Buy it now from Amazon
The Meme Machine
Susan Blackmore
Oxford University Press, USA
- List price: $19.95
- Lowest new price: $7.81
- Lowest used price: $4.85
Average customer rating:
This book will change the way you think about your thinking
I completed reading the "The Meme Machine" just 1 hour before and am almost compelled to write a review of this book in Amazon. Though I read a lot, this is the first time I am writing a review in Amazon, and there is a valid reason. I strongly feel, it may take some decades to understand the full impact of this book. This book did to Psychology, Religion and Culture what "Origin of Species" did to Biology and Copernicus did to Physics. But for us the relevance of this book is more, since the subject matter of this book is our thinking, speech, behaviour and culture. At the end of the book, the reader almost discovers that he is not the "Doer" and he never was and there is no other "Doer". You almost see your thinking and action in a new perspective, and though there is no religious connotation to that specially the way we understand "Religion", but you feel a lightness and letting go attitude, which I believe what some of the mystics have mentioned as "Being in Grace".
The Meme Machine
This has to be probably the best complementary book to the writings of Dawkins; Dennett, Hitchens, et.al. on the subject of evolutionary study. It is at times very heavy in context but should create an excellent starting point for further study/research on Memetics. I loved every page.
Great theory, let's apply it
I found this book both thought provoking and slightly disturbing. The arguments are well constructed and make perfect sense. The implications of the meme 'mind virus' are far reaching, I guess intuitively we all know this happens but now have a theory about the mechanism (like natural selection for genes) that illuminates the process. I am now wondering how this might help in my work in the area of organisational change...? I have a lot of thinking to do, perhaps create a meme or two.
A thought-provoking look at social evolution
With the Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore has elaborated on the fascinating idea of the meme started by Richard Dawkins. This combined with the theory of culural and biological co-evolution between memes and genes opens up a new way of thinking about the world we live in.
This book details meme-centric explanations for everything from religion to alien abudctions. If it does not convince the reader of the existence of the 'second replicator', the meme, working together with the gene, it will at least sufficiently explain Blackmore's view. At times, it was impossible for me to put the book down.
Highly readible and informative
If you're exploring an understanding of Memes, what they actually are with regard to idea communication and culture, I would start here - most readible and grounded explanation written...and the development of the Self-plex helps carry the conversation to its next level.