As Dawkins (1976) pointed out, when he introduced the concept of the meme as a cultural item that gets itself copied, the fundamental principle of biology is that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. . . .
Two main insights that flow from this thinking tool dramatically alter the landscape of our imaginations when we think about human culture and creativity. First, memes shatter the otherwise seductive idea that there are only two routes to good Design: it’s either genes or genius. For most thinkers, until memes open their eyes, if something in human life exhibits the telltale signs of adaptation of means to ends or functional efficiency, it must be either a product of genetic natural selection or a product of deliberate, comprehending, intending human thinking—intelligent design.
The second insight is that the price we pay for having this extra information highway, this bounteous medium of design and transmission that no other species enjoys, is that memes have their own fitness, just like all the other symbionts that thrive in our company, and their fitness is to some degree independent of our own fitness. Blindness to this idea is endemic, and is particularly evident when people discuss evolutionary accounts of religion.
Memes are informational symbionts, and like the mutualist symbionts by the trillions that also inhabit us, we couldn’t live without them, but that doesn’t mean they are all our friends. Some are harmful plagues we could well do without.
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
