Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Brodie , Richard (2011-02-15), Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme, Hay House, Retrieved on 2011-05-29
Folksonomies: memetics memes ideas Memes
29 MAY 2011
Three Categories for Memes
What kinds of memes are there? I've divided memes into three classes: distinctions, knives used to slice up reality; strategies, beliefs about which causes will produce which effects; and associations, attitudes about everything in life. Each class of meme works to program you in a different way.
[...]
Distinction-memes
The universe is full of stuff. However, anything we say about that stuff is purely a concept-a set of memes-invented by human beings. All concepts are composed of memes. Fo... 1 
notes
notesDistinction, Strategy, and Association
29 MAY 2011
Advertisers Exploit our Tendency Toward Distinction
Advertisers, politicians, and anyone else who wants your money or support are very interested in programming you with certain distinctions over others and understanding the distinctions you see the world through so that they can take advantage of them. What are you more likely to buy for breakfast: a slice of chocolate cake or a "chocolate-chip muffin"? Calling a round piece of high-fat chocolate cake a "muffin" takes advantage of the distinctions you have around breakfast food and increases ... 1 notes
notesPrompting us to distinguish their products into more positive categories.
29 MAY 2011
Designer VS Cultural Memes
At this point I want to introduce a distinction between mind viruses that arose spontaneously and ones that were invented by human consciousness. I'll call the naturally arising ones cultural viruses and the human-crafted ones designer viruses. A designer virus is carefully crafted to infect people with a set of memes that influence them to spread the virus throughout the population.
Designer viruses and cultural viruses can be equally damaging to your pursuit of happiness, although for many...Folksonomies: memetics
Folksonomies: memetics
1 notes
notesSome memes are designed to infect our minds, others come from our environment.
29 MAY 2011
Human Drives That Open Us to Memes
Here are a few second-order instinctual drives some people seem to have that are all opportunities for memes to take advantage of:
- Belonging. Humans are gregarious-that is, they like company. There are any number of evolutionary reasons for the existence of this drive, including safety in numbers, economies of scale, and simply the presence of more potential mates. Memes that give people a feeling of belonging to a group have an advantage over memes that don't.
- Distinguishing yourself. ...Folksonomies: memetics
Folksonomies: memetics
1 notes
notesThere are instinctual needs humans have that memes exploit to take root in our minds.
29 MAY 2011
Cultural Moors and Sex
Different cultures today have evolved different sets of sexual mores, resulting in differences in male and female behavior. In Sweden, a social democracy where women have great economic independence, we see a high degree of sexual freedom among women. Without needing to depend on men for their security, Swedish women need not be concerned so much with testing potential mates for commitment and generosity. The result is greater promiscuity among women: a study showed Swedish men prize a potent... 1 notes
notesCountries with equality between the sexes have more sex and less violence.
29 MAY 2011
Overcoming Fear
Overcoming fear requires you to train yourself to think every time you feel fear, rather than just reacting instinctively. The thought process I go through goes like this:
I'm scared. Is it physical danger? No. Well, when I make a decision based on fear, it's often a bad one, so I'm going to put the fear aside and ask myself "What is my purpose in this situation?" I'll make my decision consciously based on what helps achieve my purpose better, rather than unconsciously on my instinctive des...Folksonomies: cognitive behavioral therapy fear
Folksonomies: cognitive behavioral therapy fear
1 notes
notesInvolves overcoming the instinctual reaction and focusing on the rational.
29 MAY 2011
The Technique of Anchoring
You can use anchoring on yourself to quickly put yourself in a good or enthusiastic mood! Close your eyes and imagine a time when you were excited and motivated. Create a vivid mental picture. Now, when you are immersed in that motivated feeling, lightly scratch the pad of your index finger with your thumbnail. You're anchoring that state of mind to that sensation.Folksonomies: cognitive behavioral therapy anchoring
Folksonomies: cognitive behavioral therapy anchoring
1 notes
notesTaking a positive experience and tying it to a physical sensation.
29 MAY 2011
Means of Penetration for Memes
We looked at three methods of penetration: repetition, cognitive dissonance, and the Trojan horse. When a virus of the mind infects you, it may resemble one of these scenarios:
- Repetition. Repeating a meme until it becomes familiar and part of your programming is one method of mind-virus penetration:
• Hearing a similar message repeatedly on television news, commercials, talk radio, and so on
• Being in a group or organization where, for instance, a charter is read or an oath is taken a... 1 notes
notesWays memes infect.
29 MAY 2011
Evangelism isn't a Bad Thing
Evangelism has kind of a bad name in some circles. The paradox about evangelism is that in addition to being the mechanism used to spread mind viruses, it's also the main way people can have a positive impact on the world. You can have the world's greatest idea, but unless you shout about it, crusade-evangelize-it has no impact. 1 notes
notesIt's that we associate it with zealotry, but in reality nothing get's promoted unless it is evangelized.
29 MAY 2011
Rhetoric of Beer Advertising
Beer commercials are notorious for this kind of treatment. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak," goes the advertising truism. Well, why not? When you're pushing a product made from rotten vegetation whose primary effects are to dull your wits, pad your paunch, and make you belch, any sizzle would be a big help. 1 notes
notesSelling the product of rotting vegetation involves a lot of sex.
29 MAY 2011
Putting Statistics in Perspective
Now let's get a handle on what it really means to have a 1-in6,500 or a 1-in-13,000 chance of dying. It's as if you lived on an island in the South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimming around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every ten years, a stray shark happens by and eats a swimmer. That's a 1-in-6,500 chance of any one person being eaten by a shark, just the same as the odds of dying in an aut...Folksonomies: statistics fear
Folksonomies: statistics fear
1 notes
notesA great way to think about cause of death statistics.
29 MAY 2011
Pets as a Meme
Pets have all the qualities necessary to be a virus of the mind:
- Pets penetrate our minds by attracting our attention. The quality they have that gets them attention is something like "cuteness" or "adorability."
- Pets actually program us to take care of them in several ways. The animals themselves take advantage of the instincts we have to care for our young. The pet industry, part of the pet virus, programs us through television and advertising to spend more and more money on expensive... 1 notes
notesPets have all the characteristics of an infectious meme.
29 MAY 2011
Making Drugs Illegal Makes Them Valuable
The more difficult the government makes it to acquire illegal drugs, the higher prices black marketeers can charge. The harsher the penalties for dealing drugs, the more freedom the dealers have to commit other crimes in their pursuit of the economic and social power their trade gives them. After all, they're already criminals and have little more to lose: low risk, high reward. The tighter the crackdown by the government, the scarcer the supply of drugs, and the more potential for money and ...Folksonomies: drugs law enforcement
Folksonomies: drugs law enforcement
1 notes
notes...and supports the criminal black market.
29 MAY 2011
The Ponzi-Scheme Meme
Profit-motivated designer viruses, many of which are completely legal and aboveboard today, have their shady origins in the crooked Ponzi scheme.* Charles Ponzi was an Italian immigrant who opened a business in Boston in 1919 called the Securities Exchange Company. He offered to repay people's investments in 90 days with 50 percent interest: an investment of $10 would bring $15 in three months.
His story was that he bought international postal reply coupons in Europe and, due to currency flu... 1 notes
notesHow it works and how it spread.
29 MAY 2011
Computers Illustrate Our Slavery to Memes
nfestations of mind viruses that chain us to information terminals, frantically aiding the replication of information, may well take over if we don't intervene.
Do you think it's a far-fetched scenario of the future that humans could become slaves to a race of computers? Look inside any large office building and see how many people spend eight hours a day following the instructions on their display screen to the point of damaging their vision and injuring their hands from the strain. What ar... 1 notes
notesWe spend all day pushing and replicating memes online, slaving away at our computers.
29 MAY 2011
Program Yourself With the Truth
What memes should you program yourself with, now that you have the chance? The second-most-popular answer (after punting) is: With the truth. It's hard to see how there could be any problem with programming yourself with memes that are true. But remember Alfred North Whitehead: all truths are half-truths.
There are several problems with the strategy-meme Program myself with the truth. In the first place, you can't ever know the whole truth of the universe. Your brain doesn't have enough stor... 1 notes
notes...but it's not that easy.
29 MAY 2011
Eccentric English Spelling is the Result of Dictionaries
The eccentric spelling of the English language is preserved because of a pervasive meme that there are right and wrong ways to spell words. This meme has all kinds of support, including dictionaries, computer spell-checkers, and children's spelling bees. But before the Use a dictionary strategy-meme became prevalent during the 18th and 19th centuries, people spelled words any way they wanted. It's not True that there's one and only one correct way to spell a word-it's just a meme. As Mark Twa...
1 Spelling could evolve naturally before we started referencing dictionaries for a correct way of spelling words that don't sound like how they are spelled anymore.
29 MAY 2011
Evangelize Evangelize Evangelize
It's interesting that once you have the shell of a successful mind virus set up, you can just plug in any agenda you have as long as it doesn't interfere with the virus's primary function of self-replication. There are many examples of such virus shells in modern life:
- Political campaign organizations. These often use the same basic formula: renting a vacant shell of office space, calling people and asking them to volunteer, and then having those volunteers call still more volunteers. The v...Promote the memes you support and tie them into memes about improving the quality of life.
29 MAY 2011
Evolution Versus Engineering
What's the difference between evolution and engineering? Engineering is the designing of a whole out of parts suited to their individual purposes. Evolution is the process of tiny incremental changes, each making some small or large improvement in the ability of the thing to survive and reproduce. A good engineer avoids the kluge-jargon for the use of a part not particularly suited to its purpose. But evolution favors, even cherishes, the kluge. Suddenly finding a new purpose for a part witho...Evolution is all about kludges.
29 MAY 2011
Meme Strategies for Replicating into Minds
In addition to the survival-oriented memes that are still with us, there are some more types of memes that don't seem to particularly help or hurt our survival, but by their very nature are fit to spread effectively-these are memes that are fit simply because they are variations on the idea Spread this meme:
- Tradition. A strategy-meme to continue what was done or believed in the past is automatically self-perpetuating. It doesn't matter whether the tradition is good or bad, important or ir...The strategies memes use to promote themselves.
