With all of the computer viruses we've been encountering at work, a strange idea occurred to me. If one considers the brain to be just an immensely parallel computer (an assertion that is certainly open to debate), a question arises: are there such things as "mind viruses"?
A mind virus would be analogous to a computer virus: software that you didn't want to run and that is potentially harmful (which is itself analogous to a regular virus: genetic material that you didn't want but got anyway, and which potentially damages your cells). One example immediately sprang to mind: the song that you just can't get out of your head. Once I thought of that, it seemed to me that there are a whole host of mind viruses interacting in our brains all the time.
This ties back to my musing about evil thoughts. Maybe some mind viruses (obsessive thoughts) could be considered evil, because they consume computing resources that could be better spent on productive thought. On the other hand, some of them might actually be useful, like repeating a grocery list over and over so you don't forget it.
Another property of computer viruses is that they propagate. This would hold true for mind viruses as well. One of Allison's favorite little tricks is to hum or whistle just a fragment of a tune, and then to wait to see if it takes root in another person. It is an irritatingly effective demonstration of the reproductive cycle of these viruses.
Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" to describe these self-replicating thoughts. The idea is that memes are to minds as genes are to chemistry. Memes use our minds as a medium in which to live, reproduce, compete, mate, and ultimately die, much as genes use the building blocks of amino acids and the like to perform similar actions. It is an interesting way to think about the collective thoughts of a culture. For instance, the "democracy" meme finds a comfortable place to live in the US, but not in, say, China. Memes can mate to produce new memes: for instance, think of "ice cream" and "yogurt", which produced "frozen yogurt". I have probably horribly oversimplified things, but that is the gist.
Unfortunately, unlike computer viruses (and like regular viruses), mind viruses are difficult to eradicate. One possible solution is to keep your mind active with alternate thoughts, so that the undesired mind viruses are "starved" (i.e., they don't get any run time). Of course, that requires a lot of discipline, and also requires that you recognize the virus in the first place. Like regular and computer viruses, mind viruses do not always exhibit symptoms, so it can be difficult to ferret them out.
A quick search of the web indicates that I am not the first to have this idea. Indeed, there is actually a book by the name of "Virus of the Mind" by Richard Brodie. The situation reminds me of the phenomenon exemplified by the invention of the calculus or the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry (although obviously in an entirely different league) - when the mental culture is ripe for an idea, it will inevitably surface, often simultaneously in distant places. Our brains are just one big old Petri dish, waiting for various molds and fungi to grow in them.
You can respond to my ranting here.
Starve a cold; feed a rant.