Customer Reviews

Mind Wars: The Battle for Your Brain

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mindwars reads like a how-to guide to forming a new religion or anti-establishment revolution, even with numbered steps. McFadyen likens the spread of doctrines (and really ideas) to the spread of viruses and the coopting of DNA replication. He shows how religious/political/scientific movements can take hold of people. To his credit, he seems to be equally critical of all three of those subject areas. The only real great leap he takes over meme theory, is that he sees the human as a vehicle for the spread of (what he claims is) the superior lifeform that is the doctrine/tenet; superior simply because it "controls us" and we're the dominant species.

Regardless, the way he shows how religion/science/politics go about convincing people their way is right, and how he shows why some people refuse to change their point of view, can be helpful for determining an approach for combating those situations.

I found this book to be a summary of much that has already been said on the subject of memetic theory with very little to add. The author has come up with a neologism ("tenetics") to semantically distance his thoughts from what has come before but fails to deliver any convincingly original material.

Memetic theorists have latched onto an intoxicating and seemingly powerful way of looking at the world but many have become frustrated at the lack of empirical rigour to back up their musings and myths. Much compelling speculation and story telling comes from the world of memetic theory and neo-darwinism, flavoured with a scientific outlook but sadly lacking ground to stand on.

Unfortunately, this author has not the humility to doubt his own speculations and presses on with the certainty of a blinkered logical positivist and as if Kant never existed. Many of the authors illustrative examples demonstrate an easy arrogance derived from the beating up of straw men. The straw men are shallow and pale parodies of academic, scientific and religious thought systems and the author has not attempted to engage their higher expressions.

The author sneers at thought systems relying on untested or untestable assumptions and yet humorously fails to see the metaphysical basis for his own "objective" world view. The book gets 2 stars for entertainment value and well written passages.

You might think it stange for me to say a book like this could change tmy life. Honestly though My thinking is changed and I feel as though my eyes have me let go and I had let myself slip deeper into understanding things. It is a very interesting book that anyone can undertsand. It presents a new consept and new perspective on how thoughts, consepts, ideas, and tenets are transmitted from person to person and survive as virus (the only both living and nonliving thing in existance besides God).

A fresh look at human behavior/beleif systems from outside the academic circle. McFayden is an astute observer, who doesn't bother to reduce human activity and beleif systems to abstract principles or hidden mechanisms(imaginary rabbits), but describes them and how they change as a process. Academia, on the other hand, has the tendency to look for hidden mechanisms(imaginary rabbits), rather than simply looking at 'what is happening'. Reminds me a lot of the late philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein actually.