Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie
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(Hardcover - New Edition)
- Pub. Date: May 2009
- 288pp
- Sales Rank: 2,501
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: May 2009
- Publisher: Hay House, Inc.
- Format: Hardcover, 288pp
- Sales Rank: 2,501
- ISBN-13: 9781401924683
- ISBN: 1401924689
- Edition Description: New Edition
Synopsis
4-CD set, Abridged Audio Book
Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society.
Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives. Mind viruses have already infected governments, educational systems, and inner cities, leading to some of the most pervasive and troublesome problems of society today: youth gangs, the welfare cycle, the deterioration of the public schools, and ever-growing government bureaucracy.
Richard Brodie weaves together science, ethics, and current events as he raises these and other very disturbing issues relating to memes.
Biography
Richard Brodie is best known as the original author of Microsoft Word. His self-help book, Getting Past OK, is an international bestseller. An accomplished speaker, Richard has appeared on dozens of television and radio shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Richard continues to pursue wide and varied interests, which he occasionally blogs about.
Customer Reviews
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- Ratings: 7Reviews: 3
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Interesting but Hard to Finishby Booknut62
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June 21, 2009: This book fascinated me when I read the cover and its "danger" meme, when it sounded the alarm about mind viruses infecting the institutions of our society. After I began reading it, I got to the point in the middle when I kept looking to see how many pages I had left. Still, the value of this book lies in its new idea, the idea that we are programmed through memes that have come to us through evolution, and through our interactions with our culture. It will perhaps make you look at all our cultural values and beliefs a little differently.
ambitious but flawedby Anonymous
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December 16, 2002: On the positive side, there is a lot of entertaining material here. As long as you realize that the author has not thought very deeply on many of the topics he discusses, you can sit back and enjoy his stream of consciousness. On the negative side, I have the following complaints: 1. the overall emphasis of this book is skewed by the title. The author states that he is trying to push the human "danger button" by describing memes as a threat in order to increase sales of his book. In fact, the replication of memes throughout human societies has spread great benefits as well as ills. To place marketing above accuracy in this manner does a great disservice to memetics. 2. the author believes that by becoming aware of memes, we can "rise above them" and program ourselves in any way that we choose. Unfortunately, the criteria we use to decide that a particular reprogrammed mind is "better" than the original are often memes, so we cannot so easily escape their influence. 3. the important concept of the "meme complex" or "memeplex" is not described, except in the very weak form of some memes tagging along with others. 4. the author naively uses the "consciousness" concept to distinguish humans from "lower" animals, apparently unaware that "consciousness" is a meme that is currently justifying the suffering of billions of animals in factory farming facilities. 5. this book completely misses the boat regarding religion. The author lists a great many reasons why he believes that religious meme complexes have successfully spread throughout the world. He neglects to mention the foremost reason: they alleviate personal suffering by superimposing an imaginary "better" universe on top of the "real" universe delivered by our senses. 6. Finally, this book is written in a breezy, arrogant tone of voice that is out of place in a book on philosophy.
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