Just because you sneeze, doesn’t mean you are coming down with something.  So many of us will automatically believe that we are getting sick or are already sick if we sneeze a few times and if our nose runs. With all of the cold and flu ads on television and radio, it’s no wonder we are conditioned to ‘look’ for symptoms and go buy a product to ward of whatever we believe we have caught.

-A meme is:-
An idea that, like a gene, can replicate and evolve.
A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to mutation, crossover and adaptation.
A cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation); “memes are the cultural counterpart of genes”.

Memes are viruses of the mind.  Richard Brodie wrote a fantastic book with that title. So what is the goal of a virus?  Viruses – say a flu virus or a computer virus – essentially do three things: the first is to duplicate itself, the second is to infiltrate any openings or weaknesses, and the third is to spread.  Television, radio, and the internet are the most common ways in which memes are spread today.  And the infection is spreading.

Learning about memetics has significantly changed the way I think about social and philosophical ideas.  Whenever I sneeze I now think “That’s interesting.  I wonder why I sneezed?  Maybe it was dust, pollen, or a bug.” And whenever my nose runs I think “I must be adjusting to a new temperature, or maybe something irritated my sinuses, or I just had too much wasabi!”

So the next time you sneeze, think about it for a moment.  Is your nose trying to get rid of dust or allergens, adjusting to the temperature of a new season, or have you just been infected by a meme?