch the leash to
breaking point? Sometimes people do give more than they can really afford.
They vie with each other to be the most generous, or give the most ostentatious
of gifts. As Matt Ridley (1996) points out, gifts can become bargains, bribes,
and weapons. Most extraordinary is the practice of ‘potlatch’. The term comes
from the Chinook language and potlatch is best known from American Indian
groups, but it also occurs in New Guinea and other places. A potlatch is a
special event in which opposing groups try to impress their rivals by giving
away, or destroying, extravagant gifts. They may give each other canoes and
animal skins, beads and copper plates, blankets and food. They may even burn
their most valuable possessions, kill their slaves, and pour precious oil onto a
huge fire.
Note that this wasteful tradition is not like ordinary reciprocal altruism. In
most forms of reciprocal altruism, both parties benefit from cooperating, but in a
potlatch everyone loses (at least in purely material terms). Note also that
potlatch depends upon imitation. Such a tradition could only spread by one
person copying it from another until it becomes the norm for a whole society. It
is imitation that makes such peculiar behaviour possible, and once the genes
have given us imitation they cannot take it back. We could see the potlatch
behaviour as like a parasite that may, or may not, kill its host, while most of our
altruistic behaviour is symbiotic or even beneficial.
Once again we can see that it is our capacity to imitate that makes humans so
different from other species. In other species gifts are confined to sharing with
kin, to precise reciprocal deals, or to special situations such as the male spider
who gives his mate a well wrapped fly to keep her busy while he copulates.
Among human cultures, giving gifts is common; visitors bring gifts, special
occasions are celebrated with gifts, marriages and birthdays are marked nth gifts.
In Britain, about seven to eight per cent of the economy is devoted to producing
articles that will be given away as gifts, and in Japan the figure may be higher
still. Fortunately, potlatches are rare, and for most of us the giving and receiving
of gifts is an enjoyable part of being human.
One last step gives us meme-gene coevolution again. I have already argued
that the best imitators, or the possessors of the best memes, will have a survival
advantage, as will the people who mate with them. So the strategy ‘mate-with-