Virus of the Mind

A book about the science of memes, a term invented by Richard Dawkins and further popularised by Susan Blackmore. Besides the meme, the book is based on three other central concepts, namely the virus, evolution and evolutionary psychology. The author sees this new idea as the basis of the paradigm shift in that we can become aware of the memes shaping our thinking and disinfect ourselves against them, or, using an alternative metaphor, deprogramme or reprogramme ourselves. Memes are useful concept, but there is a tendency for writers to denigrate the memes of others while thinking they have the right ones or don't really need to deprogramme themselves. It's a little like relativists not realising that the position is equally relative. And it so happens that in my copy, a whole block of text was printed upside down. I did at first wonder if this was a trick to help me change my memes.