If a gene is in a genome at all, then, when suitable circumstances arise, it will definitely be expressed as an enzyme, as I described in Chapter 6, and will then cause its characteristic effects. Nor can it be left behind if the rest of its genome is successfully replicated. But merely being present in a mind does not automatically get a meme expressed as behaviour: the meme has to compete for that privilege with other ideas – memes and non-memes, about all sorts of subjects – in the same mind. And merely being expressed as behaviour does not automatically get the meme copied into a recipient
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