Chapter 7: Dangerous Memes; or, What the Pandorans Let Loose

Cultural evolution is a dangerous child for any species to let loose on its world. And the parent species, whatever it is like and wherever it arises, will have no insight into what it has done until its offspring is already grown and making its way in the world. By then it is too late to take it back. So I shall call this motherly species "Pandoran," after the mythical first Greek woman whose box released all the evils of mankind. We humans are Earth s Pandorans, and have let loose cultural evolution; but on other planets quite different creatures might be playing this role.

Opening such a box of tricks can even be lethal, and I suspect that there are several danger points. The first critical step occurs when one species becomes capable of behavioral imitation, or of some other process that makes copying with variation and selection possible. This creates a new replicator, making the evolution of culture inevitable. This is the first danger point, because the newly created culture - the spreading of copied behaviors and the competition to mix, match, and make more - can get out of hand. Some of the behaviors may be so extravagant, or expensive, or dangerous, that they kill off their Pandorans and so obliterate themselves as well. This kind of waste is all part of how evolution works. Indeed natural selection might be called "design by death" because of all the billions of creations that have to die in spawning innovation and success for a few.

If this first danger point is passed, the Pandorans and their newly spawned culture may begin to adapt to each other, and co-evolve towards a more symbiotic relationship, as diseases and their hosts sometimes do. If this succeeds, the result may be a stable mutualism that lasts indefinitely. Alternatively, with enough time and under the right conditions, another step might be taken. That is, new mechanisms for copying, varying, and selecting information could evolve outside of the Pandorans themselves, leading to a second danger point. For example, here on Earth, humans invented printing, sound recording and photography, vast communication networks, broadcasting, and the Internet. These are all methods of selective copying, which means a new evolutionary step and this creates a second danger point. As the copying increases, the thirst for innovation that s unleashed can be a drain not only on the Pandorans who started it but on their whole environment as well. This is what has happened here on Earth, with the consequent overpopulation and technological explosion threatening the health and climate of the entire planet.

This danger point could be safely passed, or it might prove fatal. We don t yet know what the outcome will be here on Earth; it could go either way. However, our sample of one planet does at least allow us to think about the general picture and speculate about what might happen on other planets elsewhere in the cosmos. I like to imagine a vast universe containing many planets which have conditions suitable for life to evolve. On some of those planets a species evolves that is capable of copying what others do, thus unleashing this second evolutionary process. Among those planets, some survive the danger point and some do not, with the successful ones going on to spawn further evolutionary steps and face further danger points. On this picture, what should we expect to see around us? I would like to explore what might be out there on the basis of this memetic way of thinking about cultural evolution. I shall first explain a little about memes, meme theory, and the importance of replicators, and then consider some of the possible fates of planets that give birth to multiple replicators as ours has done.