The Meme Machine (30 page)

I am going to speculate about the origins of such behaviour in our evolutionary past. (In the next chapter I will deal with altruism in today’s world where it is easier to test the consequences and to find out whether a memetic theory is really needed.) We begin with reciprocal altruism. People are nice to each other to get kindness in return, and their emotions are designed appropriately – that is, people want to be generous to those who might repay them, and they want to be liked. Now, add the capacity to imitate, and the strategy ‘copy–the-altruist’, and two consequences follow. First, kind and generous behaviours will spread by imitation. Second, behaviours that
look
like kind and generous ones, or are prevalent in kind and generous people, will also spread by imitation.

I speculated previously about how human imitation ever came about, and it is interesting to realise that Tit–for-tat entails a kind of imitation -it is essentially a strategy of ‘imitate the other guy’. So perhaps the selection pressures favouring cooperative behaviour also played a part in the evolution of imitation itself. In any case, once imitation had arisen, people could begin copying each other, and ways of doing things could spread through whole populations. Among these ways of doing things would be acts of generosity, such as sharing food, giving presents, and looking after the sick – all of which could arise from sound genetic principles such as those we have already considered, kinship patterns, mating systems, and reciprocal altruism.

Once imitation has arisen, this process only works if people are more likely to copy altruists. This makes sense, because if you live in a community that uses reciprocal altruism you are likely to gain most by being with people who are known to be generous. So the generous people will have more contact with others and therefore more opportunities for spreading their memes. However, there is another reason why it might pay to copy altruists. A fundamental principle of reciprocal altruism is that people are most generous to people who are generous to them. But there is a way to cheat the system. If you want the rewards (other people’s generosity) without paying the costs (actually being generous) you could try to
look
like a generous person. In other words, it would pay you to copy the people who really are generous. So the strategy ‘copy–the-altruist’ should spread. This strategy is, at first, of benefit to the genes but because it involves the second replicator the genes cannot keep it under control. ‘Copy–the-altruist’ starts as a strategy for biological gain, and ends up as a strategy for spreading memes – including (but not restricted
to) memes for altruism itself. There will always be pressures
against
altruistic acts because of the costs involved, but once imitation is possible there is also memetic pressure
for
altruism.

Imagine two early hunters who go out with bows and arrows, leather quivers, and skin clothing, and both come back with meat. One, let us call him Kev, shares his meat widely with surrounding people. He does this because kin selection and reciprocal altruism have given him genes for at least some altruistic behaviour. Meanwhile Gav keeps his meat to himself and his own family, because his genes have made him somewhat less generous. Which behaviours are more likely to get copied? Kev’s of course. He sees more people, these people like him, and they tend to copy him. So his style of quiver, his kind of clothing and his ways of behaving are more likely to be passed on than Gav’s – including the altruistic behaviour itself. In this way Kev is the early equivalent of the meme–fountain, and he spreads memes because of his altruistic behaviour.

Note that there are two different things going on here. First, the altruistic behaviour serves to spread copies of itself. Second, it spreads copies of other memes from the altruistic person. This second possibility could produce odd results. As with biological evolution, accidents of history can have profound effects. So, if it just happened that in one particular group of our ancestors the generous people happened to have made specially natty blue–feathered arrows, then blue–feathered arrows would spread more widely than brown–feathered ones, and so on. Whatever the kind of memes we are talking about, they may be driven to increase by the altruism of their bearers.

There are also more complicated ways in which altruism could be spread memetically. The sociologist Paul Allison (1992) has suggested a number of ‘beneficent rules’ whose contents may ensure their own survival. They all take the general form of ‘Be good to those who have a higher than average probability of being carriers of this norm’. This principle depends not on the strategy ‘copy–the-altruist’ but on ‘copy–the-successful’. As Allison explains, suppose A follows one of these rules and helps B. B may now be more successful because of the help he has received. He is therefore more likely to be imitated and therefore to pass on the rule which made A help him in the first place. In this way the rule spreads itself.

This process only works if B actually takes on the beneficent rule and does not just take the kindness and run. That is why the general rule is to be good to others who are likely to carry the rule. So who are they? Among many versions of the rules are ‘Be good to those who imitate you’, ‘Be good to children’, ‘Be good to your cultural ancestors’ or, more
generally, ‘Be good to your close cultural relatives’. For example, you might follow the rule ‘Be good to your cultural descendants’. If people have already taken on other memes of yours and in general are known to copy you, then they are more likely to take on your beneficent rules as well. Since kindness to them is likely to increase their cultural fitness they may also pass it on to someone else and so the rule will thrive. This process would apply to biological parents and their children, in which case it would be hard to distinguish from kin selection. It becomes more interesting when applied to non–kin, and Allison considers the example of professors and their graduate students. Professors who are generous to their students (in time, effort, and so on) increase the cultural fitness of their students and hence the chances that all their memes, including the beneficent rule itself, will be passed on to yet more students. This makes sense, because a caring professor who works hard for her students’ welfare will certainly attract more students – and better students – who in turn are likely to do the same.

Note that it is the rule that benefits here, not the professor. Perhaps rationally the professor should not be so generous, but because these norms thrive and she has picked them up, she will be. Allison does not use the term ‘meme’ but his beneficent norms clearly are memes, for he specifies that they are passed on by imitation and teaching. His analysis shows how taking the meme’s eye view (or ‘norm’s eye view’) can explain behaviours that cannot easily be explained in terms of rational choice theory or genetic advantage.

Note that Allison’s scheme best accounts for acts of altruism directed towards cultural relatives and, as he points out, it cannot account for altruism directed at large groups of people, or at people in general. In contrast, memetic altruism based on ‘copy–the-altruist’ can explain just this kind of generalised altruism.

Memes versus genes

Any act of meme–driven altruism potentially lowers the actor’s genetic fitness. In other words, the arena of human altruism can be seen as a competition between memes and genes. Kev’s behaviour will make him friends but it may reduce his chances of survival, or the chance of his children’s survival, by reducing their share of the meat. His genes only ‘care’ about his generosity if it serves in the long run to pass them on, and they have equipped him with feelings and behaviours that generally serve their interests. But his memes do not ‘care’ about his genes at all. If they
can get copied they will. And they will, because people copy people they like. Thus we can imagine a human society in which meme–driven altruistic behaviour could spread – even if it put a heavy burden on individuals. In other words, once people start to copy the altruists, the genes will not necessarily be able to stop them.

Could memetic altruism get completely out of hand – and stretch the leash to breaking point? Sometimes people do give more than they can really afford. They vie with each other to be the most generous, or give the most ostentatious of gifts. As Matt Ridley (1996) points out, gifts can become bargains, bribes, and weapons. Most extraordinary is the practice of ‘potlatch’. The term comes from the Chinook language and potlatch is best known from American Indian groups, but it also occurs in New Guinea and other places. A potlatch is a special event in which opposing groups try to impress their rivals by giving away, or destroying, extravagant gifts. They may give each other canoes and animal skins, beads and copper plates, blankets and food. They may even burn their most valuable possessions, kill their slaves, and pour precious oil onto a huge fire.

Note that this wasteful tradition is not like ordinary reciprocal altruism. In most forms of reciprocal altruism, both parties benefit from cooperating, but in a potlatch everyone loses (at least in purely material terms). Note also that potlatch depends upon imitation. Such a tradition could only spread by one person copying it from another until it becomes the norm for a whole society. It is imitation that makes such peculiar behaviour possible, and once the genes have given us imitation they cannot take it back. We could see the potlatch behaviour as like a parasite that may, or may not, kill its host, while most of our altruistic behaviour is symbiotic or even beneficial.

Once again we can see that it is our capacity to imitate that makes humans so different from other species. In other species gifts are confined to sharing with kin, to precise reciprocal deals, or to special situations such as the male spider who gives his mate a well wrapped fly to keep her busy while he copulates. Among human cultures, giving gifts is common; visitors bring gifts, special occasions are celebrated with gifts, marriages and birthdays are marked with gifts. In Britain, about seven to eight per cent of the economy is devoted to producing articles that will be given away as gifts, and in Japan the figure may be higher still. Fortunately, potlatches are rare, and for most of us the giving and receiving of gifts is an enjoyable part of being human.

One last step gives us meme–gene coevolution again. I have already argued that the best imitators, or the possessors of the best memes, will have a survival advantage, as will the people who mate with them. So the
strategy ‘mate–with-the–best-imitator’ spreads. In practice, this means mating with those people who have the most fashionable (and not just the most useful) memes, and we can now see that altruism is one of the factors that determines which memes come to be fashionable.

So Kev, the meme–fountain, will not only make more friends and spread more memes, but since these memes are fashionable he will also attract a better mate and pass on the genes that made him altruistic in the first place. This means that insofar as the originally altruistic behaviour depended on genetic differences, these will be passed on to more offspring, and so altruistic behaviour will spread genetically, as well as memetically. Note that this process entails the memetic–driving of
genes
for altruism rather than just memes driving
memes
for altruism as described above. By this process genes for human altruism could have been meme–driven -making us genetically more altruistic than we would otherwise be.

Note also that this possibility arises because two strategies coincide – ‘imitate the altruist’ and (because altruism memes are imitated and become fashionable) ‘mate–with-the–altruist’. The same does not apply for Allison’s beneficent norms because they depend on the strategy ‘mate–with-the–successful’, which is directly in the interests of the genes, and is in any case widespread. In other words, for Allison’s rules the outcome will be similar whether just genes were involved, or memes as well.

I suggested that ‘imitate–the-altruist’ had two consequences: spreading altruism memes and spreading other memes associated with altruists. The same applies to the memetic driving of genes. So, not only might genes for altruism be favoured but, by the quirks of history, other genes might be affected. For example, let us suppose that there was some genetic components to Kev’s choice of blue feathers (differences in colour vision, for example). Blue–feathered arrows became popular because they first appeared on Kev, and Kev was a generous person. Now people not only copy the feathers, but they preferentially mate with people who have the fashionable blue–feathered arrows. Thus, the genes for preferring blue feathers may now have an advantage, and, if the fashion were maintained for enough generations, gene frequencies might start to change. Note that there need be nothing intrinsically better about having blue–feathered arrows. The whole process began only because it was an altruistic person who started the fashion.

I have no idea whether memetic–driving of this kind has ever taken place or not. There is some observational evidence that human infants show a tendency to share (as well as to be selfish of course) at a young age, while infants of other primate species do not, suggesting an innate basis. Certainly, humans have a far more cooperative society than any other
species, apart from the social insects such as ants and bees that operate by kin selection. This theory of memetic altruism could provide the explanation. It might also help explain why the relationship between memes and genes is apparently so successful, even though the two replicators are so often at odds. Perhaps memes are more like a symbiont and less like a parasite precisely because they encourage people to cooperate with each other.

If there were many other species with memes, comparisons would be easy; but there are not. Many birds imitate each others’ songs and so perhaps we should expect these birds to show more altruism to each other than closely related non–imitators. Dolphins are among the very few other species capable of imitation, and they are renowned for stories of heroic rescues. Dolphins have been reported to push a drowning human up to the surface of the sea, and even to push someone onto land – a very strange thing for another species to do. But this is only anecdote; much research would be needed to find out whether the idea is valid or not. Other research to find out whether memetic driving of altruism has ever occurred would be difficult, as is all research on behaviour in our distant past.