Selfish Genes

Not long ago, an ape-descended life form called Richard Dawkins came up with a remarkable description of the theory of evolution.

His conceit was a simple way to explain the apparent discrepancy between the theory of evolution -- which states that anything which propagates copies of itself efficiently will thrive -- and the fact that people are not selfish, amoral and generally bad all the time, but rather merely most of it.

The theory was called the theory of selfish genes. As you share almost of your genetic material with the rest of your species, almost all of the genes within you will very probably be propagated if your fellow species-members reproduce. Therefore the health and happiness of other species-members is almost as important as your own -- and this is why people are only slightly selfish, unlike genes, which are completely and utterly selfish.

Evolution in five minutes

Evolution in genetics relies on two things.

The first is replication. Things must be able to produce copies of themselves. Things which produced perfect copies would tend to dominate, since imperfect copies are different in some way and therefore (from an evolutionary viewpoint) may be considered competitors.

The second is variation. If things don't vary, there is no possibility that things will modify at all -- and we'd all be algae. Admittedly, this would mean that -- in an evolutionary sense -- the algae (or their genes, at least) would have won, but this would be very dull, and fail utterly to explain the incredible diversity and ingenuity of things on Earth, or, indeed, the fact that we exist¹.

Especially useful is a form of replication which allows maximum scope for variations to grow, and which is a lot of fun besides.

Selfish Memes

However, as a conceptual flight of fancy, Dawkins also suggested that thought-fragments -- which he named memes (a shortened form of mimeme) -- could propagate and breed in a similar way in the minds of intelligent life-forms. For example, the simple phrase "Don't Panic" represents a meme, the phrase "Large friendly letters" represents another, and their child has proven remarkably robust.

I have decided it is my life's quest to cause as much mimetic mutation as possible.

Mimetic Diversity

This sentence is as paradoxical as it is true.

Think about it.