Why 'Memes over Genes': TLDR version


We all know about genes, don't we. They're the 'units of hereditary': the biological building blocks of our genome, signature sequences of DNA that get passed on to our children, if we have any -- or die with us if we don't. It's the same for all living things. What drives evolution is the random element of the sexual shuffle: useful new characteristics survive, others are not so lucky. But here's the thing: what most makes us human is that -- above and beyond this slow genetic churn -- we swim in an extraordinary pool of abstract ideas, ideas we absorb and pass on whenever we find them interesting. It was this pool of shared ideas that Richard Dawkins was thinking about when he coined the word 'meme' in his book The Selfish Gene to mean 'a unit of cultural transmission': memes are the building blocks of culture.

These days memes are all about video clips of cats doing weird stuff, or the latest buzz-word doing the rounds, but that's just the froth: the heaving lifting in human culture happens when we trade information. But the exchange of information has no cost: unlike a physical object, I can give you an idea but still keep it myself. That's an incredible advantage, and explains almost everything about the rise and rise of homo sapiens. Our memes are worth more than our genes, and the key to that is language -- as I detail in my book. If you want to know why we live in glittering cities and fly helicopters on Mars, the answer is in our memes, not our genes. And that's the secret of being human: memes over genes. 

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