    28

    When Memes Collide--The Pecking Order of Nations

    Nature's way of testing any self-replicating device is competition.

    For over three-and-a-half billion years54, she has set the products of the

    genetic system in a race to see who can corner the good things of this

    life.  Like a driver strapping himself into his machine at Le Mans, each

    string of genes has hunkered down into the creature it constructed and

    driven up to the starting line.  The winners of the moment are still here.

    The losers have retired from the track.  Homo Habilis,

    Australopithecus, Peking Man, and Cro-Magnon, all had their moment

    in the sun and are gone.

    Bodies are usually the genes' racing machine.  But memes have

    driven a radically different kind of device onto the field. Their

    contraptions of choice are extended social groups.  These

    superorganismic vehicles are big and  complex.  But their advantages

    are awesome: speed, maneuverability, and incalculable horsepower.

    The Le Mans of superorganisms has a set of very simple rules.

    To understand how they work, let's take a quick look at some of the

    strange battles between beings of a smaller size--chickens, monkeys,

    you and me.

    Just after World War I, a Norwegian naturalist named Thorlief

    Schjelderup-Ebbe decided to spend some time down on his parents'

    farm watching the quaint ways of chickens.  Schjelderup-Ebbe's study

    uncovered a subtle form of competition disguised as barnyard peace.

    When the hens were fed, they approached the trough with

    extraordinary decorum.  Though all were hungry, none ran up and

    grabbed whatever it could.  First a rather regal-looking hen stepped up

    to the container of grain and proceeded to dine.  The others simply

    watched.  Then another came forward to partake of the meal, and

    eventually stepped aside.  Yet another marched in to take her turn.

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