The Meme Machine

164 THE MEME MACHINE
behaviour and that when they do so something is passed on from one to the
other. We do not need to agonise about what that something is. The simple fact
is that if imitation happens (as it surely does) then something has been passed on
and that something is what we call the meme. So when I say a ‘meme for
helping your friend’ I only mean that some aspect of helping behaviour has been
passed on by one person copying another.
Now we can ask the important question: which of these two memes will do
better? The first meme will – it will make your friend like you more and want to
spend more time with you. She will then tend to imitate you more than her
other, less helpful, friend and so your helpfulness memes will spread to her. She
will therefore become more helpful to her other friends, and so the meme will
gradually spread. The same simple logic applies to any meme which helps its
carrier to become more popular. The people who pick up these memes are not
aware of what they are doing, they just find themselves wanting to be more like
the nice people, not the nasty ones. They find they want to help and be kind and
feel bad if they do not. Just as many of our human emotions serve the genes, so
these ones serve the memes – and they are no less noble for that.
Does this mean that everyone will become nicer and nicer and nicer without
limit? Of course not. The main reason why not is that being kind and generous
and altruistic is expensive in terms of time and money. There are always
pressures acting against altruism, and there are always other strategies for
memes to use. However, in general it means that people will be more altruistic
than they would be if they were incapable of imitation.
This is an example of meme-driven altruism in a modern context (and note
that this is different from the memetic driving of genes for altruism which I
considered at the end of the previous chapter). In this kind of meme-driven
altruism, actions that are costly and done for someone else come about through
memetic competition. Because these actions are driven by memes and not genes
they need not necessarily be in the person’s genetic interest. These cases, in
which the genes do not benefit and the memes do, provide test cases for a
memetic explanation. People who devote their entire lives to charitable work or
to the caring professions while having no children of their own are examples.
Their sacrifice cannot easily be explained in terms of genetic advantage, but can
be simply explained in terms of memetics.
In principle, meme-driven altruism ought to be able to produce the most pure
and selfless generosity. Indeed, it may occasionally do so. However, altruism
not only works to spread itself but also acts to spread other memes as well. This
provides a mechanism open to exploitation by other memes. This, I suggest, is
exactly what happens. I shall describe several ways in which memes can exploit