A war for mind share is going on around us. Ideas struggle for territory in our
brains. In Part 5 of Meme Wars we consider
current technologies enabling memes to struggle for mind share.
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| Like the bodies immune system, meme's protect themselves (click for video) |
Meme Immunity
As when specialization happened during Renaissance meme
reproduction, we are now specializing by ideology and familiarity. Like attracts like and we form into reading
and writing communities. Our minds are
attracted to our desires and prejudices.
Individuals now filter which information streams they will allow to
reproduce memes in their brains.
Many people are limiting meme reproduction by only speaking and listening to those they know in a physical world. Friends on Facebook and Google are allowed
into our streams of consciousness because we already are familiar with
them. We visit websites that contain
information we want to read and ignore those with voices that could change our
minds.
Most minds have memes which are developing an immune system
like structure to protect our brains from ideas that could threaten or change
us. Like white blood cells, our brain's memes attacks ideas that are unfamiliar or disliked.
We reinforce these meme’s by reproducing them in posts, blogs, and
texts.
Death of Thought?
Pictures of cute pets and single sentence sentiments are
plentiful. Our ability to write and be
read so quickly and easily is allowing the most base of human thought to bubble
to the surface.
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| Memes that are winning the battle for mind share? |
Complex thoughts are being reduced, over simplified and
shared widely. Effortless, emotional
appeals are trumping thoughtful logic and considered thought. Our information flow is so fast and furious
that factual knowledge is being reduced to absurdity, being lost in a stream of
silliness.
More dangerous, perhaps, is the tendency toward verbal
violence and extreme speech. Ridicule
has become a standard means of communication.
Cruel one-liners are replacing patient understanding. True dialog to
understand one another dissolves into shouting matches. We seem in many circles to be devolving into
name-calling ideologues.
Ideas that require more than one sentence or single picture
are being lost in the shuffle by our new filters. With so much information, minds trend toward easy
to digest bits of information. Our
capacity for deep, introspective thought is giving way to shallow, surface
communication.
At the same time our minds are being bombarded by memes
desiring reproduction, we are filtering all but simple, short ones out. Complex ideas which can not be reduced to
sentiment are losing in this fight for mind share. Our meme immune systems must develop more
complexity in order for us to regain control of our own minds. If we do not we may reduce ourselves to
absurdity.
In part 6 of Meme Wars we explore political and social
effects of a new meme landscape.
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