As You Do You Too

Toward the tip end of the second millenium,
The popular and influential Stephen Jay Gould
Opined that one of the reasons culture could never
Be considered to evolve the way life has evolved
Was because, while life varies by descent, culture jumps
Horizontally and near simultaneously
From person to person, brain to brain. (Steven Pinker,
Also a popular, third-culture science writer,
Added, at about the same time, that ideas emerge
Created by brain because the brain is thinking hard.)
Even at the time, it was already obvious
That bacteria could transfer genes laterally,
In fact, scoop up and incorporate genes from fragments
Of dead bacteria. (Ever gotten an idea

From reading a book by a dead person, like, say, Gould?)
In the couple decades since then, not only has this
Horizontal gene transfer been shown to be common
In bacteria, but cases have been emerging
From field studies and comparative genetics labs
Suggesting genes hitch rides on shared parasites to jump
Horizontally between complex organisms
So that mushrooms may share genes to make the same toxin
Despite acquiring it from neither common descent
Nor convergent evolution, but laterally,
And frogs may pick up genes from snakes with shared pathogens.
So, perhaps culture never evolved in unique ways.
Maybe culture is one typical way life does lives,
Not particularly weird, effective, or unkind.