Man is neither the measure of all things nor the source of all value. Terrestrially, he is not a biological necessity, but a luxury. He is not the end point of evolution but only its most recent product. He dare not dominate life on this planet but rather must coexist with it. The planet on which man resides is in no way special, nor is it at the center of the universe. Its parent star, the galaxy in which that star exists, and the cluster to which that galaxy adheres are likewise cloaked in anonymity. Abundant likenesses of these structures are remote in distance but close in kinship: all share the same ancestry of cosmic evolution. Earth is therefore unlikely to be either the only locale where life exists or the only habitat where intelligence has arisen. If intelligent life emerges, a new kind of evolution, cultural, supersedes its atomic, chemical, and biological predecessors. It differs from these predecessors by virtue of its speed of transformation. Supersonic aircraft, whose wingspans exceed the initial flight path of the Wright Brothers' Flyer, follow their flying pioneer by a mere fifty years, or less than a typical human lifetime. This illustrates how rapidly knowledge, and the ability to exploit it, accumulates. Inevitably this progression provokes a crisis: at the moment when the species driving the cultural evolution amasses powers global in extent, the survival of its entire biocommunity is endangered. Problems of a previously unencountered nature appear. Their solutions cannot be postponed. We humans of the present generation on Planet Earth are among the most recent to have crossed the evolutionary threshold to global powers. When we consider how we arrived at our current predicament, we note striking similarities between cultural and biological evolution. The gene is the fundamental unit for transmitting information biologically. The special property that gives it so prominent a role is its self-copying ability: it is a replicator. Of course, no natural replicating process is perfect. Life, if not extinguished altogether, would be despairingly monotonous had fallibility not been built

into the copying process. Instead, each error or mutation offered the opportunity for initiating new living forms, adaptable to new environmental niches. Nearly all of these naturally occurring experiments were failures; otherwise life would have careened between unicorns and mermaids with such rapidity that the stability essential to its survival would never have arisen. But the small fraction of successful mutations eventually enriched the biosphere with biota as diverse as warthogs and prickly pear cacti. The reason why life continually changed was that the various replicating entities had different fates when pitted against their environments. A differential in ability to survive soon showed up as a shift in relative numbers of competing species. Are there analogies in the case of cultural evolution? There are indeed ideas, thoughts, inventions, artistic styles, musical themes, fashions of dress, idioms of expression, architectural standards, computer algorithms, and other units of information whose propagation determines the pace and direction of a culture's changes. These units are the analogues of genes. They are transmitted, not as is the gene by a union of two contributing parents, but directly from brain to brain. In that sense our brains are almost public organs, openly exchanging information through conversations, electronic communications, printed media, hand-distributed leaflets, art works, photographs, billboards, and innumerable other conduits. All of us are enmeshed in a circuitry girdling Earth over which information reverberates with astonishing speed. As a result, the products of our minds are syntheses of the thoughts of others. We assemble ideas from bits and pieces gleaned elsewhere. In cultural evolution the transmitted units of information are not so much reproduced as imitated. Clothing fashions, catchy tunes, and clever inventions acquire a permanence when they are widely adopted. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, has introduced the name meme, a contraction of the Greek mimeme (imitation), for these and similar examples of cultural phenomena that have been emulated in so many settings and for so long a time that they have become customs and traditions.

Not all of the imitations will be perfect. As in biological evolution, this fallibility is necessary to perpetuate the process of change. In the case of the gene, the imperfect copies were called mutations. With respect to the meme, the mutations are the bold, trend-setting innovations introduced by such true intellectual giants as Einstein, Picasso, Shakespeare, Mozart, and even Disney. Meme mutations occur every several generations in whatever field we consider. Without them the world would be a lot less civilized. Let us also note how culture mimics a living process. Life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities, culture by the differential survival of imitating entities. Ideas, thoughts, speculations, and dreams compete for the limited attention a given mind, or set of minds, can devote to any single topic. Those memes that survive this competition are the ones that excel in terms of longevity, fecundity, and fidelity of imitation. Overtime, these crowd out the others. Humankind is extraordinarily lucky to be a participant in both kinds of evolution. Although our genes may last forever, the exact collection of genes that is any one of us disappears rapidly. At each generation, our genetic contribution is halved. By contrast, someone who writes a book, designs a bridge, builds a better mousetrap, or composes a tune donates a contribution that may survive intact long after his biological self has revealed its mere mortality. Socrates' ideas still pervade our culture intact, whereas his genes are widely scattered among the huge number of progeny who have descended from him. The memes we have inherited, plus those we originated, now empower us to breed ourselves out of existence, to annihilate the living presence on the planet, to pollute its whole environment, and to perturb the global climate. Capabilities so extensive in effect were unimaginable as recently as a mere century ago. A danger exists precisely because we may fail to recognize the uniqueness of this exact moment in Earth's history. In the overall context of cosmic evolution, during which many biosystems may already have encountered the threshold of global powers, it may not matter whether ours survives the crisis—as long as some do. But if we believe in the worth of the human phenomenon and truly value the good fortune that has proliferated life on our planet, it should matter to us. Faced with this unprecedented crisis of our own making, we can either cringe helplessly before the fear of catastrophe or accept the challenge as an opportunity to explore totally new evolutionary possibilities. The greatest threat may not be biological extinction but, instead, an extinction of the cultural values that define our humanness. Unless we collectively summon the inner resources to develop the new values and institutions essential to a stable and cooperative worldwide civilization, we may produce a mental stagnation resulting from the oppressive regimentation and coercive restriction of freedoms which will be seen as necessary to cope with ever more trying circumstances. And mental stagnation spells the death of cultural evolution. Nonetheless, there is hope! It lies in the replenishment of the meme pool. The overwhelming strength of the system biological evolution has brought forth is rooted in its profligate diversity. The gene pool is sufficiendy rich to contain many different ways to make a living. The collective biosphere therefore has the resiliency to surmount environmental challenge—earthquakes, fires, volcanoes, glaciation, and the like. By analogy, if our culture is to proceed through its present crisis, it will be because the meme pool is equally robust, equally richly stocked with varied alternatives. The leaps and bounds so necessary to accelerate the pace of social, cultural, political, and economic adjustment will occur as do mutations in the course of the evolution of living systems—that is to say, randomly and occasionally—whenever the spark of genius is ignited. But they will come only if adequate raw material in the form

of basic information is already stockpiled. We must therefore encourage the expression and propagation of alternative and original viewpoints. We cannot restrict the boundaries within which what is called "legitimate discussion" takes place. To do so is to deprive ourselves of potential solutions to future problems. Yet that may be exactly the trap into which the world, including those countries that pride themselves on freedom of expression, is falling. The "movers and shakers" in our society—be they political figures, captains of the media, corporate executives, labor leaders, economists, or assorted other "villains" who most benefit from the system as it is—are limiting expression to a narrow range clustered about some nebulously defined center that is basically the status quo. But the status quo is definitely not appropriate for a transition era. It will not suffice merely to conquer the notion that someone is a threat because he proposes changes to a system that has worked well in the past; we must go the next step of actively encouraging the cultivation and free exchange of alternative ideas. We must also avoid submerging cultures which we define as alien. Within them, if only we were to look, might lie some alternatives that would help smooth the way through our multiple crises. A Western, industrialized life-style is not appropriate for all the peoples of the world. Nor is an Eastern, an Asian, a Latin American, or that of any other single culture. All contribute to a social fabric that is the stronger because of the many strands from which it is woven. Moreover, we must preserve a certain imperfectibility in the memepropagation process. Our connected minds occasionally need the jolt of absolute unpredictability and total improbability, without which adjustment to the pace of change can be too stiflingly slow. Historically, the civilizations that have withdrawn into pleasure gardens dedicated to the preservation of the comfort and safety they have achieved end their development at that level and wither away in the smugness of their supposed satisfaction. The same will be true in the future, although the decay will be ever faster.

Finally, as individuals we must assert the strength of character, independence of mind, and boldness of conviction to create and express memes of our own. If all are takers from the meme pool, and none contributors to it, the pool quickly dries up. It may indeed be easier to succumb to the narcotic of mass culture and to avoid the strenuous intellectual adventure of stretching one's mind with a new idea, but this very ease of submission deceptively masks a path toward extinction. Nothing short of a new kind of evolution is required. I described it in the beginning chapter as participatory and collective. There is no sideline to which we can retreat; there are no subgroups of our species which we can ignore. In biological evolution, the modus operandi is unbridled selfindulgence, ignoring coplaneteers of both present and future. By contrast, the new evolutionary era we are entering will be dominated by cognition. That means man must project the outcomes of his many optional actions, then choose the ones promising the best long-term survival possibilities for the biosphere. The future will not be selected naturally, but consciously. Complete randomness will yield to loose direction. Creatures who seem cosmically insignificant must now assume full responsibility for the continued prosperity of their habitat. We alone on this planet are capable of the mental discipline to defy the selfishness of our genes and to override the indoctrination of our memes. Will we accelerate our social adjustments to the appropriate, albeit bewildering, pace? Or does the long, tangled evolutionary thread that led to our existence end here and now on this one small planet? We have surely arrived at a fork in the road. One path plunges down what is probably a well-worn cul-de-sac. The other leads toward a future of unlimited, hopeful expectation. Saguaro trees in a lifetime scatter millions of seeds by wind and water across the desert, of which but two or three attain full development. Metaphorical seeds of life may likewise be scattered profusely throughout the