Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.

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?

In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ is dangerous and painful to give birth to, expensive to build and, in a resting human, uses about 20 per cent of the body's energy even though it is just 2 per cent of the body's weight. There must be some reason for all this evolutionary expense.

For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed.

The sale of sex in modern societies is not about spreading genes. Sex has been taken over by the memes.

Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.

You start by copying other people's paintings or music or whatever. You get all of those skills before you branch out. Really creative people have a fantastic ability to copy things and then combine them in new ways. And whether we're talking about genes or memes, recombination is the real heart of creativity.