The Selfish Gene Vs Fierce Love
I finally got around to reading The Selfish Gene. This is Richard Dawkin’s 1976 classic that lays out a theory about the fundamental drivers (he posits they are genes) of evolution and how that impacts all life, including us humans. It’s also where he coined the word ‘meme’, positing that -like genes- memes are essentially ‘replication machines’. They are ideas that spread through culture in the same way viruses and genes spread through physical space. And they are subject to the same laws of selection pressure, being forced to evolve as the environment changes. (Including the pressures of other memes attempting to supplant them.) My emotional state during the reading of this book could be described as inspired and invigorated. I’ve come away from it excited and energized. Which could probably be puzzling to many people. This is a book about how our bodies and brains are essentially fancy machines that genes have cobbled together over millions of years for the sole purp