The Meme Machine

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Uniquely among animals, humans are capable of imitation and so can copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviors, inventions, songs and stories. These are all memes, a term first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976. According to memetic theory, memes, like genes, are replicators, competing to get into as many brains as possible, and this memetic competition has fashioned our minds and culture, just as natural selection has designed our bodies. Can the analogy between memes and genes lead us to powerful new theories that actually explain anything important? This book ends by confronting the deepest questions of all about ourselves: the nature of the inner self, the part of us that is the centre of our consciousness, that feels emotions, has memories, holds beliefs and makes decisions. Author Blackmore contends that this inner self is an illusion, a creation of the memes for the sake of their own replication.--From publisher description