Biological Viruses
These annoying little buggers have caused us a great deal of grief. They make us all sick from time to time, they're sometimes fatal, and they can even kill off large populations of people. Its funny how something so small can do so much harm. But have you ever stopped to wonder how viruses work?
Biological viruses may seem like living things, but they do not actually show all the characteristics of life. They seem more like machines than life forms. What these little machines do is find their way to a living cell and infect it with viral code. This code tricks the cell into making more viruses which are all released to look for new cells to infect, and thus the cycle continues.
These viruses are not quite alive, but they do evolve. This means that any adaptation that helps them reproduce will be favored. For example, the flu causes you to sneeze a lot. This gets a lot of flu viruses air borne and makes it easy for them to find a new host to infect.
Computer Viruses
Cells are basically computers. They have hardware, which performs physical tasks, and software (DNA and RNA), which contain instructions for the hardware to carry out. Since cells and computers are so similar, it makes sense that computers have viruses too.
A computer virus is a piece of computer code that attaches itself to programs on a computer. A program that has a virus attached to it is said to be infected. When an infected program is run, the virus code also runs and this causes it to infect other programs that it finds.
Computer viruses are created by people, not nature, so whatever harm a computer virus does is up to the person who programed it. It might delete everything on your computer, or it might just call you a dork every five minutes, who knows? The point is that computer viruses work the same way as biological viruses. They are really just a different form of the same thing.
Viruses In General
If a computer virus is basically the same thing as a biological virus, except in a different form, then there might be other forms of viruses out there too, right? In order to discover them, we need to know how to recognize them. To do this, I've looked at the similarities and differences between the two types of viruses and came up with the following list of viral qualities:
Characteristics Of A Virus
Must infect a host.
Must be able to spread from host to host.
Must alter the host's behavior to benefit it.
May cause harm to the host.
May resist being destroyed or disabled.
May resist detection.
May evolve if conditions are right.
As you'll notice, only the first three characteristics are required for a virus. The other four characteristics are not present in all viruses but occur often enough that they are worth mentioning.
Now that we have a list of viral characteristics, we can use it to see if other types of viruses exist... but since you already know what I'm getting to, because you read the note at the top of this page, lets just get on with it:
Mental Viruses: Memes
I, and many other people like me, believe that there is in fact another type of virus, which we call memes (rhymes with beams). A meme is a mental virus. Rather than infecting living cells or computers it infects people's minds. Memes are not concrete things like other viruses, they are abstract. They are thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. It may be hard to believe that these abstract things can have the qualities of a virus, but I intend to prove it to you on the next page.
Next: Memes
Contagious Humor
My friends think I'm a pretty good comedian. Some of the jokes I tell are jokes that I completely made up myself. A lot of the jokes, however, are jokes that I heard before, or are variations of jokes I've heard before. When you are told a joke that you think is really funny, doesn't it make you want to retell it to someone else? Most people would answer yes, I think, and this is how jokes spread.
When you examine how these jokes spread from person to person, you'll notice that they do seem to behave like a virus does. Jokes "infect" the human mind, and alter our behavior to make us want to spread the joke to other "hosts." This satisfies all the requirements for a virus that were given on the previous page. Even though the joke itself is an abstract non-physical thing, it still behaves like a virus. Weird, eh?
The human mind, like a living cell, is basically a complicated computer. And like any computer, the human mind can be exploited. These mental viruses that exploit the human mind are what we call memes. In the case of jokes, memes are pretty harmless, but there are many other types of memes out there and they cannot all be safely ignored.
Pop Culture
What should I wear? How should I style my hair? What slang should I use? Should I have a bicycle? a skateboard? roller skates? a skooter? Should I get my ear pierced? my belly button? my tongue? my nipples? Should I get a tattoo? Should I play Dungeons and Dragons? Pogs? Magic cards? Should I buy Pokemon toys? Ferbies? Hoola-hoops? Power Rangers? Should I listen to Metallica? Britney Spears? What is everyone else listening to? What is everyone else wearing? What is everyone else doing!?!
In case you don't get the point, how much of your preferences do you suppose are actually yours? How much did you "borrow" from your peers? Sure, we'd all like to believe we think entirely for ourselves, but this isn't always the case. If people thought entirely for themselves, we wouldn't see the pop culture trends that we do. Pop culture is nothing more than memes hard at work.
Marketing and Fame: An Example
I remember when bands used to start out as a bunch of friends who would play music in their garage until they were discovered by a record company and made famous through their music by going on tour and being on the radio. Nowadays, it seems like companies just decide to make a band and have performers audition for it. I say performers instead of musicians because they do not actually play any instruments or write their own songs. They are hired to look sexy, dance, sing, and love their fans. The actual musicians dont get any credit. Why is it done this way? It sells.
The performers were hired for their good looks...most of the songs are love songs...and the music is marketed toward teens. What is the goal here? They want teens to "fall in love" with their performers, so that their music will sell. This is just to get the process started though. Once the first "batch" of teens develop their crushes, they will talk about it with all their friends and all of a sudden the performers are very popular. The fact that they are popular makes more people want to listen to the music, which makes them even more popular, etc.
The idea "this band is good and popular" spreads from person to person just like a virus. Unlike the joke memes discussed earlier, these popularity memes are actually engineered by people to spread efficiently. They want you to want their product because they want to make money off you!
Advertizing: Another Example
Have you ever noticed that men's magazines have pictures of beautiful women in them? Not surprising. But have you ever noticed that women's magazines also have pictures of beautiful women in them? What's the big deal here? Look at it from the advertisers' point of view. What are they trying to accomplish now? Most of the ads in these magazines are for things like make up, beauty products, perfumes, clothing, lingerie, weight loss programs, and even cosmetic surgery. The ads feature pretty women in order to make the reader feel ugly. Every page she turns is a wound to her self esteem. The advertizers want it this way so the reader will buy the products.
These insecurities that the ads plant in women's minds are also memes. If a woman starts to see more and more other women wearing makeup or certain clothes or whatever, she will feel pressured to do so too. Advertisers understand how memes work, and how they can be used to tinker with the emotions of others to get what they want, money. Almost all advertizing is like this, I just used magazine ads as an example. Some of the advertizing out there is harmless, but the ones that play off of people's emotional insecurities are good examples of dangerous memes.
Instinct And Emotion
We, as a species, are lucky enough to have evolved the ability to think for ourselves. This ability has been a valuable aid for our survival. But being able to clearly think things out isn't always as helpful as it seems. Sometimes it's best, for your survival, to do things that go against your regular thoughts, and sometimes it's best to act quickly without stopping to think at all. This is where our instincts and emotions come in. They act to regulate your thoughts and make sure you're doing what's best (that's how they should work anyway).
The emotion we call fear, an emotion we all hate, is actually quite helpful. It prevents us from doing things that are dangerous. I wouldn't want to jump off a cliff because I know it would kill me, but even if I wanted to die it would still be very difficult for me to jump off because the fear would be overwhelming. Like everything else about us, our fears vary from person to person. Because of this, our instinctual fears can evolve. If, for example, a person who is afraid of spiders is more likely to survive than a person who isn't (because some spiders are deadly), then this fear would be preferred by natural selection.
What about other emotions? Do they all have a purpose? I bet they do. Emotions like pride, shame, and guilt are the basis of ethics. Sometimes it's best for us to work together, which is what emotions like love and compassion push us to do. Yet sometimes it's best for us to compete, which is what emotions like envy, jealousy, and greed push us to do. Emotions like embarrassment and shame push us to conform to the group, which helps keep a stable social structure. Emotions like fear and hate push us to destroy what doesn't conform, which also helps keep a stable social structure.
If you think you think for yourself, think again...
Emotional Responses
Just because we are all capable of the same set of emotions doesn't mean we have the same emotional reactions under the same circumstances. Some people have an overwhelming fear of heights. Some don't. Some people would feel very guilty if they accidently killed an animal. Some wouldn't worry about it. Some would kill animals on purpose and feel proud. It all depends on the person.
Emotions may be universal, but emotional responses are not. Some emotional responses are preprogrammed in your instinct (like fear of spiders). Some emotional responses are programmed in latter by your family, peers, society, culture, and other aspects of your surrounding environment. You can think of emotions as a sort of language; everyone uses the same alphabet, but we all have different things written with it.
Memes And Emotion
The great bulk of memes out there rely on emotion. If emotions did not exist, I doubt that we ever would've come up with the idea of a meme. Not all memes rely on emotion though, and some rely on emotion more than others. As I see it, memes can be classified into three groups based on their complexity.
The simplest class of memes are those that have nothing to do with emotion at all. I call these memes utilitarian memes. They spread simply because they are ideas that work. An example of a utilitarian meme would be how to build a fire. Once someone figured out how to do it, the technique spread because it is useful.
The second class of memes do rely on emotion. I call these memes pop cultural memes. They tend to spread quickly and die quickly, causing the pop cultural trends described on the previous page. Most commonly, pop cultural memes feed off of peoples' instinctual need to fit in, and be accepted.
The third class of memes are the most complex and the most viral. They rely on actually programming (or reprogramming) a person's emotional responses. These memes usually infect a host at a young age, because it is during this time that emotional responses are usually learned. Children are exposed to these memes by their parents, peers, and society, and once infected, usually stay infected for life. I call these memes cultural memes because they are responsible for cultural, religious, and societal beliefs. These are the memes that we atheists believe are the most harmful.
Next: Societal Beliefs Contents
re you saying that culture and religion are nothing more than mental viruses?
Yes. That is what I am saying. Any idea that spreads, whether right or wrong, is a meme, including culture and religion. The thing that is special about cultural and religious memes is that they fall into this third category of meme which deals with teaching emotional responses to people.
What does this mean exactly?
All cultures and religions out there have certain rules which are taught. These rules are also emotional responses. For example, the rule "it is wrong to steal" is the same as the emotional response "I should feel shame/guilt if I steal." Some of these rules are logical, like the one just given, and some are not, like "it is wrong it eat meat on Friday."
The thing that is scary about these types of memes is just how powerful they are. They infect people when they are young and influence the development of their emotional responses, which affects how they will think for the rest of their lives (in most cases). These memes can make people strongly believe things that have no logical basis whatsoever.
If a lot of these memes are illogical, why do people have no trouble believing them?
These types of memes are very tricky because they are self reenforcing. These memes include the emotional response "this meme is good, I should feel proud." People who are raised to believe in a religion are taught to feel proud for believing in the religion. If they start to doubt the religion, it often makes them feel guilty. So you see, these memes reward you for believing in them, and punish you for disbelieving in them. It's of no use to argue about the logic of the belief because people follow the beliefs for emotional purposes. The believers will just conveniently ignore that their beliefs are illogical.
My religion is correct! I refuse to believe that it is just some kind of virus!
Go ahead. But let me ask you this... Even if your religion is the one true religion and is not a virus, how do you explain other religions? There is no majority religion in the world. No matter what you believe, more people would disagree with you than agree. No matter what you believe, there are people out there that are willing to die for a different belief. How do explain how all those people are fooled? If they are fooled by memes, how is your religion any different from theirs?
How are these types of memes dangerous? Doesn't religion teach good morals?
Sometimes these memes do teach good things, but they do have great potential to cause harm. Most wars throughout history have been fought over religious or cultural differences. Religion is especially harmful because it gives people the feeling that god is on their side. Adolf Hitler thought he was doing god's work when killing off countless people. A lot of religions, including Christianity, have used violence to spread to new areas. Many people have had religion forced upon them.
God is the leading cause of death.
Even without all the violence, there are still other harmful effects. A lot of religions out there have illogical rules which cause people a lot of grief. For example, imagine a gay teen being raised by strict religious parents. The teen would probably be confused and feel a lot of shame and guilt, for no real reason. Most religions are guilt provoking to some degree, and this is emotionally unhealthy.
Religion also steps on science's turf all too often. Throughout history, scientists have been persecuted for going against the popular belief. Many scientists were killed for their "heresy." This level of violence doesn't exist today, but religion is still an annoyance to science. For example, Christains have tried to stop the teaching of evolution in public schools (pretty difficult considering evolution is the core theme of biology).
The general attitude taught by religion is harmful because it teaches people to be narrow minded and illogical and gives them the unfounded feeling of moral superiority. We atheists believe that whatever benefits there are to religion can be accomplished without it.
These annoying little buggers have caused us a great deal of grief. They make us all sick from time to time, they're sometimes fatal, and they can even kill off large populations of people. Its funny how something so small can do so much harm. But have you ever stopped to wonder how viruses work?
Biological viruses may seem like living things, but they do not actually show all the characteristics of life. They seem more like machines than life forms. What these little machines do is find their way to a living cell and infect it with viral code. This code tricks the cell into making more viruses which are all released to look for new cells to infect, and thus the cycle continues.
These viruses are not quite alive, but they do evolve. This means that any adaptation that helps them reproduce will be favored. For example, the flu causes you to sneeze a lot. This gets a lot of flu viruses air borne and makes it easy for them to find a new host to infect.
Computer Viruses
Cells are basically computers. They have hardware, which performs physical tasks, and software (DNA and RNA), which contain instructions for the hardware to carry out. Since cells and computers are so similar, it makes sense that computers have viruses too.
A computer virus is a piece of computer code that attaches itself to programs on a computer. A program that has a virus attached to it is said to be infected. When an infected program is run, the virus code also runs and this causes it to infect other programs that it finds.
Computer viruses are created by people, not nature, so whatever harm a computer virus does is up to the person who programed it. It might delete everything on your computer, or it might just call you a dork every five minutes, who knows? The point is that computer viruses work the same way as biological viruses. They are really just a different form of the same thing.
Viruses In General
If a computer virus is basically the same thing as a biological virus, except in a different form, then there might be other forms of viruses out there too, right? In order to discover them, we need to know how to recognize them. To do this, I've looked at the similarities and differences between the two types of viruses and came up with the following list of viral qualities:
Characteristics Of A Virus
Must infect a host.
Must be able to spread from host to host.
Must alter the host's behavior to benefit it.
May cause harm to the host.
May resist being destroyed or disabled.
May resist detection.
May evolve if conditions are right.
As you'll notice, only the first three characteristics are required for a virus. The other four characteristics are not present in all viruses but occur often enough that they are worth mentioning.
Now that we have a list of viral characteristics, we can use it to see if other types of viruses exist... but since you already know what I'm getting to, because you read the note at the top of this page, lets just get on with it:
Mental Viruses: Memes
I, and many other people like me, believe that there is in fact another type of virus, which we call memes (rhymes with beams). A meme is a mental virus. Rather than infecting living cells or computers it infects people's minds. Memes are not concrete things like other viruses, they are abstract. They are thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. It may be hard to believe that these abstract things can have the qualities of a virus, but I intend to prove it to you on the next page.
Next: Memes
Contagious Humor
My friends think I'm a pretty good comedian. Some of the jokes I tell are jokes that I completely made up myself. A lot of the jokes, however, are jokes that I heard before, or are variations of jokes I've heard before. When you are told a joke that you think is really funny, doesn't it make you want to retell it to someone else? Most people would answer yes, I think, and this is how jokes spread.
When you examine how these jokes spread from person to person, you'll notice that they do seem to behave like a virus does. Jokes "infect" the human mind, and alter our behavior to make us want to spread the joke to other "hosts." This satisfies all the requirements for a virus that were given on the previous page. Even though the joke itself is an abstract non-physical thing, it still behaves like a virus. Weird, eh?
The human mind, like a living cell, is basically a complicated computer. And like any computer, the human mind can be exploited. These mental viruses that exploit the human mind are what we call memes. In the case of jokes, memes are pretty harmless, but there are many other types of memes out there and they cannot all be safely ignored.
Pop Culture
What should I wear? How should I style my hair? What slang should I use? Should I have a bicycle? a skateboard? roller skates? a skooter? Should I get my ear pierced? my belly button? my tongue? my nipples? Should I get a tattoo? Should I play Dungeons and Dragons? Pogs? Magic cards? Should I buy Pokemon toys? Ferbies? Hoola-hoops? Power Rangers? Should I listen to Metallica? Britney Spears? What is everyone else listening to? What is everyone else wearing? What is everyone else doing!?!
In case you don't get the point, how much of your preferences do you suppose are actually yours? How much did you "borrow" from your peers? Sure, we'd all like to believe we think entirely for ourselves, but this isn't always the case. If people thought entirely for themselves, we wouldn't see the pop culture trends that we do. Pop culture is nothing more than memes hard at work.
Marketing and Fame: An Example
I remember when bands used to start out as a bunch of friends who would play music in their garage until they were discovered by a record company and made famous through their music by going on tour and being on the radio. Nowadays, it seems like companies just decide to make a band and have performers audition for it. I say performers instead of musicians because they do not actually play any instruments or write their own songs. They are hired to look sexy, dance, sing, and love their fans. The actual musicians dont get any credit. Why is it done this way? It sells.
The performers were hired for their good looks...most of the songs are love songs...and the music is marketed toward teens. What is the goal here? They want teens to "fall in love" with their performers, so that their music will sell. This is just to get the process started though. Once the first "batch" of teens develop their crushes, they will talk about it with all their friends and all of a sudden the performers are very popular. The fact that they are popular makes more people want to listen to the music, which makes them even more popular, etc.
The idea "this band is good and popular" spreads from person to person just like a virus. Unlike the joke memes discussed earlier, these popularity memes are actually engineered by people to spread efficiently. They want you to want their product because they want to make money off you!
Advertizing: Another Example
Have you ever noticed that men's magazines have pictures of beautiful women in them? Not surprising. But have you ever noticed that women's magazines also have pictures of beautiful women in them? What's the big deal here? Look at it from the advertisers' point of view. What are they trying to accomplish now? Most of the ads in these magazines are for things like make up, beauty products, perfumes, clothing, lingerie, weight loss programs, and even cosmetic surgery. The ads feature pretty women in order to make the reader feel ugly. Every page she turns is a wound to her self esteem. The advertizers want it this way so the reader will buy the products.
These insecurities that the ads plant in women's minds are also memes. If a woman starts to see more and more other women wearing makeup or certain clothes or whatever, she will feel pressured to do so too. Advertisers understand how memes work, and how they can be used to tinker with the emotions of others to get what they want, money. Almost all advertizing is like this, I just used magazine ads as an example. Some of the advertizing out there is harmless, but the ones that play off of people's emotional insecurities are good examples of dangerous memes.
Instinct And Emotion
We, as a species, are lucky enough to have evolved the ability to think for ourselves. This ability has been a valuable aid for our survival. But being able to clearly think things out isn't always as helpful as it seems. Sometimes it's best, for your survival, to do things that go against your regular thoughts, and sometimes it's best to act quickly without stopping to think at all. This is where our instincts and emotions come in. They act to regulate your thoughts and make sure you're doing what's best (that's how they should work anyway).
The emotion we call fear, an emotion we all hate, is actually quite helpful. It prevents us from doing things that are dangerous. I wouldn't want to jump off a cliff because I know it would kill me, but even if I wanted to die it would still be very difficult for me to jump off because the fear would be overwhelming. Like everything else about us, our fears vary from person to person. Because of this, our instinctual fears can evolve. If, for example, a person who is afraid of spiders is more likely to survive than a person who isn't (because some spiders are deadly), then this fear would be preferred by natural selection.
What about other emotions? Do they all have a purpose? I bet they do. Emotions like pride, shame, and guilt are the basis of ethics. Sometimes it's best for us to work together, which is what emotions like love and compassion push us to do. Yet sometimes it's best for us to compete, which is what emotions like envy, jealousy, and greed push us to do. Emotions like embarrassment and shame push us to conform to the group, which helps keep a stable social structure. Emotions like fear and hate push us to destroy what doesn't conform, which also helps keep a stable social structure.
If you think you think for yourself, think again...
Emotional Responses
Just because we are all capable of the same set of emotions doesn't mean we have the same emotional reactions under the same circumstances. Some people have an overwhelming fear of heights. Some don't. Some people would feel very guilty if they accidently killed an animal. Some wouldn't worry about it. Some would kill animals on purpose and feel proud. It all depends on the person.
Emotions may be universal, but emotional responses are not. Some emotional responses are preprogrammed in your instinct (like fear of spiders). Some emotional responses are programmed in latter by your family, peers, society, culture, and other aspects of your surrounding environment. You can think of emotions as a sort of language; everyone uses the same alphabet, but we all have different things written with it.
Memes And Emotion
The great bulk of memes out there rely on emotion. If emotions did not exist, I doubt that we ever would've come up with the idea of a meme. Not all memes rely on emotion though, and some rely on emotion more than others. As I see it, memes can be classified into three groups based on their complexity.
The simplest class of memes are those that have nothing to do with emotion at all. I call these memes utilitarian memes. They spread simply because they are ideas that work. An example of a utilitarian meme would be how to build a fire. Once someone figured out how to do it, the technique spread because it is useful.
The second class of memes do rely on emotion. I call these memes pop cultural memes. They tend to spread quickly and die quickly, causing the pop cultural trends described on the previous page. Most commonly, pop cultural memes feed off of peoples' instinctual need to fit in, and be accepted.
The third class of memes are the most complex and the most viral. They rely on actually programming (or reprogramming) a person's emotional responses. These memes usually infect a host at a young age, because it is during this time that emotional responses are usually learned. Children are exposed to these memes by their parents, peers, and society, and once infected, usually stay infected for life. I call these memes cultural memes because they are responsible for cultural, religious, and societal beliefs. These are the memes that we atheists believe are the most harmful.
Next: Societal Beliefs Contents
re you saying that culture and religion are nothing more than mental viruses?
Yes. That is what I am saying. Any idea that spreads, whether right or wrong, is a meme, including culture and religion. The thing that is special about cultural and religious memes is that they fall into this third category of meme which deals with teaching emotional responses to people.
What does this mean exactly?
All cultures and religions out there have certain rules which are taught. These rules are also emotional responses. For example, the rule "it is wrong to steal" is the same as the emotional response "I should feel shame/guilt if I steal." Some of these rules are logical, like the one just given, and some are not, like "it is wrong it eat meat on Friday."
The thing that is scary about these types of memes is just how powerful they are. They infect people when they are young and influence the development of their emotional responses, which affects how they will think for the rest of their lives (in most cases). These memes can make people strongly believe things that have no logical basis whatsoever.
If a lot of these memes are illogical, why do people have no trouble believing them?
These types of memes are very tricky because they are self reenforcing. These memes include the emotional response "this meme is good, I should feel proud." People who are raised to believe in a religion are taught to feel proud for believing in the religion. If they start to doubt the religion, it often makes them feel guilty. So you see, these memes reward you for believing in them, and punish you for disbelieving in them. It's of no use to argue about the logic of the belief because people follow the beliefs for emotional purposes. The believers will just conveniently ignore that their beliefs are illogical.
My religion is correct! I refuse to believe that it is just some kind of virus!
Go ahead. But let me ask you this... Even if your religion is the one true religion and is not a virus, how do you explain other religions? There is no majority religion in the world. No matter what you believe, more people would disagree with you than agree. No matter what you believe, there are people out there that are willing to die for a different belief. How do explain how all those people are fooled? If they are fooled by memes, how is your religion any different from theirs?
How are these types of memes dangerous? Doesn't religion teach good morals?
Sometimes these memes do teach good things, but they do have great potential to cause harm. Most wars throughout history have been fought over religious or cultural differences. Religion is especially harmful because it gives people the feeling that god is on their side. Adolf Hitler thought he was doing god's work when killing off countless people. A lot of religions, including Christianity, have used violence to spread to new areas. Many people have had religion forced upon them.
God is the leading cause of death.
Even without all the violence, there are still other harmful effects. A lot of religions out there have illogical rules which cause people a lot of grief. For example, imagine a gay teen being raised by strict religious parents. The teen would probably be confused and feel a lot of shame and guilt, for no real reason. Most religions are guilt provoking to some degree, and this is emotionally unhealthy.
Religion also steps on science's turf all too often. Throughout history, scientists have been persecuted for going against the popular belief. Many scientists were killed for their "heresy." This level of violence doesn't exist today, but religion is still an annoyance to science. For example, Christains have tried to stop the teaching of evolution in public schools (pretty difficult considering evolution is the core theme of biology).
The general attitude taught by religion is harmful because it teaches people to be narrow minded and illogical and gives them the unfounded feeling of moral superiority. We atheists believe that whatever benefits there are to religion can be accomplished without it.
