The Meme Machine (27 page)

Richard Dawkins gave the first memetic explanation of celibacy in
The Selfish Gene
(1976). Suppose, he said, that the success of a meme depends on how much time and effort people put into propagating it. From the meme’s point of view any time spent doing anything else is simply time wasted. Marriage, having children and bringing them up, even sexual activity itself, is a great waste of time for memes. Suppose, he went on, that marriage weakened the power of a priest to influence his flock because his wife and children occupied a large proportion of his time and attention. Then it follows that the meme for celibacy could have greater survival value than the meme for marriage. A religion like
Roman Catholicism, which insists on celibacy in its priesthood, would find itself with actively meme–spreading priests, plenty of converts and an ongoing supply of new recruits to celibacy. The agony of abstinence may even goad these priests into ever more fervent attempts to serve their religion as a way of diverting their own attention from wicked thoughts of sex.

This is a particularly interesting kind of meme–gene conflict reminiscent of the gene–gene conflicts between a host and a parasite. I already gave one example in the conflict over the thickness of snail shells. Some parasites actually castrate their hosts (usually chemically rather than physically) as a way of diverting the hosts’ energies into replicating them rather than host genes. Religious celibacy is a way for memes to divert their hosts’ energies into replicating religious memes instead of host genes (Ball 1984).

If this explanation is going to be really useful it should be able to predict the conditions under which celibacy will and will not evolve, and I shall return to this when considering religions in more detail. For now the point is clear enough. Memetics suggests that some behaviours will spread just because they are good for the memes. You could look at it this way – each person only has a finite amount of time, effort and money. Their memes and genes therefore have to compete for control of these resources. In the truly celibate priest the memes have won hands down. But they have not done badly in even a lapsed celibate priest. As we know from many recent scandals, quite a few priests do have affairs and become fathers. But, of course, they have to keep this secret. They do not usually give up their religious life and so they cannot afford to spend any time and effort, or much money, on those offspring. They must rely on the mother providing all the care. If she does, the sinful man’s memes and his genes will both have done well.

Birth control

Birth control succumbs to exactly the same argument – and with dramatic consequences for the future of both memes and genes.

Let us suppose that women who have many children are far too busy to have much social life, and spend most of their time with their partners and family. The few other people they do see are likely to be other mothers with young children who already share at least some of their child–rearing memes. The more children they have the more years they will spend this way. They will, therefore, have little time for spreading
their own memes, including the ones concerned with family values and the pleasures of having lots of children.

On the other hand, women who have only one or two children, or none at all, are far more likely to have jobs outside the home, to have an exciting social life, to use e–mail, to write books and papers and articles, to become politicians or broadcasters, or do any number of other things that will spread their memes, including the memes for birth control and the pleasures of a small family. These are the women whose pictures appear in the media, whose success inspires others, and who provide role models for other women to copy.

There is a battle going on here – a battle between memes and genes to take control over the machinery of replication – in this case a woman’s body and mind. Any one person has only so much time and energy in their lifetime. They can divide it as they choose but they cannot have lots of children
and
devote maximal time and effort to spreading memes. This particular battle is played out largely in the lives of women and is becoming ever more important as women take a more prominent role in modern meme–driven society. My argument is simply this – the women who devote more time to memes and less to genes are the more visible ones, and therefore the ones most likely to be copied. In the process, they are effectively encouraging more women to desert gene–spreading in favour of meme–spreading.

This simple bias ensures that memes for birth control will spread even though they are disastrous for the genes of the people carrying them. These memes include not only ideas about small families and the benefits of birth control, but the pills, condoms, and caps that actually do the work; all the ideas in our society concerning sex for fun; the films, books, and television programmes that promote them; and the programmes of sex education that help our children to cope with sex in a permissive society without getting pregnant or catching AIDS. If this theory is right, birth rates are unlikely to rise again because this simple bias will keep them down.

Is this theory right? It makes a number of assumptions that could be challenged. One crucial assumption is that women with fewer children copy more memes. This seems to be true in a world in which middle class women with more money and more access to information have fewer children, but it could easily be tested by measuring, for example, the number of social contacts they have, the time they spend talking to others, the amount they read, their output of written or broadcast material, how many of them use e–mail, or own fax machines. The theory can work only if memetic output correlates negatively with the number of children a woman has.

A second assumption is that women are more likely to imitate the women they see in the media who have (or appear to have) few children, than those of their friends who have many. Research in social psychology, marketing, and advertising shows that people are more often persuaded by others who are perceived as powerful or famous. Family size is probably no exception, so if successful women have few children then others will copy their example. If both these assumptions are true then it follows that, in a climate of horizontal transmission, birth control will spread and families will get smaller.

Predictions can also be made. For example, the size of families should depend on the ease with which memes can spread horizontally in a given society. Other theories might predict that the main forces for lowering birth rate (Chinese–type coercion aside) would be economic necessity, availability of birth–control technology, the value of children as agricultural workers, or the decline of religions. Meme theory suggests that factors such as how many people a mother typically communicates with, or how much access she has to printed and broadcast material, should be more important. And note that it is mothers who count. Memetic theory easily explains why the education of women is so important in changing family size.

Education aside, this all leads to the paradoxical thought that the more sex magazines, e–mail sex sites, and sex shops are available, the lower birth rates are likely to be. The sale of sex in modern societies is not about spreading genes. Sex has been taken over by the memes.

Let us consider an example. Imagine a couple who both have rewarding and demanding careers. Let us suppose that she is editor of a magazine and he is a management consultant. They have a large house but it is a workplace as well as a home. They have computers, fax machines, phones, and desks piled with work, and they work long hours. She goes to the magazine’s office, but often works at home, editing contributions, dealing with problems and writing her own articles. When they are not working they go out with friends to get a welcome break from it all.

The time comes to decide about children. The woman is in her thirties; she has always faintly wanted children, but how will she manage? She sees her friends juggling family and careers, she sees the time that babies take up, and the sleep they deprive you of, the problems with nannies, the money they cost. She thinks about her work: they are about to take over another magazine. Will she get the job of editing both? If she takes time off, will she lose it? He thinks about his clients. Will children be in the way? Will he need a separate office? Will his competitors overtake him if he cannot keep working evenings and weekends? What if he has to take
children to school or do his share of nappy–changing and feeding? They decide, on balance, not to have children.

What has happened here? You could say that these two people have rationally made the choice to devote their energies to work rather than having children. And in one sense you would be right. But another way of looking at it is from the meme’s eye view. From this perspective the memes have done rather well. They have, as it were, persuaded the couple to devote their energies to memes rather than genes. They did not do this by conscious design or foresight, but simply because they are replicators. From this perspective, the couple’s thoughts, emotions, desire for success, and willingness to work hard, are all aspects of the replicating machinery that is, or is not, devoted to spreading the memes – as are the printing presses that reproduce the magazines and the factories that build the computers. The buyers of the magazines and the users of the management advice are all part of the environment in which all these memes thrive, and these memes use us for their own propagation.

There are many people like this. As our environment becomes more and more rich in memes and meme–copying devices, we may expect more and more people to become infected with memes that drive them to spend their lives propagating those memes. That is what memes do.

The overworked scientist is frantic to read all those latest research reports. The exhausted doctor cannot keep up with the latest change in health care advice and works longer and longer hours. The advertising executive has a mountain of new ideas to deal with. The check–out worker at the supermarket has to learn the latest technology or lose the job. With the advent of the Internet more and more people are getting connected and there is scope for them to spend inordinate amounts of time playing with the new memes. The computer nerd is more in the thrall of the memes he plays with than of the genes he is carrying.

The natural end point of all this might appear to be a childless society, but the genes have given us a powerful desire to have and care for children. I would guess that birth rates in modern meme–driven societies will stabilise at some level that balances the genetically created desire for children against the memetically created desire to spread memes more than genes.

Adoption

Finally, there is the question of adoption. Sociobiologists can reasonably argue that childless couples are driven by their genetically created desires
to want to have and nurture children, and that these desires outweigh the obvious point that an adopted child will not pass on their genes. In other words, from the gene’s point of view adoption is just a mistake. However, it is an extremely expensive mistake. It means devoting vast amounts of time and money for no genetic reward at all. It is just the kind of mistake that is made by the bird who is tricked into bringing up a baby cuckoo, or a man who is ‘cuckolded’ – and we have already seen how far biological evolution has gone in devising strategies to avoid this happening – and what pressures men have put on women to ensure their own paternity. Genetically, infertile people would do better to help their siblings and their siblings’ children. Some do just that, but the long queues of people now waiting to adopt suggest there is something going on here that challenges the sociobiological view.

Looked at from the meme’s point of view, the benefits of adoption are obvious. As far as memes are concerned, the time and effort expended on an adopted child are exactly as valuable as that expended on one’s own offspring. There are many kinds of meme which parents pass down vertically to their children. The ones that are successful in getting spread this way (and are common in the meme pool) are those that people
want
to pass on. These include not only religious and political views, social mores, and ethical standards (in any case some children reject these entirely), but all the possessions that go with living in a meme–rich society. Memes are ultimately responsible for us having our homes and possessions, our position in society, and our stocks, shares and money. None of these things would exist without a meme–based society and these are the things we work hard for and want to leave to someone we care about when we die.

If we ask someone why they want to adopt a child we should not expect them to say ‘to pass on my memes’, any more than if we ask someone why they enjoy sex we would expect them to say ‘to pass on my genes’. Nevertheless, from the meme’s eye view a person’s desire to pass on their experience and possessions is an opportunity to be exploited. Thus, we should expect that in species without memes, individuals will do all they can to avoid bringing up non–relatives, but in a species with both memes and genes, some individuals will find themselves wanting a child whether or not it is biologically their own. Adoption, birth control and celibacy may be mistakes for the genes, but they are not so for the memes.

•••••

The memes can take over sexual behaviour in many other ways too. Sex means intimacy, and intimacy means sharing memes. Many a spy has
lured a politician into bed as a ploy for obtaining information. Many a young actress has succumbed to sex on the casting–couch in the hope that she will get on to the wide screen and so be seen and possibly emulated by millions. Power is a powerful aphrodisiac and today’s power is all about spreading memes. Politicians are renowned for using sex as a weapon, as a device to gain influence, and as a way of cementing alliances – and these alliances are all about spreading political memes. Sex is a wonderful world for the proliferation, control, and manipulation of memes.

I have contrasted the sociobiological view of sex (it is all for the genes) with a memetic view (it is for memes as well as genes). These two approaches make rather different predictions for the long–term future of any memetic species. If sociobiologists are right (at least those who agree with their founding father, E. O. Wilson) then the genes must ultimately pull in the leash again. If the genes were fundamentally in charge they would find a way to correct the mistake and redress the balance. As time goes on, unless the mistake proved fatal, human beings would change genetically so that they were no longer lured away by magazines, high–powered jobs, or the Internet, and were prepared to concentrate on the proper business of creating more human beings.