Wolves closing in to kill bison (credit: Wikipedia) 

In this book, wisdom is seen as being a prime virtue. For example, in the economic sector of our society, we all need to be wise enough to grasp a lesson. When there is a lesson as glaring as this one to be found in the history recorded by our forebears, refusing to learn that lesson would not just be unwise; it would be suicidal. Modern business leaders and union leaders, however much they may dislike one another, have by and large grown wise enough to see that they need one another. Dynamic balances make our society work. It is only in adjusting the balances that we argue. Over time, the wolf pack keeps the caribou herd strong, and vice versa. Unions and managers keep each other strong. 

And this discussion of the ways in which social evolution driven by cultural changes can be compared to physiological/anatomical evolution driven by genetic variation can be pursued further. The discussion is worth the trouble because it reiterates a main claim of this book, namely that these analogies between genes and memes are not just figures of speech. They are ways of describing material reality. The idea that cultural adaptation is the key driving force in human evolution fits the evidence.

                                     

   

                                        Prickly pear cactus, Utah, USA (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

                                       

   

                                            Flowering cactus, Jordan (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

For example, in biology, convergence is the term describing the phenomenon seen in species that are widely separated geographically, but that, after millennia of evolution, are found to be using near-identical strategies for survival. For example, desert plants of widely differing species, in widely separated deserts, have waxy leaves. They also put off flowering and reproducing for years until that rare desert downpour arrives.

                                                       

   

      Native elder Agnes Baker Pilgrim with her granddaughter (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

                                               

   

                  Grandfather and grandson in Indonesia (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Similarly, nearly all human societies that have made it into the present age, with vastly disparate cultures and from widespread geographic areas, respect, value, and heed their elderly. In pre-literate tribes, an old person was a walking encyclopedia of the tribe’s accumulated knowledge. What the old had stored in their heads about hunts, crops, cures for diseases, etc. could save lives, even save a whole tribe. This universal respect for the elderly demonstrates convergence in the cultural realm. The meme-gene analogy works.