Holdenfield caught his eye but gave no sign of recognition. She smoothed out a few sheets of paper on the top of the podium and smiled at her audience. The expression conveyed confidence and intensity rather than warmth.

Nothing new in that, thought Gurney.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” The smile was switched off, the voice was clear and commanding. “I’m here today to bring you a simple idea. I don’t ask you to agree with it or to disagree with it. I ask you to think about it. What I bring you is a new view of the role of imitation in our lives—and how it affects everything we think, feel, and do. I suggest to you that imitation is a survival instinct of the human species—as indispensable as sex. This simple idea is revolutionary. Imitation has never been classified as an instinct—a tendency to action, driven by the buildup and release of tension. But isn’t that exactly what it is?”

She paused. Her audience was perfectly still.

“Perhaps the most revealing and overlooked fact about imitation is that … it feels good. The process of imitation provides the human organism with a form of pleasure—a release of tension. In everything we do, there is a bias in favor of repetition—because it feels good.”

Holdenfield’s eyes were shining, and her audience seemed entranced.

“We enjoy seeing what we have seen before and doing what we have done before. The brain seeks pattern resonance because resonance provides pleasure.”

She stepped away from the podium, as though to connect more directly with her listeners. “The survival of any species depends on each new generation’s being able to replicate the behaviors of the previous generation. The replication may arise from genetic programming or from learning. Ants rely heavily on genetic programming for their behavior. We rely heavily on learning. Insect brains are born knowing virtually everything they need to know, while human brains are born knowing virtually nothing they need to know. The survival imperative of the insect is to act. The survival imperative of the human is to learn. The insect’s instincts drive it through the specific acts of its life cycle, while our imitation instinct drives us through the process of learning how to act.”

As far as Gurney could judge from the back of the room, everyone was hanging on her words. In this room she was a rock star.