As a meme, however, the steam engine had a beauty, consistency and utility that caused it to be adopted, improved and distributed once it came into existence. Monotheism is another meme that must have succeeded for other than direct biological reasons. People believing in a single God were not likely to have more successful offspring than polytheists. Polytheism was also adequate to serve psychological needs, protecting believers against the unknown and against their own darkest impulses. Monotheism has spread across so much of the world, and through so many cultures, simply because it is a beautiful meme.
Morality succeeds because it is a beautiful meme.
Biology lays the groundwork for it, conditioning us to altruism in very limited situations, such as when we rescue our offspring from a danger. It took human intelligence, and a craving for beauty, to produce a meme of universal altruism, across all racial and even species boundaries, when it advances our genes not one whit to practice it. Perhaps because memes have existed for a much shorter time than genes, it is not clear if memes can triumph so completely. Creationism and Nazism are examples of memes which still exist despite significant set-backs. Another reason that memes may never completely triumph over their rivals is because memes, unlike genes, can now be stored outside their original containers.