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 volunteers self-replicate, and you can plug in literally any political agenda.

- Multilevel marketing companies, as described earlier in the chapter. The product sold is really secondary to the structure of the business. Of course, you need to have a real product to make it legal, but it's effectively programming members to recruit more members that makes it work.

-Word-of-mouth seminar series. Participants attend a severalday, intensive seminar that leaves them feeling very good. Mixed in with the course content is the use of conditioning, cognitive-dissonance, and Trojan-horse techniques that program people to do two things: recruit new participants for the next offering of the class; and sign up for the next, more expensive seminar in the series.*

The common thread in all mind-virus shells is evangelism. Directly or indirectly, you've got to recruit members who recruit more members who recruit still more members. When you've got a good virus shell, you can plug in your agenda, cross your fingers, and hope it doesn't mutate to come back and getcha.

Quality-of-Life Viruses

In a future where mind viruses proliferate, the kinds I personally want to see win are viruses that raise people's quality of life. The way to make such viruses win is twofold:

1. Evangelize, evangelize, evangelize! When you come across memes you like, spread them consciously! Silence is death to memes.

2. Make a point of tying together all the button-pushing memes you can with the memes that raise quality of life. Point out how they help our children! Remind people this is a crisis! Serve them food! Offer them sex! Well, whatever. But complacency is defeat in the world of mind viruses-you're competing with all these selfreplicating memes designed to take us back to prehistoric times.

Is all this evangelism and button pushing I'm promoting too Machiavellian for your taste? Does it sound hypocritical, like I'm advocating manipulating people to save them from being manipulated? I hope not. I don't want you to lie, just to understand the effect you have on the world by spreading memes. We're all participating in mind viruses all the time. I want you to choose which ones you spread consciously, with an eye toward what's most important to you.

Richard Brodie, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (2011-02-15)

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• evangelizing
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