Post#14: The Selfish Gene

Author: Richard Dawkins

In The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, your mind will be blown multiple times for sure. One of the central themes, if not, the main central theme of the book is the idea of replicators (DNA molecules), and their vehicles or as Dawkins calls them (survival machines). By survival machines of course he means humans.

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

The quote above is the very first line of the book which is quite a hook for a book. It is a statement that resonates deeply and make us think. Do signs of intelligence start coming up to the surface once we actually become intelligent and start questioning who we are? The question is very difficult to answer and Dawkins doesn’t get philosophical at all in The Selfish Gene. Instead, he explains things in a matter-of-fact way which is appreciated by his readers.

The main argument of the book is that all living organisms such as humans, animals, and plants are just machines or rather vehicles controlled by genes that live inside of us. These genes are the real masters who call the shots. In a way, we are just vehicles which main purpose is to help genes survive and propagate generation after generation.

Since genes are selfish entities that only look out for themselves, then we can expect that we never act for the benefit of other humans as well. I’m not sure I agree with this idea, but Dawkins claims that even when we are working in cooperation, there is always a hidden benefit that we expect to gain from this cooperation. The other way around is easier to see since there are plenty of examples of people manipulating others for their benefit.

Dawkins claims there is a general misconception when we say that we do things for the good of the species. He thinks that this kind of altruism is selfishness in disguise. The idea of sacrificing for others is popular because it aligns with our moral ideals. Moreover, this idea is shared by most people because it tunes in with what we believe in, but there might be a hidden truth to all of that.

To put it in a slightly more respectable way, a group such as species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place place their own selfish interests first. Therefore, the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of ‘group selection’. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

One of the ideas mentioned in the book that I don’t agree with is the idea that life started out of nowhere by an accidental grouping of molecules on Earth. Dawkins claims that many years ago the Earth had a very different and richer environment with abundance of different molecules of oxygen, water, methane, and others which might have associated themselves together by accident to form a replicator which started evolving into what we are today.

These replicators started looking for ways to protect themselves from outside dangers, so as a mechanism of protection they created containers or rather vehicles in order to travel safely, survive, and propagate. Dawkins claims that human bodies are just a reliable way for genes to ensure that they are passed on unaltered.

As you move ahead, there are other important ideas laid out in the book. Ideas such as evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) are also explained with examples taken from the animal kingdom which are really fascinating.

An evolutionary stable strategy or ESS is defined as a strategy which, if most members of a population adopt to, cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

In other words, we tend to do what the majority of people is doing because we know that a population is just a group of individuals who are trying to maximize their chances of survival, so they have agreed upon a common strategy for how to do certain things such as acting in a variety of ways under certain circumstances, cooperating with other people, etc. Obviously, there are exceptions like in all areas of life, but they’re nicely explained and tied back to the this idea of ESS.

The examples in the book not only refer to animals, but also humans. No pun intended since I know humans can also be considered to be animals of some sort. Dawkins explains that there is such a complicated game going on in our lives. This refers particularly in how we act when we are around others and even when selecting a partner.

Our brains consciously or unconsciously start making calculations and come up with a cost-benefit analysis of situations and people way ahead of the curve in order to save us time and energy. There is also characteristics such as fidelity and persistence which are prominent when females choose a partner based on what strategy females are going with. There is a whole chapter about this in the book outlining the strategies used by males and females.

Another fundamental idea of the book is the idea about memes. Memes are the new replicators. A meme is the idea of the unit of cultural transmission. Memes could be things such as ideas, tunes, ways of making things, fashion styles, etc. Memes are similar to genes in that they also look to survive. The medium of transmission differs from genes since memes travel from brain to brain by a process called ‘imitation’. For example, if a professor hears or reads of a new idea which is appealing and convincing enough to him, he passes this idea to his coworkers and students. If the idea holds up to be interesting enough and resonate with others, then the meme is propagated to other individuals which in turn pass it to others and so for and so on. In this way, memes have a long reach and survival expectancy for literally generations. One example of a meme that has lasted for generations is cultural traditions.

“When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.” The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

Dawkins expands on this topic thoroughly by talking about survival value of memes, constant mutation and blending of memes, and others that seem to explain why we have such a burning desire to invent things in order to leave a legacy behind.

If you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

There are so many ideas worth exploring in The Selfish Gene and some of those have not been mentioned here such as the non-zero sum game and the zero sum game which Dawkins mentions in the book too. In order to keep this post readable and also because I want you to give this book a try, I have not included many of those ideas.

This book is fascinating and once you read it you come out of the other side with a better understanding of who you are and what we are made of. Nevertheless, you also come out with a renewed sense of wonder and lots of questions perhaps more than you had before and I say that in the best possible way.

Additional Resources:

The Selfish Gene Explained

Some chapters of the book have been made into cool videos

Richard Dawkins explains his idea of memes

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