Rebel against our selfish genes!

The point I am making now is that, even if we look on
the dark side and assume that individual man is
fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight -- our
capacity to simulate the future in imagination --
could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the
blind replicators. We have at least the mental
equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests
rather than merely our short-term selfish interests.
We can see the long-term benefits of participating in
a `conspiracy of doves', and we can sit down together
to discuss ways of making the conspiracy work. We
have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth
and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our
indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of
deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure,
disinterested altruism -- something that has no place
in nature, something that has never existed before in
the whole history of the world. We are built as gene
machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have
the power to turn against our own creators. We, alone
on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish
replicators (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene,
pp.200-201).