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Praise for Virus of the Mind
“Brodie is infectious, indeed, but his virus breeds
truth. Those who ingest this book are at great
risk of seeing how things really are.”
— Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Media Virus!
and Nothing Sacred
“This isn’t a book—it’s a mental adventure.
Virus of the Mind stimulates, educates, and
awakens you to what really happens to the things
you see and hear. Buy it and study it.”
— Jeffrey Gitomer, the author of The Sales Bible
“The true earmark of genius is taking a complex
concept and making it simple (for people like me)
to understand and, far more importantly, utilize.
If the meme truly is fundamental to behavior
(child imitates child, child imitates adult, world
leader imitates world leader . . . ), then all of us
need to spread memes with much greater
intention—and care! Brodie’s humor makes this
book a fun, absorbing, educational, and at times
controversial read. Pick up this book, then give it
to someone you love and you will spread a truly
valuable Virus!”
— Kevin Hogan, Psy.D., the co-author of
Irresistible Attraction and author of The
Psychology of Persuasion
“Virus of the Mind can do for memetics what
Carl Sagan has done for astronomy and
astrophysics with Cosmos. ”

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
POWER vs. FORCE: The Hidden Determinants
of Human Behavior, by David R. Hawkins, M.D.,
Ph.D.
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VIRUS
OF THE
MIND
The New Science of the Meme
Richard Brodie
Carlsbad, California • New York City
London • Sydney • Johannesburg
Vancouver • Hong Kong • New Delhi
Copyright © 1996 by Richard Brodie
Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House,
Inc.: www.hay house.com • Published and distributed in
Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.:
www.hayhouse.com.au • Published and distributed in the United
Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk •
Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by:
Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in
Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com • Published in India
by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in
Editorial supervision: Jill Kramer • Design: Tricia Breidenthal
Indexer: Richard Comfort

ISBN: 978-1-4019-2468-3
12 11 10 09 4 3 2 1
1st Hay House edition, May 2009
Printed in the United States of America
For my mother,
Mary Ann Brodie,
who got me thinking . . .
CONTENTS
Introduction: Crisis of the Mind
Chapter 1: Memes
Chapter 2: Mind and Behavior
Chapter 3: Viruses
Chapter 4: Evolution
Chapter 5: The Evolution of Memes
Chapter 6: Sex: The Root of All Evolution
Chapter 7: Survival and Fear
Chapter 8: How We Get Programmed
Chapter 9: Cultural Viruses
Chapter 10: The Memetics of Religion
Chapter 11: Designer Viruses
(How to Start a Cult)
Chapter 12: Disinfection
Recommended Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Warning: This book contains a live mind
virus. Do not read further unless you are
willing to be infected. The infection may
affect the way you think in subtle or not-
so-subtle ways—or even turn your current

researching memetics as biology was by Darwin.
For those of us who yearn to understand
ourselves, learning about memetics gives us a huge
amount of satisfaction. I also believe that people
who understand memetics will have an increasing
advantage in life, especially in preventing
themselves from being manipulated or taken
advantage of. If you better understand how your
mind works, you can better navigate through a
world of increasingly subtle manipulation.
Now the bad news. . . . The bad news is that this
book raises more questions than it answers. In
particular, memetics has uncovered the existence
of viruses of the mind but gives us few insights
into what to do about them.
Viruses of the mind have been with us throughout
history, but they are constantly evolving and
changing. They are infectious pieces of our culture
that spread rapidly throughout a population,
altering people’s thoughts and lives in their wake.
Mind viruses include everything from the
relatively harmless examples, such as miniskirts
and slang phrases, to those that seriously derail
people’s lives, such as the cycle of unwed mothers
on welfare, the Crips and Bloods youth gangs, and
the Branch Davidian religious cult. When these
pieces of culture are ones we like, there’s no
problem. However, just as the Michelangelo
computer virus programs computers with
instructions to destroy their data, viruses of the

around the earth to the earth revolving around the
sun. Another shift occurred when Einstein
discovered the relationships between space and
time and between energy and matter. Each of these
paradigm shifts took some time to penetrate the
scientific community and even longer to become
accepted by the general public.
Viruses of the mind, and the whole
science of memetics, represent a major
paradigm shift in the science of the mind.
Because understanding this new science
involves a significant change in the way people
think about the mind and culture, it has been
difficult for them to grasp. As with any paradigm
shift, memetics doesn’t fit into our existing way of
looking at things, of understanding the world.
The trick to learning a new paradigm is to set
aside your current one while you’re learning rather
than attempt to fit the new knowledge into your
existing model. It won’t fit! If you’re willing to set
aside your current thinking long enough to consider
four concepts, some or all of which may be new to
you, you’ll be rewarded with an understanding of
memetics. With that understanding, I hope, comes a
call to action for anyone concerned with the future
of human life.
— The first concept—the star of the show—is
the meme, which I introduce in Chapter 1 and
which plays a leading role throughout this book.
The meme, which rhymes with “beam,” is the basic

defenses. I called this part of the book “Crisis of
the Mind” rather than simply “Introduction”
because the former pushes more buttons: it attracts
more attention, and more people will read it. I
called this book Virus of the Mind rather than
Introduction to Memetics for the same reason.
Currently a controversial topic, evolutionary
psychology explores and explains many of the
stereotypical differences between men and women,
especially in the realm of mating behavior. Chapter
6 is about the mating part of evolutionary
psychology; Chapter 7 covers the survival aspect.
Memetics builds on these four conceptual blocks
to form a new paradigm of how culture evolved
and is evolving. It illuminates a major decision
point for humanity:
Will we allow natural selection to
evolve us randomly, without regard for our
happiness, satisfaction, or spirit? Or will
we seize the reins of our own evolution
and pick a direction for ourselves?
Memetics gives us the knowledge and power to
direct our own evolution more than we’ve done at
any time in history. Now that we have that power,
what will we do with it?
A Threat to Humanity
A mind virus is not spread by sneezing, like the
flu, or by sex, like AIDS. It’s not a physical thing.