TimPerhaps you can get SomaSteve to participate on BookTalk and especially this thread. What a fantastic post! I love his writing style and clarity of thought.
I tend to feel that the more we as individuals hone our critical thinking skills, and overall education, the more apt we are to succeed in rebelling against the
"tyranny of the selfish replicators" of memes and genes. Being aware that genes and memes are having a profound impact on influencing our motivations to do this or that is the first step to not becoming a product of these replicators.
Can we ever completely free ourselves from being influenced? Who knows. One could argue that what we consider
free will is really the selfish design of nature.
I've always had a problem with the term
artificial selection for this same reason. Our species is a part of the whole of nature and what we do as a species is therefore an aspect of nature. But for conversations sake it seems reasonable to differentiate between the blind actions of nature and the conscious
decisions and actions of the most intellectually gifted species on this rock.
Chris
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