Cultural evolution and genetic evolution possess many qualities and characteristics that are very similar. Both must obey the rules of natural selection and most importantly be successful replicators. Memes are present in today’s culture because culture is merely a compilation of memes.  Today’s society is equipped with many different avenues for cultural transmission, such as language, newspapers, television, and the World Wide Web. These innovations have allowed novel memes to replicate and old memes to ‘stay alive.’ However some view cultural evolution as strictly characteristic of humans and animal culture as interesting oddities. On the other hand, others believe culture is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom. This paper is a review of literature that addresses certain issues associated with the concept of memes. A descriptive example of a novel meme will be reviewed and the question of genetic determinism will be addressed. Furthermore, memes and genes will be compared to fully understand the similarities between the two.
A gene is defined by Dawkins as a unit that survives through a large number of successive individual bodies and potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection. Furthermore, Dawkins argues in The Selfish Gene that memes share qualities very similar to genes. However, before evidence can support the concept of memes, an understanding of certain terms is vital. Natural selection can be understood as the differential survival of entities. These entities are replicators and must retain the properties of longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity in order to spread through the gene pool. Dawkins argues that memes can also be considered replicators spreading from brain to brain in the meme pool.
Memes are self-replicating units of cultural, units or elements of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Examples are melodies, art, slang, the wheel, and religion. An important point is that memes are just like genes; memes are self-replicators, survive by retaining the same qualities of longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity, and abide by the same rules of natural selection. Through the process of memetic drift (i.e., an analogy to genetic drift) memes are able to be transmitted but are subject to mutation. Furthermore memes can be considered ‘selfish’ (metaphorically speaking) because they are in competition with each other. Memes compete for limited space and memory within mass media and the brains of individual bodiest at the expense of rival memes. Moreover, memes can form co-adapted meme-complexes which consist of various memes that are associated with each other and furtherance the survival of each of the associated memes.
Associated memes have very powerful implications on human culture and overt behaviors. A novel example of a meme is global warming. Many associated memes such as air pollution, cars, Al Gore, scientific consensus, and the greenhouse effect contribute to the propagation of global warming. Currently the meme-complex associated with global warming is a hotly debated issue in households, classrooms, and congress. The meme-complex is competing with other memes in order to exploit their cultural environment. For instance, LaRouche, a physical economist, has begun lecturing around the U.S. in order to introduce his own meme on global warming. LaRouche speaks about the implications of the Al Gore hoax for international policy and denotes the idea of global warming as a man made process. Nevertheless global warming has evolved into a very good competing co-adapted meme-complex. Dawkins would state that the meme pool in which meme-complexes associated with global warming have become an evolutionarily stable set, which new memes find it hard to invade. Criteria which demonstrate that global warming is a meme are its ability to propagate itself and its high survival among other memes.
Global warming can be considered a successful replicator in the meme-pool because the meme retains properties of longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity in order to spread from brain to brain. Longevity is important in the survival of the meme; however, global warming is more dependent on the spread of the idea and how acceptable the idea is, or in other words, its fecundity. Additionally copying-fidelity or quality of successful replication implies that the meme of global warming must be successfully articulated in order to hold itself as a viable unit of natural selection. The meme-complex or intricacies that comprise the mosaic of memes for the idea of global warming may not be the same in every brain, however, the general sense of global warming is similar. In other words, the idea of global warming may vary by degree but the overall understanding that air pollutants is causing the earth to warm up and ultimately result in the destruction of the earth’s ecosystem is prominent. A majority of human cultures understand the implications of such a meme, however, the real question lye’s within the domain of culture.
One must consider that culture may reflect the natural predisposition or temperament of an organism (Weisfeld, 1997). Culture is a by-product of biology and must be viewed as serving the interest of the organism. Lynch et al. (1989) address the fact that interrelations between cultural and biological evolution may have cooperated in a feedback mechanism whereby biological evolution can affect cultural evolution, and ultimately influence further biological evolution. Bjorklund and Pellegrini (2001) suggest that an organism consists of two general types of cognitive abilities: biologically primary abilities and biologically secondary abilities. Biologically primary abilities are those that have evolved to deal with problems faced by our ancestors (e.g., language or quantitative abilities) but biologically secondary abilities are those ingrained in an organism through culture (e.g., reading from left to right or the names of number words). The biologically secondary abilities are ‘new applications’ supported by biologically primary abilities. Moreover, biologically secondary abilities are dependent upon cultural context.
Culture can be defined as local customs that are passed on via mechanisms of social learning from one generation to another. Social learning refers to the acquisition of social information and behavior. The different forms of social learning can be divided into local enhancement, mimicry, emulation, and imitation. The latter may be most unique to humans, nevertheless, animals may engage in any other array of social learning. This is contrary to Dawkins view in which he argues “there are other examples of culture evolution in birds and monkeys, but these are just interesting oddities.” However, Charles Lumsden and Edward Wilson concluded that over 10,000 species, including some bacteria, exhibit some form of social learning that can be recognized as culture (Laland and Hoppitt, 2003). Dawkins additionally argues that the evolution of cultural traits and their survival value do not have to infer an advantage to the organism.
Dawkins believes that cultural traits may just have evolved and survived because it is advantageous to itself. However, theoretically, this may be a fallacy. The survival of the meme must allow the brain it occupies to pass on other replications that are susceptible to choosing that particular meme. Dennett (1991) refers to meme-immunological systems, which hypothetically helps the organism choose memes that infer an advantage to the organism. If an organism chooses memes that result in a net cost greater than the benefits, over time, the organisms would not successfully propagate its genes. A meme is acquired through brain mechanisms and the ecology of the memes is the brain itself. If the meme acts as a ‘parasite’ to the host, then the host would not benefit from the genes for brain mechanisms that acquire memes. In other words, natural selection would not favor genes for culture. However, genes for culture have been selected for and ultimately memes that are disadvantageous to the organism will go through he same selective pressures.
An inquisitor may question the meme for smoking cigarettes. At first glance it seems disadvantageous; however, the idea of smoking cigarettes is concurrently associated with ‘being cool.’ The inclination towards ‘being cool’ may actually result in a benefit to an individual and result in reproductive success. The individuals’ reproductive success does not ultimately require a long life, however, it may help. Additionally Dawkins explicitly refers to religion as a meme that has no purpose other than ‘selfish’ replication. In fact, Dawkins argues religion may be detrimental to humans, reporting that it has caused great anguish throughout history. Regardless of the death and cruelties religion may have caused, at an individual level, religion may result in an advantage. Dean Hammer, in The God Gene, communicates that spirituality is transmitted through genes and religion is transmitted through memes. Moreover the meme-complex of religion fulfills the biological niche in the brain for its predisposition toward spirituality. The individual benefits may be linked to alterations in brain chemistry. The VMAT2 gene which is associated with spirituality encodes for a monoamine transporter and may increase sexual reproduction. The influence VMAT2 has on dopamine and serotonin may influence an individual’s reproductive behavior; dopamine specifically plays a role in partner diversity through its effects on novelty-seeking behavior and serotonin influences how often people have sex. Additionally, the power of faith through the placebo effect may improve health and prolong life. Regardless of the implications genes and memes infer on an individual, human behavior does not require a strict genetic deterministic view.
Dawkins finishes the chapter on memes by explaining that we as humans are built by gene machines and cultured by meme machines, however, we possess self-consciousness, conscious foresight, and possible genuine altruism. These unique characteristics allow other influences to modify and override the statistical influence of genes on human behavior. Furthermore, genetic determinism is a fallacy and the study of behavior must consider the implications of such an argument.