OF THE Also by Richard Brodie Getting Past OK: A Straightforward Guide to Having a Fantastic Life ttt Hay House Titles of Related Interest YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE, the movie, starring Louise L. Hay & Friends (available as a 1-DVD program and an expanded 2-DVD set) Watch the trailer at: www.LouiseHayMovie.com THE SHIFT: the movie, starring Wayne W. Dyer (available as a 1-DVD program and an expanded 2-DVD set) Watch the trailer at: www.DyerMovie.com ttt ASK & IT IS GIVEN: Learning to Manifest the Law of Attraction, by Esther & Jerry Hicks THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles, by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD DESTINY vs. FREE WILL: Why Things Happen the Way They Do, by David R. Hamilton, PhD FRACTAL TIME: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age, by Gregg Braden POWER vs. FORCE: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, by David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD STOP THE EXCUSES! How to Change Lifelong Self-Defeating Thinking Habits, by Dr Wayne W. Dyer Please visit Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com® Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in OF THE The New Science of the Meme Richard Brodie Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK Ltd, 292B Kensal Rd, London W10 5BE. Tel.: (44) 20 8962 1230; Fax: (44) 20 8962 1239. www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the United States of America by: Hay House, Inc., PO Box 5100, Carlsbad, CA 92018-5100. Tel.: (1) 760 431 7695 or (800) 654 5126; Fax: (1) 760 431 6948 or (800) 650 5115. www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Ltd, 18/36 Ralph St, Alexandria NSW 2015. Tel.: (61) 2 9669 4299; Fax: (61) 2 9669 4144. www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd, PO Box 990, Witkoppen 2068. Tel./Fax: (27) 11 467 8904. www.hayhouse.co.za Published and distributed in India by: Hay House Publishers India, Muskaan Complex, Plot No.3, B-2, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi – 110 070. Tel.: (91) 11 4176 1620; Fax: (91) 11 4176 1630. www.hayhouse.co.in Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast, 9050 Shaughnessy St, Vancouver, BC V6P 6E5. Tel.: (1) 604 323 7100; Fax: (1) 604 323 2600 © Richard Brodie, 2009 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for ‘fair use’ as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher. The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-84850-127-0 Previously published by Integral Press (ISBN 978-0-9636001-2-7) Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall. For my mother, Mary Ann Brodie, who got me thinking . Contents Introduction: Crisis of the Mind ...................................................xiii CHAPTER 1: Memes ...................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: Mind and Behavior .............................................17 CHAPTER 3: Viruses .................................................................35 CHAPTER 4: Evolution .............................................................47 CHAPTER 5: The Evolution of Memes .....................................65 CHAPTER 6: Sex: The Root of All Evolution ............................89 CHAPTER 7: Survival and Fear ...............................................111 CHAPTER 8: How We Get Programmed ................................125 CHAPTER 9: Cultural Viruses .................................................147 CHAPTER 10: The Memetics of Religion .................................181 CHAPTER 11: Designer Viruses (How to Start a Cult) .........................................195 CHAPTER 12: Disinfection .......................................................211 Recommended Reading .................................................................231 Acknowledgments .........................................................................235 Index ...........................................................................................237 About the Author .........................................................................249 WARNING: This book contains a live mind virus. Do not read further unless you are willing to be infected. The infection may affect the way you think in subtle or not-so-subtle ways—or even turn your current worldview inside out. Introduction Crisis of the Mind “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is very wasteful.” — Dan Quayle, mutating the memes in the United Negro College Fund’s motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” There is some good news in this book. So before I get into how mind viruses are spreading wildly throughout the world—infecting people with unwanted programming like the Michelangelo com- puter virus infects computers with self-destruct instructions—I’ll start with the good news. The good news is that the long-awaited scientific theory uni- fying biology, psychology, and cognitive science is here. An inter- disciplinary effort by scientists in all those fields over the last 20 years or so—really back to 1859 and Charles Darwin, if you like— has produced a new science called memetics. The science of memetics is based on evolution. Darwin’s the- ory of the evolution of species by natural selection utterly trans- formed the field of biology. Scientists are now applying modern evolutionary theory to the way the mind works, the way people learn and grow, and the way culture progresses. In so doing, the field of psychology will ultimately be as transformed by the scien- tists researching memetics as biology was by Darwin. xiii VIRUS OF THE MIND For those of us who yearn to understand ourselves, learning about memetics gives us a huge amount of satisfaction. I also believe that people who understand memetics will have an increas- ing advantage in life, especially in preventing themselves from being manipulated or taken advantage of. If you better understand how your mind works, you can better navigate through a world of increasingly subtle manipulation. Now the bad news. The bad news is that this book raises more questions than it answers. In particular, memetics has uncov- ered the existence of viruses of the mind but gives us few insights into what to do about them. Viruses of the mind have been with us throughout history, but they are constantly evolving and changing. They are infectious pieces of our culture that spread rapidly throughout a population, altering people’s thoughts and lives in their wake. Mind viruses include everything from the relatively harmless examples, such as miniskirts and slang phrases, to those that seriously derail people’s lives, such as the cycle of unwed mothers on welfare, the Crips and Bloods youth gangs, and the Branch Davidian religious cult. When these pieces of culture are ones we like, there’s no problem. However, just as the Michelangelo computer virus programs com- puters with instructions to destroy their data, viruses of the mind can program us to think and behave in ways that are destructive to our lives. This is the most surprising and most profound insight from the science of memetics: your thoughts are not always your own original ideas. You catch thoughts—you get infected with them, both directly from other people and indirectly from viruses of the mind. People don’t seem to like the idea that they aren’t in control of their thoughts. The reluctance of people to even consider this notion is probably the main reason the scientific work done so far is not better known. As we’ll see, ideas people don’t like have a hard time catching on. Further compounding the problem is that you don’t immedi- ately know whether the programming you get from a given mind virus is harmful or beneficial. Nobody ever joined a religious cult xiv Introduction: Crisis of the Mind with the intention of getting brainwashed, moving to Guyana, and committing suicide. When the teenage Bill Gates caught the poker-playing mind virus at Harvard, was that harmful because it kept him from his studies? Or was it beneficial because it helped sway his decision to drop out, start Microsoft, and become a multi- billionaire? Paradigm Shift Every so often, the world of science experiences something called a paradigm shift. That happens when one of the basic, underlying assumptions we’ve been living with changes, such as when we shifted from looking at the universe as revolving around the earth to the earth revolving around the sun. Another shift occurred when Einstein discovered the relationships between space and time and between energy and matter. Each of these paradigm shifts took some time to penetrate the scientific community and even longer to become accepted by the general public. Viruses of the mind, and the whole science of memetics, represent a major paradigm shift in the science of the mind. Because understanding this new science involves a significant change in the way people think about the mind and culture, it has been difficult for them to grasp. As with any paradigm shift, memetics doesn’t fit into our existing way of looking at things, of understanding the world. The trick to learning a new paradigm is to set aside your cur- rent one while you’re learning rather than attempt to fit the new knowledge into your existing model.