Discussion Group Report

Are there good reasons for supposing our own species unique?

"Yes," says Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (further explicated in Thought Contagion by Aaron Lynch and Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie), "most of what is unusual about man, can be summed up in one word: 'culture'...Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can rise to a form of evolution. Language seems to 'evolve' by nongenetic means, and at a rate which is orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution."

It is our own species that really shows what cultural evolution can do. Besides language, fashions in dress and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolve in historical time in ways that look like highly speeded-up genetic evolution, but which really have nothing to do with it. Still, as in genetic evolution, the change may be progressive.

What is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators. Is there any general principle that is true of all life? Dawkins doesn't know but would bet on one fundamental principle, the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene is the replicating entity that prevails on our own planet.

A new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face, and still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup. The new soup is the soup of human culture. Dawkins names the new replicator a meme, short for the Greek root "mimeme," a unit of imitation. It is a monosyllable that sounds a bit like "gene" Memes are the building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life. They are units of information analogous to genes which transmit ideas instead of genetic information. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool, by leaping body to body via sperms and eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process called imitation. If a scientist hears or reads about a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. If the idea catches on, it propagates itself from brain to brain.

We do not know how the idea of God arose in the meme pool. Very old indeed, it replicates itself by the spoken and written word, aided by great music and art. Why does it have high survival value? Because of its great psychological appeal. "It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary."

Just as we can think of genes as active agents working for their own survival, we might think of memes in the same way. Memes live in a computer, the human brain. The brain cannot do more than one or a few things at once. If a meme is to dominate its attention, it must do so at the expense of "rival" memes. Co-adapted gene complexes, such as a set of genes concerned with mimicry in butterflies, may arise in the gene pool and become so tightly linked together on the same chromosome that they can be treated as one gene. Analogously the god meme may become associated with other memes and thus assist the survival of each participating meme as in the case of an organized church, with its meme architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and a written tradition, a co-adapted stable set of mutually-assisting memes.

An aspect of doctrine that has been very effective in enforcing religious observance is the threat of hell fire. Many children and some adults believe that they will suffer ghastly torments after death if they do not obey priestly rules. This is a peculiarly nasty technique of religious persuasion, causing great psychological anguish in the middle ages and even today. But it is highly effective. "Unconscious memes have ensured their own survival by virtue of those same qualities of pseudo-ruthlessness that successful genes display. The idea of hell-fire is self-perpetuating because of its own deep psychological impact. It has become linked with the god meme because the two reinforce each other, and assist each other's survival in the meme pool," explains Dawkins.

The story of doubting Thomas is told to reinforce the meme complex called faith. The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held up to us as worthy of imitation. Thomas demanded evidence. Nothing is more lethal for certain kinds of memes than a tendency to look for evidence. The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. Blind faith can justify anything. If a man believes in a different god, or even if he uses a different ritual for worshipping the same god, blind faith can decree that he should die. Memes for blind faith have their own ruthless ways of propagating themselves.

"We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines," says Dawkins, "but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."