Rishon Rishon

Family Values

My Meme Plague post seems to have been widely misunderstood. Beyond my description of the mechanism of memetic transmission, which could have been better written, I want to emphasize that I wasn’t making a moral statement about fertility (or anything else, for that matter). I was merely trying to describe an idea I had about memetic evolution, which I still think is evolutionarily valid. I emphatically don’t think that fertility is virtuous for the individual, or lack of fertility unvirtuous.

Having said that, I do think that some memes are virtuous, and I would like to see them propagated. I realize that the only way to do that long-term is to embed them in a meme complex that will encourage fertility at least to replacement level.

I also realize that I made a mistake in that post. (Jinnderella beat me to the punch by pointing me to this article.) I do think people are attracted to memes that promote fertility. These memes come in two flavors: memes that promote sex, and memes that promote family values. Clearly, in today’s post-contraceptive world, the relationship between sex and fertility has been broken. But that still leaves family values.

It is clear to me that one of the main reasons why some people are attracted to traditional Judaism, as well as fundamentalist Christianity, and I presume many other religions, is family values. A lot of people (including me) believe that raising their children with clear values, in an environment where most of the people around them have clear values, is healthy for them, and most likely to promote their happiness, well-being, and success in life. The choice becomes even starker when you start thinking about your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. While it is quite conceivable to imagine transmitting your favorite memes to your children in the absence of a supporting meme-complex, it is much harder to imagine them transmitted to your grandchildren when the general society is promoting a conflicting set of memes. In such an environment, what are the chances of your children marrying a like-minded person? (Or for that matter in today’s world, getting married at all?)

I don’t have time for it now – I’m anticipating a busy day – but at some point I want to discuss the impact this will have on the future. Hint: Since time immemorial there has been an evolutionary war between the male-based strategy of maximizing the number of offspring, and the female-based strategy of maximizing the quality of offspring. The end of sex-based strategies for meme propagation favors the female strategy.