Genes as social viruses

"Our genes are like a colony of viruses — socialized viruses, as opposed to anarchic viruses. They're socialized in the sense that they all work together to produce the body and make the body do what's good for all of them. The only reason they do that is that they all are destined to leave the present body and enter the next generation by the same route, sperms or eggs. If they could break out of that route and get to the next generation by being sneezed out and breathed in by the next victim, that's what they would do.

Those are what we call anarchic viruses. Anarchic viruses, the ones that make us sneeze, are the ones that don't agree with each other. They don't care if we die. All they want to do is make us sneeze, or, in the case of the rabies virus, make the dog salivate and bite. But most of our genes are socialized viruses, socialized replicators. They're disciplined and cooperative precisely because they have only one way out of the present body: by sperm or egg." (Dawkins in Brockman 1996, The Third Culture)