'Why do we talk so much?' by Susan Blackmore
An extract from psychologist Susan Blackmore's book 'The Meme Machine' (2000), which explores the science of mimetics and it's relationship to Darwinism.
Several possible answers spring to mind. First, there may, after all, be a sound biological explanation. Perhaps talking serves an important function that I have overlooked, such as cementing social bonds or exchanging useful information. I will consider theories of this kind later on.
Second, a sociobiologist might argue that, with the evolution of language, culture has somehow got temporarily out of hand, and the cultural trait of speech has been stretching the leash. However, if talking is really wasteful of precious energy then the genes of the people who talk most will do less well and in time the genes will pull the leash in again.
Third, an evolutionary psychologist might argue that all this talking once had advantages for our ancestors and so we are stuck with it now, even though it doesn't benefit our genes any more. On this view we ought to be able to find the function of so much talking in the lives of early hunter-gatherers.
All these suggestions have in common the fact that they appeal to genetic advantage for an explanation. Memetics provides a totally different approach.[1] Rather than asking what advantage talking provides to the genes, we can ask what advantage it provides to the memes. Now the answer is obvious. Talking spreads memes. In other words, the reason we talk so much is not to benefit our genes, but to spread our memes.
There are several ways of looking at how memes exert pressure on us to keep talking, and I will consider three of them in more detail.
First, since talking is an efficient way of propagating memes, memes that can get themselves spoken will (in general) be copied more often than those that cannot. So these kinds of memes will spread in the meme pool and we will all end up talking a lot.
This argument is similar to the explanation I proposed for why we think so much - another example of the ‘weed theory' of memes. Silence is like a beautifully weeded flowerbed, just waiting for your favourite plants, and it does not stay that way for long. A silent person is an idle copying machine waiting to be exploited. Your brain is full of ideas, memories, thoughts to be shared and actions to be carried out; the social world is full of new memes being created, spread about and competing to be taken up by you and passed on again. But you cannot possibly speak them all. Competition to take charge of your voice is strong - just as competition to grow in the garden is strong. Keeping silence is as hard work as weeding.
So which memes will win in the competition to take over your voice? It may help to ask again our familiar question - imagine a world full of brains, and far more memes than can possibly find homes. Which memes are more likely to find a safe home and get passed on again?
Certain memes are particularly easy to say, or almost force their hosts to pass them on. These include bits of juicy scandal, terrifying news, comforting ideas of various sorts, or useful instructions. Some of these have their ‘spread me' effect for good biological and psychological reasons. Perhaps they tap into need for sex, social cohesion, excitement, or avoiding danger. Perhaps people pass them on in order to conform, to be better liked, to enjoy the other person's surprise or laughter. Perhaps the information will be genuinely useful to the other person. We can certainly study all these reasons (and indeed psychologists do just that), but for the memetic argument I am proposing here it does not matter what they are. The point is you are less likely to want to pass on some boring thing you heard about the health of your neighbour's rose bushes than a rumour about what your neighbour was doing behind them. Such ‘say me' memes will therefore spread better than other memes and many people will get infected with them.
Extract from Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine. The Origins of Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, pp. 83-84
[1] The term "meme" first appeared in 1976, in Richard Dawkins's bestselling book The Selfish Gene. When you imitate someone else, something is passed on. This "something" can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, a piece of information...but if we are going to study it we shall need to give it a name.