salmon swimming upstream (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

Moral realism takes as a given premise that meme complexes - sets of closely related ideas that exist in the minds of the people in a given culture, are closely analogous to gene complexes in the nuclei of the cells of living species. 

For example, in the human genome, there are definitely identifiable sets of genes that determine a baby's eventual eye color long before that baby is born. From conception, in fact. There are also genes for cystic fibrosis, musical talent, size, strength, susceptibility to cancer and so on. 

Now complexes of related ideas in human minds, complexes that are passed from parent to child by nurture rather than by nature, are usually more flexible than gene complexes. In fact, genes can't be changed much at all, though there is some evidence now that learned behaviors may be inherited by offspring in some species. But this is a digression. For the most part, the genes an organism is born with are the ones it is stuck with for the rest of its life. 

Memes arranged into sets of ideas that we call theories, models, concepts, beliefs, or values, on the other hand, can be modified even in adulthood. Difficult, but not impossible. We can give up our geocentric model of the solar system once we see the logic and evidence for the heliocentric one. We can stop thinking that diseases are caused by swamp vapors and learn germ theory. We can even convert to a new religion that is radically different from the one we were born into. We can learn to play the piano even at a mature age. Or weld. Note that this kind of changing of the memes is doable, by and large, for human beings. Animals lower than us on the complexity scale, for the most part, don't learn new tricks very well, if at all. 

But we do. Most of us can re-educate and re-train several times in a lifetime. 

Moral realism argues that in human cultures, ideas and concepts, etc. survive and spread if they enable the humans who carry them to live more vigorously and thus survive and spread themselves. Ideas and ideals live if they make the people who carry them live. Sometimes this may mean that an individual will sacrifice her/himself in order that the individual's children or neighbors or fellow citizens may live. Altruistic genes can be fatal for the individual and yet be very positively survival-oriented for a species. So also can altruistic memes work for a culture. 

Which brings me to an interesting point: if genes can be selfish, as Richard Dawkins uses the term, then can memes be so as well? 

What Dawkins means by a selfish gene is not that there is a gene that programs its carriers to be selfish people, cats, or whatever. What he means is that the gene drives the behavior patterns of the individual so that the gene itself will get passed on down the generations, regardless of what the processes involved in the passing on do to the individual carrier. Sexual reproduction immediately comes to mind. Yes, it feels good. No, intercourse isn't always good for us in the short or long term. But the genes involved make it, anatomically and hormonally, so motivating that we throw caution to the winds, as do most other species, just to have that one more orgasm. Pity the millions of salmon swimming up the Fraser River. They are being manipulated. 

But then are there memes that are selfish in the sense that Dawkins intends? 

I think that, yes, there are such memes, or more accurately we can call them meme complexes or more commonly, values. 

Courage and wisdom - in subtle, lively balance - and freedom and love, these are the ideals that drive us and have driven us for centuries. Really efficient balances of these ideals have been hit upon by the great civilizations of History. This is one of the key insights of moral realism. 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a great day. 

                     

                                                           Richard Dawkins (credit: Simple Wikipedia)