Excerpt: "Virus of the Mind"

I'm reading Richard Brodie's book, "Virus of the Mind," and will be making occasional quotes as they relate to this blog. This is the first of such posts.

As you read this, please bear in mind that the extremist views of fundamentalist religions like the Mormons, traditional Baptists, and the evangelicals are all masters of spreading the designer viruses referred to in this excerpt.

[excerpt - pages 45 to 46]
"Our minds excel both at copying information and at following instructions. Remember the four characteristics of a virus:
- penetration
- copying
- issuing instructions
- spreading
They can penetrate our minds because we are so adept at learning new ideas and information. they are copied by us communicating with each other, something we are getting better and better at. Mind viruses issue instructions by programming us with new memes that affect our behavior. They spread when the chain of events stemming from that new behavior reaches an uninfected mind.

Examples of viruses of the mind range from fashion fads to religious cults. They can be any bit of culture whose existence touches people, causing them to shift their thinking and thus their behavior, eventually causing reinforcement for proliferation of that same bit of culture.

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 people it doesn't feel as bad to have your life ruined by a natural set of circumstances as it does to have some manipulative no-goodnik get the best of you. But despite the difference in perception, the effect of these two kinds of mind viruses is the same: you unwittingly have a portion of yourself diverted from what you might otherwise be doing with your life, and instead devoted to doing the work of the mind virus.

Memetics provides new insight into the way our minds, societies, and cultures work. Rather than looking at the development of culture as a sequence of ideas and discoveries that build upon one another, what would it be like to view culture as a meme pool, where the ideas in our heads are shaped and transported by various forces, including mind viruses? How many of these viruses are already with us? Are they helping or harming us? Can we control them?

The outer reaches of this line of thought are dark and scary. However, I see much, much more potential for help than harm through understanding the mind virus. And even though it involves thinking about things in unfamiliar ways, I suggest we do whatever it takes to understand it, tame it, and put it to work for the best interest and the best interests of our children--and our children's children."
[end quote]