genes and memes

The relation between genes and memes is an argument about how evolution can outgrow its original replicator. Genes shaped organisms and the brains capable of imitation; memes, once they arose in human culture, began copying themselves through those brains and followed their own faster evolutionary process. Sometimes the two replicators reinforce one another, sometimes their interests diverge, and neither has foresight. The distinction matters because a cultural trait can spread for its own replicative success rather than for the biological advantage of its human carriers.

From genes to a second replicator

Genes are the replicators that prevail on Earth, but the argument treats replication—not any particular chemistry—as the general principle of life. Other forms of life might be based on silicon, ammonia, or electronic circuits; if entities in such conditions could copy themselves, they too might become the basis of evolution. The gene is therefore not the only imaginable vehicle for evolutionary change, but the replicator is central to the theory.

The author locates the emergence of a new replicator not on another planet but in human culture. Genes had already made brains capable of rapid imitation, creating the environment in which memes could arise. Once self-copying memes appeared, they began an evolutionary process that was not necessarily subordinate to gene-selected evolution. The metaphor of a new replicator in a cultural “soup” marks a change in scale and speed: cultural evolution can proceed far faster than the genetic process that made it possible.

A meme is defined as a unit of cultural transmission or imitation. Tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, fashions, and ways of making pots or building arches can all serve as examples. Genes propagate through bodies by way of sperm or eggs; memes propagate from brain to brain through imitation. A scientist who encounters an idea may pass it to colleagues and students, and then circulate it in articles and lectures. If the idea catches on, its spread is a form of replication.

Different routes of inheritance

The contrast between genetic and cultural transmission appears in the example of the saddleback, a bird on islands off New Zealand. P. F. Jenkins described an island song repertoire of about nine distinct songs. Males sang one or a few songs and clustered into dialect groups; a group of eight males with neighbouring territories, for example, sang the CC song. Comparisons between fathers and sons indicated that the songs were not genetically inherited: young males were likely to imitate songs from territorial neighbours.

For much of Jenkins’s observation, the island had a fixed song pool from which young males acquired their repertoires. But a new song could arise through a mistake in imitating an existing one. A change in pitch, repetition or omission of notes, or combination of parts of other songs could produce a variant. Such a new form might remain stable for years and be accurately transmitted to younger recruits. The example makes cultural variation and inheritance visible without reducing them to genes: songs could mutate, persist, and spread through imitation.

Human culture magnifies this kind of evolution. Language, clothing and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology change over historical time in a way that resembles accelerated genetic evolution, though it is not genetic evolution. The author uses this distinction to argue that explaining culture solely through biological advantage is inadequate. Kin selection and reciprocal altruism may help explain basic human psychological tendencies, but they do not, in his view, account for the scale and variety of cultural differences.

Replication, competition, and persistence

Memes differ from genes in how they compete. Genes have alleles that vie for the same chromosomal position; memes have no direct equivalent of paired alleles. Their competition instead takes place amid scarce attention and communication resources. A human brain and the body it controls can attend to only one or a few things at a time, so a meme that occupies attention does so at the expense of rivals. Radio and television time, billboard space, newspaper columns, and library shelves are further limited resources for which memes compete.

The comparison also extends to the qualities that make replicators successful: longevity, fecundity, and copying fidelity. The lifespan of any one copy may matter less than the persistence of copies across many minds and records. A remembered or printed copy of “Auld Lang Syne” may not last long, while copies of the tune can endure for centuries. Fecundity can be considered through the spread of an idea in scientific journals, a tune among people who whistle it, or a shoe style in sales figures. Popular songs and stiletto heels may spread quickly but fade; written records can help other cultural traits, including Jewish religious laws, persist for thousands of years.

Cultural copying is not necessarily as exact as genetic copying. When an idea is passed from person to person, it may change through blending or continuous variation. The author notes that he has not simply repeated R. L. Trivers’s ideas in their original wording, but has changed their emphasis and combined them with ideas of his own and others. The comparison thus allows both continuity and alteration: memes can be recognizable enough to spread while changing in transmission.

Genes themselves also operate through cooperation and interaction rather than as isolated agents. A modern survival machine contains thousands of genes; a given gene can affect different bodily parts, and any one part can be influenced by many genes. Development is an intricate cooperative venture, and sexual reproduction continually mixes and shuffles genes, making each individual body a temporary vehicle for a combination that may be short-lived even as its constituent genes persist through generations. This complexity cautions against treating a “gene for” a trait as a single, independent cause. A gene may influence a developmental outcome while depending on other genes and environmental conditions.

Reinforcement and conflict

Genes and memes may reinforce one another, and the proposed religious meme complex offers an example. An organized church can be viewed as a stable, mutually assisting set of memes involving architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and written tradition. The threat of hell fire can encourage religious observance, while the idea of hell reinforces the god meme. In this account, such ideas need not have been deliberately designed by priests: memes that have a powerful psychological effect may persist because that effect helps their transmission.

Blind faith is another proposed element of this complex. By discouraging a search for evidence, it can protect certain memes from a form of inquiry that might undermine them. The account extends the point beyond religion: patriotic and political blind faith can also propagate in ways that turn different beliefs or rituals into grounds for lethal conflict. These are examples of the book’s central distinction between a trait’s consequences for its human carriers and its success as a replicating cultural trait.

The relation can also become openly antagonistic. The meme for celibacy may succeed culturally even though a gene for celibacy would generally be disadvantaged in the gene pool. The proposed reason is that, if a priest’s time and attention are important to transmitting religious ideas, marriage might weaken his influence over his flock. Under that condition, celibacy could aid the spread of a meme by making its human carrier a more effective vehicle. The author presents this as a supposition, not as a demonstrated universal explanation; its point is that a trait can be useful to a meme while working against genetic replication.

The book conjectures that co-adapted meme complexes evolve in a manner analogous to co-adapted gene complexes. Memes are selected within a cultural environment made up of other selected memes, and mutually supportive combinations may become difficult for newcomers to invade. The relation is therefore not simply a contest between genes and memes: each replicator can operate through associations, and the cultural environment itself can be shaped by the ongoing selection of memes.

Replicators without foresight

A cultural trait’s survival value must be assessed at the level at which it replicates. Religion, music, or ritual dancing may also have conventional biological effects, but the argument does not require those effects to explain their cultural history. Once brains can imitate, memes can evolve by exploiting that capacity. Their success may be advantageous to themselves, whether or not it improves the survival of the genes that helped produce the brains carrying them.

This account does not grant genes or memes conscious intentions. Both are described as blind replicators: copying and differential survival can favour traits that appear selfish without foresight or planning. The example of an evolutionarily stable strategy makes the point in animal behaviour: even if a cooperative “conspiracy of doves” would benefit every individual, selection may still favour the stable strategy instead. The same caution applies to the language of selfish memes; it describes a consequence of replication, not an intention in the meme.

The relation ends with a qualified possibility of resistance. Genes built brains able to predict the future, and cultural transmission made those brains carriers of memes, but human conscious foresight can help people pursue long-term interests rather than merely immediate gains. People can discuss how cooperation might work and can, the author suggests, cultivate disinterested altruism. The argument does not claim that such altruism is already established as a biological or memetic outcome. Instead, it closes by distinguishing the power of replicators from the human capacity to recognize their effects and potentially defy them.