The Meme Machine

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE 83
active during speech, or when listening to and understanding speech, but the
production of sound is itself expensive. If you have ever been very ill you will
know how exhausting it is to speak. You may lie in a hospital bed perfectly able
to think but when the nurse arrives you can barely manage a feeble ‘thank you’,
while a few days later you still happily engage in friendly banter about the
qualify of the food, or what you still do when you get out – complete with
smiles, laughs and completely superfluous chit-chat.
Perhaps you are a hi-fi freak. If so you will know how much energy is
needed to drive big speakers, and how expensive the sound system gets when it
needs to play loud, high-quality sound. Or if you prefer low tech you may have
a clockwork radio, in which case you will know all too well, by the feeling in
your arm, how much energy is needed to produce that sound, and how much
winding you can save by turning down the volume.
This phenomenal use of energy presents something of a puzzle. Living
creatures have to work hard for all the energy they consume, and efficient
energy use is a critical factor in survival. If you can use less energy than your
neighbour, you are more likely to pull through the hard times, to find scarce
food, to win the competition for the best mate, and so to pass on your genes.
Why, then, has evolution produced creatures that talk whenever they get the
chance?
Several possible answers spring to mind. First, there may, after all, be a
sound biological explanation. Perhaps talking serves an important function that
I have overlooked, such as cementing social bonds or exchanging useful
information. I will consider theories of this kind later on.
Second, a sociobiologist might argue that, with the evolution of language,
culture has somehow got temporarily out of hand, and the cultural trait of speech
has been stretching the leash. However, if talking is really wasteful of precious
energy then the genes of the people who talk most will do less well and in time
the genes will pull the leash in again.
Third, an evolutionary psychologist might argue that all this talking once had
advantages for our ancestors and so we are stuck with it now, even though it
doesn’t benefit our genes any more. On this view we ought to be able to find the
function of so much talking in the lives of early hunter-gatherers.
All these suggestions have in common that they appeal to genetic advantage
for an explanation. Memetics provides a totally different approach. Rather than
asking what advantage talking provides to the genes, we can ask what advantage
it provides to the memes. Now the answer is obvious. Talking spreads memes.