Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme

by Richard Brodie (Author)

219 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0963600127

ISBN-10: 0963600125

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Product details

Publisher : Integral Pr (January 31, 2004)
Language : English
Paperback : 251 pages
ISBN-10 : 0963600125
ISBN-13 : 978-0963600127
Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
Dimensions : 9.06 x 6.06 x 0.73 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,947,855 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,717 in Genetics (Books)
- #17,426 in Sociology (Books)
- #19,194 in Biology & Life Sciences (Books)

Customer Reviews:
219 ratings

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Thought Provoking!

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2017

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Brodie first explains how biological viruses succeed, and then ties in the concept of mind viruses. They are just as dangerous and deadly. Having been born and raised in a cult I especially enjoyed the whole chapter he devoted to "designer viruses". I first heard about this book from Wayne Dryer in his series on "Excuses Be Gone". I highly recommend Brodie's book to anyone who is serious about understanding the functioning of the evolution of our DNA and harmful memes that are arising at an alarming rate, and left unchecked could cause damage to society. However as Brodie points out, once we are educated on memes we can also use them for positive influence. Thank you Brodie for your efforts in writing this fun, fact filled book!

14 people found this helpful

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C. Fey

Do you know where your beliefs come from?

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2016

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For many years I studied with a Shamanic teacher who professed "Don't believe anything. Don't believe anything I say. Don't believe anything others tell you. Don't believe yourself. Test everything." I also have a magnet on my refrigerator the quotes the Buddha as saying "believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". If you've ever considered the impact on your life of the beliefs that come your way...you might enjoy reading this. It shows so many of the ways these beliefs come to us at all ages, from all sources... and the potential impact of not recognizing them as beliefs and just following blindly. .

15 people found this helpful

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Mark Edward Bachmann

Diminution Of A Good Idea

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2014

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I've been intrigued by the term "meme" since I first ran across it a few years ago. Like all good new words, it seemed to capture something I'd already been thinking vaguely about and to offer a shorthand pointer to a useful idea. I was then interested to learn that a whole literature had in fact grown up around the concept of the meme, and I wanted to learn more. I knew that the word had been coined by scientist Richard Dawkins in a book he wrote in the 1970's, but I didn't feel like slogging through a tome on evolutionary biology - Dawkins' field - and I cast about for something more narrowly focused and accessible. So I picked up this book by Richard Brodie and gave it a read. This was a mistake, however, because Virus Of The Mind is not a good book.

Mr. Brodie in his introduction opens with sweeping promise: "The good news is that the long-awaited scientific theory unifying biology, psychology, and cognitive science is here . . . a new science called memetics". What he delivers, however, is far less. It' mostly pop psychology, and in the most pejorative sense of that term - shallow, smug, and brimming with aimless enthusiasm. I've read a other books in this genre, usually with regret later, and this one exhibits all the tell-tale traits, down to effusive praise from other pop-writers on the opening fly-leaf and ads for their tapes and seminars at the back. Stylistically, the book is full of exclamation points, sophomoric humor - he likes sex jokes - and condescending rhetorical questions with obvious answers. One device he favors is setting off little chunks of text inside of lined boxes every page or two, apparently to emphasize bits of wisdom he wants to make sure his inattentive readers don't miss. Thus are we subjected to things like: "Access to sex is the driving force behind many aspect of culture" (page 106), or "Our beloved dogs, cats, iguanas, and so on, along with the enormous industries that have arisen to support them, are all part of a huge cultural virus known as pets" (page 168) Little editorial tricks like this designed to elevate ideas too trite or silly otherwise to attract attention constitute yet another hallmark of this irksome genre.

Much of the first part of the book is actually about evolutionary biology, and I'm assuming - not having read Dawkins - that it's essentially a recapitulation of his theories. And this part of the book is even sort of interesting in places, but it reads like a summary written by a college student eager to demonstrate how well he's absorbed the assigned reading. So we hear all about how it's genes themselves, more than organisms, that compete for survival in the biological world, and how they do so by learning to replicate themselves more rapaciously then competing genes. The meme then emerges as the psychological and social extension of this same process. For memes are ideas that replicate themselves easily and acquire the ability to spread rapidly from one human mind to another. Hence, the "virus of the mind" metaphor, which apparently originated again with Dawkins but which Mr. Brodie co-opts here and brandishes proudly around like a kid who just found his dad's gun.

A meme in its own right, as Mr. Brodie repeatedly points out, the meme idea is compelling because it indeed seems to capture a lot about our media-intense social environment. Advertisers, politicians, televangelists, cultists, propagandists and hucksters of every sort surround us and compete for our attention with neatly packaged ideas designed for rapid social transmission. The dark side of the concept can be seen in the totalitarianisms that dominated the latter half of the last century and the new ones emerging now. Stalinists, Fascists, Nazis, and Islamic extremists have all sought to complement their police states with what we might now call engineered meme infection. State-sponsored memes are planted everywhere in the form of official ideology or doctrine, and competing memes are exterminated.

Mr. Brodie is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, however, and only hints at such negatives. In fact, he positions himself on a high horse above it all, explaining that he has "disinfected" himself from the memes of his culture and "re-programmed" himself with constructive memes, although he doesn't tell us much about what these might actually be, other than that they support his "values". He says his agenda in writing books now is to "make a difference in people's lives", by which he seems to mean helping them along his own path of "self-disinfection". He even tries to associate the process he advocates with Zen Buddhism. As with most of the ideas he toys with, this one is not without interest, but he reaches way over his pay grade in his shallow attempt to address it.

I'm still interested in the concept of the meme, but I have to say a bit less so after reading Virus Of The Mind. Surely this is one defining characteristic of a bad book.

30 people found this helpful

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Worth reading? yea.

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2018

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First 2/3rds is great. Real eye opener. The parts on religion were spot on. The Utopian solution at the end was kind of idealistic, unrealistic, and unnecessary.

One person found this helpful

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Michael & Na’ama Devivo

A MUST read book and Richard Brodie's consciousness is an absolute treat to get to know.

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2013

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This is a MUST read book. I actually bought it as an audio since I like to get a feel of the author without my own interpretation.
Its a great eye opener, eventhough I already had some understanding of the idea of MEMES (which in my language I call it indoctrination) I was happy to know there was something out there to point to this phenomena. After you read this book or listen to it consider The Avatar Course, it is like the continuing or an action step to discover al these sabotaging memes you hold.

6 people found this helpful

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Jimmie Benbrook

Brodie's Self-Promoting Mind Virus

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2010

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I saw this book at Costco and was immediately attracted to the title, i.e., "What the heck is a "meme""? The title itself is a meme, which, I suppose, was Brodie's intent, I know it certainly piqued my interest. The book proved to be very informative for a person, such as myself, who was totally unfamiliar with memetics, and from that perspective it was well worth the read, however, I also found it rather self-promoting and somewhat disjointed. What was the purpose, for example, of the author's mini-tirade regarding the erosion of state's rights in favor of a more centralized form of government? To me, that was more of a personal political statement and a prime example of a mind virus. Though thought-provoking, the concept of memetics still remains nebulous to me but certainly deserves further exploration.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Bri

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2017

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Its an intertesting read and has some good insights and perspectives. But deviates too much into non mind theory.

Adam Peter

Brilliant book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2016

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Absolutely brilliant book worth reading and getting back after giving some thoughs. Great thinker to spread the good meme around. Highly recommended for good thinkers.

David H

Probably best not to

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2017

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An odd book. I'm not sure whether to take it seriously or not. Probably best not to.

Lorri

virus of the mind.....its mind boggling!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 9, 2013

Verified Purchase

Arrived in good time. Excellent packaging. Would read again. Quite a deep book. Got me thinking about how we are constantly being manipulated. I wouldn't however let it bother me too much.

Faab

great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 12, 2017

Verified Purchase

smooth transaction, great book

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