While authorities in psychology discuss whether
memetics is a science, its use by politicians, marketing departments and mass media becomes more and more ubiquitous.
Consider a computer. You can only use a word processor to edit a text. You can only use a merchant's website to order merchandize. But you can use programming languages like C++ or C# to make a computer do virtually anything you want. Similarly, psychology is not enough anymore for politicians, mass media, and large businesses. Preinstalled programs in human minds, such as widely accepted social norms, habits, and prejudices, are not enough for them to exploit anymore. They want to make you do virtually anything they want you to do.
Do you want to defend yourself? Mind viruses are not biological viruses like influenza, but pieces of information or ideas that, once they get into our minds, are capable of causing us to replicate them to other people’s minds. They are very much like computer viruses, but instead of spreading from one computer to another, they spread from one human mind to another. They are also similar to the usual biological viruses (flu, cold, hepatitis, AIDS) in the sense that they use us to replicate themselves. And just like biological and computer viruses, they usually hurt the host in the process. This host is you.
Mind viruses force your mind to replicate them, because that’s the only purpose of their existence. If it hurts you, the virus does not care, as long as you continue to replicate it. As such, they compete with each other for the place in human minds, like yours. This competition results in a sort of evolution where only those mind viruses survive that are most efficient in grabbing your attention and forcing you to spread them. In doing so, they have no concern for your well-being. They don’t have a reason to be relevant to your life and wellness. In fact, one of their main goals is to impair your judgment, because otherwise, why would you spread them?
The very existence of mind viruses is based on their ability to impair your judgment, which you need for your own survival and success. And once they take over, they are forcing you to spread them. This means that you spend cycles in your life spreading the virus instead of working on improving your own life … or just merely enjoying your own life. In fact,
Enjoying your life is something that mind viruses attack first, because the promise of enjoying your life in the future is one of the most efficient ways to force you into replicating them. As you can guess, the future reward never comes.
Long story short, mind viruses can:
• Impair your judgment;
• Make you act against your own interests;
• Prevent your success in life;
• Prevent you from enjoying your life.
Don’t believe it? Read on…
