ABSTRACT
Dawkins in The Selfish Gene is not, of course, engaged on any mission of cosmic warfare or of moral reformation. According to Calvinism, we are pawns in a game, in which the real players are the demons and God. According to The Selfish Gene, we are pawns in a game in which the only real players are genes. The branches of literature are various, and the readers in one branch tend to be not readers in the others: the readers of science, say, tend not to be readers of history, or of philosophy, or of poetry. The Selfish Gene is nearly as bad a book as Mary Midgley said it is, and it is quite as pernicious a book as she said it is. A meme is anything which can be transmitted by non-genetic means from one human to another. All ideas, beliefs, attitudes, styles, customs, fashions, in fact all the elements of culture in the broadest sense, are memes.
