Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme

_Virus of the Mind_ by Richard Brodie is the first popular book on the market exclusively about memetics, the study of infectious ideas. I've been looking forward to it since I first heard rumours of its existence in alt.memetics almost a year ago.

I have to confess that at first I was disappointed with the presentation style of the book. It seems to be aimed at an audience with a high-school reading level, with key points highlighted in boxes and illustrated with cartoons featuring Eggbert, on oval happy face with spiky hair. Later I came to the conclusion that Brodie is probably capable of a more sophisticated writing style, but consciously chose to give it wider appeal in a deliberate act of memetic engineering.

In fact Brodie takes many opportunities to apply the techniques he discusses which serves not only to lend weight to the theories, but should also theoretically increase books sales. :) For example, he named the book _Virus of the Mind_ rather than, say, _Introduction to Memetics_ because it will catch more people's attention due to their association memes.

It is difficult to discuss memetics in depth without veering off into deep philosophy. Everything that exists, everything with a name, everything we know corresponds to a meme including memes themselves. What is truth? What are we? What should we do? The new science of the meme sheds light on all these questions and Brodie doesn't shy away from tackling these issues head on, but always remaining practical and open-minded.

The book covers a great deal in its 230 pages. Starting with general definitions, it goes on to describe how memes are like biological and computer viruses and how they evolve in their respective mediums. One chapter introduces evolutionary psychology (the subject of Robert Wright's excellent _The Moral Animal_ ), and how the ancient memes of "sex" and "danger" are still very much shaping our culture today. Another chapter covers how we get programmed (infected by new memes), and how these techniques are used by governments, corporations, cults and religions. (I paid special attention to the chapter on how to start a cult :)

It was refreshing to see how charitable Brodie is towards religion, even after describing in detail how it is really a cultural power virus, evolving to take advantage of the natural "push-button" memes of its adherents including "security", "sex", "belonging" and "crisis" through memes like "tradition", "heresy", "evangilism" and "repetition". He concludes that despite all that religions are still very useful because they give purpose to otherwise meaningless lives.

I suspect even someone already well-read in the area of memetics will find new insights in _Virus of the Mind_. Brodie is obviously a bright guy who has thought a lot about how to teach people about memes in order to create a future by design. _Virus of the Mind_ should be on the reading list of everyone interested in the future evolution of ideas.


To see the review in paragraphed form, try alt.memetics.   January 7, 1996
Review of Richard Brodie¹s _ViRUS OF THE MiND_ prepared for the alt.memetics community by KMO In a Nutshell: Until very recently, I¹ve been pushing three books at anyone who expressed any interest in the topic of memetics. Those books were Douglas Rushkoff¹s _Media Virus_, Howard Bloom¹s _The Lucifer Principle_, and Daniel Dennett¹s _Darwin¹s Dangerous Idea_. I¹m now pushing FOUR books. Richard Brodie¹s book is an excellent introduction to memetics. It covers a sufficiently wide range of memetic implications and applications to make it a worthwhile read even for the seasoned vets of alt.memetics. I recommend it. The Longish Version In order to move up in many hierarchies you must accept a transfer. This is because the people with whom you interact daily associate you with a particular role. Your promotion may not be significant enough to convince those who associate you with your old role that you really are a big shot now. Rather than attempt to overpower that old association, it is often easier to convince a group of strangers that yours is the voice of experience and seasoned judgement. I¹ve been putting off reading _Virus of the Mind_ for just that reason. Richard Brodie was a name that I associated with the alt.memetics newsgroup. I knew that he worked at Xerox PARC and later at Microsoft, and I knew that he was Œa success¹. Even so, I thought of him as someone who never posted anything outrageous or controversial, who¹d read and understood Dawkins as well as the other books I¹d been pushing. I assumed that he knew about as much as I did and vice versa. I didn¹t expect much from his book, and that attitude lingered for about forty pages. I recognized, as I read, that my bad attitude was a hinderance to my ability to benefit from Richard¹s perspective, but that recognition was not sufficient to correct for the distortion imposed by my expectations. Fortunately, the author¹s clear presentation and inclusive perspective did the job my introspective efforts had failed to accomplish. Around the beginning of the third chapter I stopped thinking of the author as ŒRichard¹ and started thinking of him as ŒBrodie¹. A good sign. Brodie presents the essentials systematically, but his presentation is fresh enough to keep his thorough-going approach from sounding pedantic to memetic initiates. What¹s more, he carves out some very useful conceptual categories which I was surprised to encounter for the first time within the pages of _Virus of the Mind_. In retrospect, I realize that it is unrealistic to expect Brodie to spill all the juicy details to the alt.memetics crew. Of course, I¹m going to spill a few, but I doubt that Brodie will object. Brodie draws useful distinctions between three kinds of memes: distinction memes, strategy memes, and association memes. My own agenda involves propagating certain distinction memes in the alt.memetics community, e.g. supervenience, epiphenomena, and a phylogenetic taxonomy of memetic types, as well as propagating the Œmeme¹ meme/temple lion association via the Collected Infection. Those two categories already existed in my cognitive architecture, but the strategy meme has only recently nestled in that web of associations. I suspect that Richard will end up expending considerable time and energy clarifying and refining his presentation of the Œstrategy meme¹ meme. This is due, in part, to the usefulness of the conceptual category, and in part to the intellectual stumbling block this category will provide for many readers. The problem has already manifested itself in an alt.memetics thread. Genes employ a variety of survival strategies. One successful strategy involves encoding for a survival machine (organism) which is more sophisticated (read Œcomplex¹) than its Malthusian rivals. Some contributors to the alt.memetics newsgroup have already mounted objections which turn on their failure to distinguish between the complexity exhibited by successful genetic replicators and Œcomplexity¹ as a strategy meme. These participants point to the many examples of complex thinking which have lead to ruin in situations where simplicity would have served human interests better. I suspect that Richard will soon have a pithy presentation in his arsenal which clearly distinguishes genetic survival strategies from strategy memes and also reinforces the idea that what constitutes success from the memetic perspective will often accompany, but not be synonymous with, that which answers to human interests. The soundbite account of memetics lists catchy tunes and religions as archetypical memes. These are not memes and anyone who first encounters the memetic paradigm in _Virus of the Mind_ will assimilate a valuable distinction meme which will steer them clear of this kind of sloppy discourse. Brodie clearly distinguishes between memes and the larger memetic entities which people often call memes. These larger memetic complexes are what Brodie calls Œviruses of the mind¹. Evangelism is a meme. Southern Baptism is a memetic complex which includes the evangelism meme. Brodie also addresses the issue of anti-realism which not many people seem to realize is central to the development of the memetic paradigm. Are memes Œreal¹ or are they just useful fictions. Brodie adopts the latter position and endorses Kuhnian anti-realism. I¹m not comfortable with every aspect of Kuhn¹s picture of science, nor do I think Brodie has written the final word on anti-realism and memetics, but I was happy to see him address the topic. For my money, Brodie¹s strongest point is that he successfully answers a worry that has tugged at the corners of my conscious mind for several months, i.e. What¹s the point? Why devote so much energy to refining this Œmemetic paradigm¹? The day before I started Brodie¹s book, I read an interview with Bruce Sterling in the current issue of Mondo 2000. Sterling crystallized my concerns for memetics: >It reminds me of postmodern critique where you see a lot of the people >who were part of the 60¹s drift into this position of Œlanguage theory¹ >analysis where they¹re just making up more and more elaborate recherche >analyses to explain the hideous global triumph of the Reagan-Bush >regime. They can¹t ever seem to find a foothold to actually dig in and >resist it, so they just sort of analyze it with more and more exquisite >techniques. And the worse things get, the more likely it is that >intellectuals will adopt that kind of approach. Sterling wasn¹t talking about memetics, per se, but the observation was broad enough to obviously include memetics. Brodie presents memetics not only as a tasty flavor of recherche cultural analysis, but also in the context of self-improvement and personal empowerment. I think, that in so doing, he has pin-pointed the primary value of the memetic paradigm. Assimilating a memetic worldview can improve your quality of life. Richard Brodie achieved professional and material success at Microsoft and discovered that he still wasn¹t all that happy. He did the self- improvement motivational seminar circuit for a couple of years and encountered the same techniques that I got via the poor man¹s route of self-help books: Napoleon Hill, Shakti Gawain, and Stephen Covey being some of the brightest lights. Richard Brodie wasn¹t the first person to learn how to live an effective and fulfilling life. Aristotle covered most of the bases in his Nichomacean Ethics. Like many of his predecessors, Brodie Œfigured it out¹ and then wrote a book based on that period of introspection and awakening. (_Getting Past OK: A Straightforward Guide to Having a Fantastic Life_) I haven¹t read that book, but I¹ve got a pretty good idea what it says. Visualize your goal. Formulate affirmations and say them every night before bed. Recognize that self-improvement is like dieting in that to be effective you must make a permanent change in your behavior and attitude. Those who equate a Œdiet¹ with a temporary behavioral modification are the Liz Taylors of the world. Self-improvement and se


This is one of the most important books ever written   December 30, 1995
I've been waiting 20 years for this book to come out. Brodie's explanation of "memes" cuts through all the religious and political b.s. that's been fooling people for centuries. I gave 6 people copies for christmas. I'm spreading the "meme"