Is This Life All There Is?. - Beliefnet
While for 3.5 billion years, reproduction has been key and is still important in evolution, in the last 10,000 years of so Homo Sap has thrown an incredible wild card into the picture in the form of memes. Suddenly that moral element has become one of the most important determinants of survival for life on earth. The 'moral' failing of not getting along with the dominant humans is detrimental for survival as a species and as an individual I might add.
The human species is no exception. Morality, that is compliance with the mores of the tribe whatever that tribe is, is critical not only to survival as an individual but survival for the memes that might become part of the culture of the tribe. In a real sense the tribal memes are the modern mechanism of human evolution. The meme of divine right king led tribes is effectively dead, although the despot led tribal meme is unfortunately alive and well.
I suspect that in the lifetime of my grandchildren the religion meme will have disappeared, and certainly the trip-omni God gene associated with many religions. Out breeding resources is always a fatal mistake, although the death throes of that meme suicide are always ugly.
Next year in Jerusalem
6 days ago
1 comment:
In his later years, Dawkins "diminished" the value he had once placed upon "Memetics" as a potential "social science" because its theories were not supported by actual and verifiable research. Viruses spread like viruses because of their nature...memes are created and spread by people that find value in the memes, whether or not the meme has arguable value to anyone else.
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