In this issue:
Movie Review: Wag the Dog
State of the World Forum
Subliminal Seduction Update
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Happy New Year to all my Meme Update Subscribers! As I'm sure you have
noticed, I've taken a couple of months off from writing Meme Updates to
enjoy the holidays and my trip to visit my brother in Thailand.
Please feel free to forward, repost, spread, copy, and otherwise disseminate
these memes. Subscription information is at the bottom of this letter.
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Movie Review: Wag the Dog
It's less than two weeks till Election Day. The President is leading all the
polls. Suddenly, you learn that the newspapers are about to break a story
that the President, while meeting with a Campfire Girl in the Oval Office,
may have gone a bit too far in demonstrating how he used to start fires when
he was a Boy Scout. She is accusing him of sexual molestation. Is it true?
It doesn't matter. It's a meme involving sex, children, danger, and
celebrity, and as such is guaranteed to dominate the media, and therefore
the minds of the masses, during this critical pre-election period. What will
you do? What WILL you do?
If you're Robert DeNiro, who plays a Washington spin doctor brought into the
War Room to handle this touchy situation, you naturally realize that you
need to create an even more virulent positive meme to outcompete the
negative one. Well, Grenada worked for Reagan, he figures. So he hires
Hollywood producer Dustin Hoffman to orchestrate a war for him.
Although the plot is perhaps predictable once this frighteningly plausible
scenario is established, this movie is full of hilarious one-liners which I
won't give away here and is well worth the full $7 admission price. But for
me the most exciting thing was that I wasn't the only one laughing at the
cynically insightful memetic insights of this movie. Looking around and
hearing the full audience laugh loudly at just the right places, I was
thrilled to see that, at least in memetically enlightened Seattle, people
really got it.
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State of the World Forum
In November, I was invited to attend the annual State of The World Forum,
co-chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev and other impressive figures. Jim Garrison
and his staff have done an incredible job of bringing this event off and
gathering hundreds of very cool people in one room for the purpose of
creating a future that works for everyone. Look for a full review of
November's State of the World Forum by yours truly in an upcoming issue of
the H.M.S. Beagle http://biomednet.com/hmsbeagle/ . Meanwhile, here's a
preview:
***
As my jogging partner and I, having mounted the final hill in our daily
half-hour morning run, returned to San Francisco's posh Fairmont Hotel, a
smiling doorman waited with gifts for us: two bottles of cold mineral water
wrapped in fresh towels and tied with a gold ribbon. What wonderful service,
I thought with one side of my brain, but the other side wondered about the
appropriateness of having such luxury at a conference dedicated to saving
the world. Shouldn't we be miserable, huddled together in unheated shacks,
or at the very most a Ramada Inn? You wouldn't see Gandhi here, would you?
Actually, a Gandhi was there. Sonia Gandhi, widow of former Indian leader
Rajiv Gandhi and president of the foundation bearing her late husband's
name. In fact, with the exception of a passionate, reproving address from
New Age feminist Marianne Williamson, the mood of the Forum seemed all in
favor of eradicating the meme that doing good cannot coexist with doing
well. In a world of increasing abundance, there's no reason we can't strive
for personal fulfillment en route to making a difference in the world.
Besides, martyrs are no fun at parties -- the crosses they bear keep
knocking over champagne glasses.
***
A surprising highlight of the five-day event was my meeting with "psychic"
Jean Houston. Turns out she's charming and brilliant, not a flake at all.
Imagine that. I wonder what else I see on TV is inaccurate?
(Always on my mission, I went to give Houston a copy of Virus of the Mind,
and was delighted to hear her respond that she had already read it. A
self-proclaimed nerd, Houston wanted me to know that she was "not Hillary's
guru." I had already sent physicist Stuart Kauffman a copy, but he bashfully
informed me that he hadn't read it and that it was hopelessly lost in a pile
in his office. Thinking about my own office, I told him sympathetically that
I understood about piles and shoved another copy into his hand, admonishing
him to read it this time. Only a small voice in the back of my mind wondered
about the prudence of adding another powerful concept, memetics, to that
already critical-mass mind. But hey -- I'm on a mission from God.)
***
The full report will be available in a future issue of HMS Beagle.
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Subliminal Seduction Update
The subliminal seduction business is expanding. In addition to the
previously reported methods of one Ross Jeffries, who applies
neurolinguistic programming (NLP) methods to the practical application of
seducing women ( http://www.seduction.com ), you can now order subliminal
music tapes on line for the same purpose. You get your choice of 10
different kinds of music from Oldies to Alternative, all with Eros-inducing
sounds lurking just beneath the surface. Unlike Jeffries' stuff, which
actually seems to work and which will be the subject of a Rolling Stone
article on Feb. 13, I have not had any reports on the effectiveness of these
tapes. But I'm sure some reader will let me know... you can find them at
http://www.ivpco.com/sub/index.html
[Thanks to several readers who probably don't want to be named]
On a more academic front, British researchers have done some clever
experiments to see if background music can influence people's buying habits.
Of course the answer was yes. They played either French or German music in a
wine shop. Wine sales were hugely skewed in favor of the kind of music being
played: when the French music was on, people bought French wine. When the
German music was played, they bought more German wine.
Most interesting, people polled afterwards said overwhelmingly that music
didn't influence their buying decision. Just goes to show you that we don't
know ourselves as well as we think we do. I have friends who still insist
that TV commercials don't influence their buying habits. Meanwhile, I just
bought a nice new pair of Nikes yesterday, the kind where they replace the
expensive synthetic rubber with air and charge an extra $50. But there's
nothing like that feeling of knowing you own the very best.
The complete article is on line at
http://www.abcnews.com/sections/scitech/muzak1112/index.html
[Thanks to reader Pete Callahan for infecting me with this meme.]
All the best memes,
Richard Brodie
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