Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Some memes can spread very effectively even though they are disadvantageous for their bearers. The meme for smoking spreads in spite of the fact that smoking demonstrably shortens life expectancy and worsens the health of its bearer and persons living in his vicinity, i.e. most frequently his biological relatives, and thus reduces his inclusive fitness (Kunzle et al. 2003; Munafo et al. 2002). The success of the meme for smoking is not only a result of its physiological addiction and the fact that it is imitated by adolescents as a symbol or maturity (and the maintenance of the smoking habit in adulthood is then ensured by the already-mentioned addiction). Smoking, similar to the consumption of chocolate or hard drugs, is pleasant for the individual, at least initially or at the time of consumption. The memes that an individual will attempt to adopt are decided, not by the degree to which they increase or decrease his fitness but by the degree to which they increase his feeling of pleasure or reduce feelings of stress (see XV.2). Even such obviously disadvantageous behavior as suicide, or behavior disadvantageous for its bearer but advantageous for his surroundings, such as some patterns of altruistic behavior, tends to be imitated. Because cultural evolution occurs incomparably faster than biological evolution, there is very little hope that selection against genes that are biologically disadvantageous, i.e. genes determining that biologically disadvantageous behavior will be perceived as unpleasant, could make a species immune to spreading of the particular disadvantageous memes. For example, it cannot be expected that the bad habit of smoking or over-eating sweets would, in time, be reduced by natural selection in that the individuals that find these bad habits pleasant would gradually disappear from the population because they would produce fewer offspring on an average.