The Meme Machine

CHAPTER 13
The altruism trick
In today’s world I am going to assume that we can ignore meme-gene
coevolution. This must be an oversimplification, because as long as there are
two replicators they will interact with each other. However, the pace of memetic
evolution is now so fast, relative to that of human genetic evolution, that we can
safely ignore the latter for most purposes. The genes cannot keep up. ‘What we
cannot ignore is the legacy left by the long process of coevolution. The brains
we have are the big and clever brains created by meme-gene coevolution. The
way we think and feel is a product of that evolutionary process, and now
determines which memes do well and which do not. We like sex, so sex memes
get a head start: different ones for men and for women. ‘We like food and we
like power and excitement. We find maths hard, and so mathematical memes
need a lot of encouragement. The structure of our language affects which
memes are more easily passed on. The theories and myths we have created
affect the way we deal with new memes. And so on.
Note that sociobiology has made a different simplifying assumption and has
ignored the role of the memes. For many purposes this has been an adequate
approach, and we can use many of the findings of sociobiology to provide
insight into the brains we have and the ideas and behaviours that come easily,
but it cannot provide the whole picture. Our concern now will be what happens
when vast numbers of memes compete to get into, and stay in, limited numbers
of increasingly educated and overworked brains.
Here must resume the meme’s eye view; remembering that all that counts in
the life of a meme is whether or not it survives and replicates. I shall find
myself saying that memes ‘want’, ‘need’, or ‘try to do’ something. But we must
remember that this is only shorthand for saying that the ‘something’ will
improve the chances of the meme’s being copied. Memes do not have conscious
intentions; nor do they actually strive to do anything at all. They are simply (by
definition) capable of being copied, and all their apparent striving and
intentionality comes from this. When anything can be copied it can end up
having few or many copies made. Memes may be successfully copied because
they are good, true, useful or beautiful – but they may be successful for other