Maybe...

This is interesting. Read it.

If the meme represents a replicator interacting within the environment of a species' culture (culture basically standing for all that species' combined/collective intellectual pursuits. Possibly on a level much more primitive than man, of course.), then a sufficiently technologically advanced species (such as humans) would offer memes a vehicle by which to manipulate genes, the basic fundamental vehicles of the memes themselves. In terms of complexity, that's a top-level effect of a pattern recursively affecting a lower-level element of that pattern, actively contributing to the top-level effect's own potential for evolution in future iterations of itself. Or more basically, it's memes saying "where we live is kinda less-than-perfect for us, so lets re-build where we live". Memes can cause man to alter man's own genes, conceivably to the benefit of meme replication. Crazy, right? In fact, Darwinian selection tells us that the effect of memes on genes would (admittedly, on the surface) seem to favour memes evolutionarily, because memes riding in better meme-spreading machines would become more dominant in a meme-altered gene pool, to coin a phrase.

We can take it back even farther. If we call all the effects of a gene on it's host body, other genes in the host body, other bodies, and the environment the gene's phenotype, then we can see that genes affect their environment to better suit the propagation of genes. Beaver Dams, caddis houses, the root systems of large plants - even the rise of the first oxygen-excreting proto-plants; these are all examples of how gene phenotypes have extended out into the larger world of the geological earth itself to make it better suit the needs of genes. So at what level does this backward trend cease? Does it ever? Memes are replicators that rely on the vehicles of genes in which to exist; genes are replicators that rely on a macro-chemical environment in which in develop. A chemical environment exists when atoms and then molecules come together. So in this we see the tempting possibility of complex life arising from the most cosmically common circumstances. Only studies of the tiniest levels of the universe can tell us if genes themselves are top-level manifestations of a more fundamental iterative pattern.

And what of the future of memes? What will their ultimate phenotypic effects on the environment of the physical universe be? Will a gene-vehicle like a human being eventually become usurped by the meme, evolving in ways that best benefit the promulgation of thought? Or, could the gene revolt? Evolve strategies to weaken the motility and fecundity of memes? Could that be what happened to Cro-Magnon man? Its early memes conquered by stubborn genes? (!)

As I see patterns emerge, I just find it so fascinating to see the way they travel backwards and forwards through events. Sometimes the context in which a pattern is revealed can mask that pattern's true significance. What is tiny on one level in broad on another, so it benefits to see the largest universe possible, and examine it as closely as you can - and compare notes. A lot of big gaps would probably fill themselves in for you as you went.

Now, there's a meme for you. Pass it on.