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The Meme Machine

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The Meme Machine

Written by: Susan Blackmore, Richard Dawkins - foreword
Narrated by: Esther Wane
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About this listen

First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture.

Susan Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive-making tools, for example, or using language - survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced.

Applying this theory to many aspects of human life, Blackmore offers brilliant explanations for why we live in cities, why we talk so much, why we can't stop thinking, why we behave altruistically, how we choose our mates, and much more. With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free will, our very sense of "self", The Meme Machine offers a provocative theory everyone will soon be talking about.

©1999 Susan Blackmore; foreword copyright 1999 by Richard Dawkins (P)2019 Tantor Anthropology Biological Sciences Developmental Psychology Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Social Sciences Sociology
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It took me a relatively long time to finish, but left me with a richer understanding of the pressures shaping human evolution and history. A very well thought out book, a must read for those seeking answers for why we are the way we are, and a well narrated audio experience.

A fresh new perspective for undertaking ourselves

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