Aaron Lynch: Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Throughout Society
How do ideas get around? Why do certain ideas—Christianity, or party politics, or hemlines, or the missionary position—spread throughout society? Why do certain things catch on while others don't? Since ideas form society itself, wouldn't it be worth knowing how they are transmitted? Aaron Lynch thinks he knows, and the answer is: like diseases. Lynch is a memeticist, a man who studies "memes" (rhymes with teams), or kernels of actively contagious ideas. And what he proposes is worth considering: that certain ideas are self-replicating due to the way they displace other ideas. Fascinating, and also scary, because truth and helpfulness are not enough to ensure an idea's survival. Lynch takes an age-old theme—namely, that certain thoughts, ideas and beliefs have lives of their own—and raises it to a science that can help decipher all-pervasive modern phenomena like spin-doctoring and religious proselytism. It's an intriguing idea in itself, and though Thought Contagion is a bit dry, it isn't at all difficult to understand, and it's a worthwhile and incisive look at why we think what we do.