American computer programmer & author (1959- )
Only take advice from people with lives you like.
RICHARD BRODIE
Getting Past OK
When people get immersed in a culture with strong new memes, it tends to be a sink-or-swim proposition. Either you change your mind, succumbing to peer pressure and adopting the new memes as your own, or you struggle with the extremely uncomfortable feeling of being surrounded by people who think you're crazy or inadequate. The fact that you probably think the same about them is little consolation.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
All naturally evolved religions--cultural viruses--are bundles of memes.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
From now on, every time you are about to say "I can't," think about what you really mean. Often it's a "polite" way of saying that something is simply not important enough to you right now, given your priorities.
RICHARD BRODIE
Getting Past OK
Mind viruses infect your mind, programming you with directions that point you away from where you want to go. Since this happens unconsciously, all you're aware of is that as you grow older, life becomes more stressful, less fun, more of a drag, and less meaningful. You may feel your motivation slipping away. You may get less excited about things than you used to. These are some of the effects of infection by a virus of the mind, an infection you can't avoid entirely short of living in complete isolation from birth.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
Making fear the most important thing in life is a survival strategy. The trouble is, most of us have survival pretty well handled most of the time. Unless you are often in physical danger, there's no need to make fear, which is designed to protect you from physical danger, the most important thing in your life. If you want your life to be about more than survival--if you have any desire to do more with your life than just make it through--then you must make something else more important than fear.
RICHARD BRODIE
Getting Past OK
Have you ever wondered why life seems so complicated today--more complicated and stressful year after year? One reason is the ever-evolving army of mind viruses, taking over a greater and greater portion of your mind, diverting you from your pursuit of happiness and due to have an even greater effect on the next generation.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
If you listen repeatedly to religious speech, after enough repetitions you will actually begin to notice God and His works where there was just chaotic life going on before. What was formerly chance becomes a miracle. What was pain is now karma. What was human nature is now sin. And regardless of whether these religious memes are presented as Truth or as allegorical mythology, you're conditioned just the same.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
If you find yourself regretting or resenting the past, or dwelling on it--is that the best choice as to how to be expending your energy right now? How about taking the point of view that you made the best choices you could make at the time, and turning your attention to the present?
RICHARD BRODIE
Getting Past OK
As we discovered during Prohibition, the good the government does by reducing drug use must be weighed against the harm done in supporting the criminal underground that serves this black market, not to mention the loss of individual freedom caused by the state imposing its group morality on everyone.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
Without a sense of purpose to life, a sense of what is truly most important to us, we become like the ball in a pinball machine, bouncing away from fear after fear. When we have a clear purpose, we may feel afraid or encounter obstacles, but we will do what it takes to move through the fear and solve the problems in front of us.
RICHARD BRODIE
Getting Past OK
Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditions developed, our brains were set up to amplify the dangers and give them greater significance than the rest.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
When I say a virus's mission in life is to spread, I mean only that when we examine viruses, the interesting thing about them is that they spread. If they didn't spread , we wouldn't call them viruses and we wouldn't be interested in them.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind
The power of meme evolution has brought us to an era where the federal government sees nothing wrong with mandating a national speed limit, controlling access to health care, and deciding which drugs people will be imprisoned for using and which will be subsidized by the taxpayers.
RICHARD BRODIE
Virus of the Mind