"Nice Guys Finish First."

In this chapter, Dawkins introduces the The  Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. This is a game based on on one turn, you can choose to either cooperate or to defect, and the option your opponent choses, plus what you chose defines the results. This game can be used as a tool to reveal how even if the genes inside survival machines have the instinct to be selfish, they are also endowed with a nice behavior, a cooperative side inside them.  To prove his point Dawkins provides the reader with different strategies into whether being nice is better or being selfish is better, and so, what do you think is better? Selfishness or kindness?


Through the course of the book, Dawkins has constantly reminded us on how our genes are selfish, and they only seek for their internal good in order to survive, unconsciously off course. We've seen how replicators rely on other survival machines and take advantage on the opportunity of being in herds, only to benefit themselves from that. However, in this chapter, the completely opposite thing is shown. In this game, which can apply to many different situations in life, like sharing food or doing  people favors that are repaid later, being nice ends up being the better option. So choose to be good or bad? The latter is the wrong choice, to choose being greedy in this game won't suffice your desires.  And so being the nice is better for you, giving everything an unexpected twist. And thus, proving the fact that underneath all those layers of selfishness, there is something good after all. Leaving the question to ponder on, are we, survival machines, then so robotically selfish after all?  Are we so terribly selfish after all? 

Abstract Replicators?

Through the course of time different kinds of replicators have started to develop, but only on the human body, making us different than other survival machines. Culture has made us different, and has, metaphorically, taken the form of a primeval soup, similar to the one that created replicators. And thus, a special kind of replicator, unique to humans, has developed in our brain, and is commonly called as a meme. The word meme can be defined as "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." This kind of replicator not gene, is different from the rest, however it still possesses the same characteristics as the rest: longevity, fecundity, and copying fidelity. 

Memes are not genes, they are not physical, but they are rather abstract, and obviously the replicate in different ways."Just as genes propagare themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense can be called imitation" (Pg. 192) Memes have a sense of survival, just like genes. Memes also tend to compete against each other for attention, popularity and time. A meme's success can measured on how society perceives it, whether if its popular or not. The more popular, the higher chances of surviving it has. 

"When we die there are two things we can leave behind us genes and memes."(p. 199) Our genes will be passed on to many generations through our blood, having an impact on our descendants. However, as generations pass by, we start to fade. On the other hand, memes do not disappear through time, they just adapt and change. Memes have the possibility of outliving our gene combination and the memory others have of us. Memes that have an impact on society can live to be very old, even immortal, they can change and adapt as time passes, but they still wont die.  


Genes are not designed nor were created to be immortal, that through time they have become immortal is different. Genes, are prone to change because time brings change, in other words evolution. However, memes,  can last to live for a longer time than genes. They will not be exactly the same as they were at the beginning, since ideas change to fit in depending on the time and place, but their original essence will remain through many generations, and so revealing the replicators immortality. 

Subconscious Interests

Through all our life we have been taught on how animals depend on each other, and thus they remain together maintaining flocks, herds and packs. For instance, bees have to work together in order to survive. They have to coexist and many animals have symbiotic relationships that allows them to survive. "The suggested benefits that a selfish individual can wrest from living in a group constitute rather a miscellaneous list." (Pg. 10) However, animals do not just live in flocks of the same species to benefit themselves in different selfish ways as Dawkins explains, consequently allowing them to spread and conserve their own genes. This has a bigger meaning, and it is much bigger than just selfishness between the same species. This kind of selfishness comes way back to the beginning of the world, between interspecies there are connections too. 

Symbiosis: (noun)  A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

Many animals live in groups that their genes believe will benefit them in different ways. Genes are selfish, and they only think upon their own interests, not thinking in those of the rest. However, there are some species, and again using the bees as an example, are social insects. "Their individuality is subjugated, apparently to the welfare of the community" (Pg. 171) If they want food, they have to work together. That's the key to their survival, bees are not selfish at all, they have to share in order to survive, and that is their genes goal. Not only this social insects are not selfish, but the symbiosis that exists between different species depicts a different kind of selfishness, that of "by helping you, I'm helping me survive, because if I don't help you, I don't survive". For instance, plants and insects (bees and butterflies) depend on each other, or clown fish and sea anemones, without the other, they both die. 


This leaves the question if organisms are really that selfish or they're just being overrated. We have to live in a community, not only between those of our same species, but of others too if we want to live and survive in this planet. Which means that we cannot be that selfish as they say we are, as we have to not be selfish in order to survive. 

The Eternal Genes, The Disposable Humans

From my previous understanding on the argument of The Selfish Gene, animals and plants alike are plain survival machines. We are survival machines replicators have created in order for them to survive the harsh competition they face on earth, and so they have developed to create armors, becoming genes in the process and live inside us to protect themselves. "Individuals are not stable things, they are always fleeting...When we have served our purposes we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever" (Pg. 35)

We live in the replicator's battle arena, or if you would like to call it, game. We are their playing cards, discarded and replaced, discarded and replaced, over an over again. It's a cycle, for a battle that will never end. Genes have come to be eternal, we are the mortals, whereas genes are the immortals. We are on trial battling others, but at the same time proving our efficiency. "We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator-molecules called DNA-but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them" (Pg 21) There are different arenas, the sea, which has survival machines designed for life in the water like fish, just like monkeys are survival machines designed for life in the forest. Each organism, is it a plant, an animal or even a virus are all made of the same kind of molecule, DNA, which is composed of genes, or as known before, replicators. 

Genes have come to become so small, and have so many descendants that it is virtually impossible nowadays for a gene to die. It is eternal. "Genes, like diamond, are forever, but not quite in the same way as diamonds." (Pg. 35) However, we, their robots are disposable in their never ending  ingenious game called evolution. Those who survive win, and those who die, simply loose. But those who are already imagining genes as jigsaw killer from saw, are just completely off. Genes do not think, they don't plan ahead, and they don't enjoy this game. Just as cells don't think but only divide, genes only survive, sometimes committing small mistakes that make everything change, or evolve. In the end everything is much worse, because we are living in a cycle, that no one can stop, not even their creators, the replicators, because they, they are long dead. 

The Unwanted Mistake

“You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” - Anonymous


While reading the The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, it made me develop questions that questioned life and its meaning. What if the replicators hadn't made any mistakes? How would things would be different? Would humans even exist? What are actually we designed to do? What's the truth behind all of that? We will never know. 

“Evolution is something that happens, willy-nilly, in spite of all the efforts of the replicators (and nowadays of the genes) to prevent it from happening.” (Pg. 18) We just happened, God didn't create us in seven days. We began as a mistake, and we are a mistake, that is something we cannot change. We just happened. Humans are survival machines, we are the replicators protection against death. "Replicators began not merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continued existence. The replicators that survived were the ones that built survival machines  for themselves to live in." (Pg. 19) We don't have a different goal in life, but to survive. That's what we were made to do. We only live once, so we should take care of ourselves to live the longest and ensure the survival of our genes and thereby the survival of our species through our descendants. 

Here is where the survival of the fittest theory comes into the picture. Only the fittest, and consequently only the superior ones survive, cleaning the race from any impurities. Humans, just as animals are the  armor replicators have designed in order for the fittest to win. It's not only a race between replicators but between species.By now, it seems like humans are winning the race between specie. Even if we try to paint reality with different colors and stories of how we are destined to love and be happy, science does not lie. We have to embrace the fact of who we are, and what we are destined to do: Fight each other. Be selfish, that is what our anatomy shouts at us, fight others in order to let our race survive, and don't be weak, because the weak die and we shouldn't die.  

Dawkins  crudely reveals to us in a hidden, but simple and straightforward way that we are just plain machines designed to pass on and protect genes. That's our reality and that's just the way things are. Even if we try to hide from it, in the end we all know who we are: Survival machines.