Disinfect Your Mind

A question from the mail:

… how to disinfect subliminals from your mind…

To begin with, that’s what the book is about. And, of course, I cannot repeat the whole book in a short post.

But in the end, there are only three ways, I know of.

To illustrate that, please, consider computer viruses. If your computer got a virus, your options are limited, you can do three things only:

1. Try to clean it yourself.
2. Hire a professional.
3. Buy a commercial software package that will do it for you. 

The same options exist if you want to get rid of patological mind viruses.

First way allows you to do most thorough job. Unfortunately, it also requires you to be an expert in the area, and most people are not experts in computers or human mind. So, that’s a solution for a few, who already mastered the subject.

Second way may seem to be very hard to find, however it does exists. It’s not available commercially (short of psychoterapy, which is not that trustworthy source of such services), but it’s available along with certain jobs. Say, if you join military, police force, or intelligence you will be thoroughly brainwashed to the point when you are guaranteed not to have anything really dangerous in your head. That is, dangerous to your country. The problem with that is that these services are in the interests of the state, not yours, so it’s not exactly what you want. But it’s fairly close, and it’s still very good, because it does the bulk of work of removing junk from your head and plants instead mostly good memes that has a long history of being associated with success. Is it for you? I don’t know. It’s up to you to decide.

And the last, you can get “commercial package”. Again, it’s not something that you order from a web site and read, but amazingly, there is something very similar to that. Namely, most of time-tested moderate religions have to push very good disinfection package on their followers in order to make them survive, prosper and multiply. It’s very important to join time-tested and moderate church (no matter what denomination it is), because any religion is a system of memoviruses. New memoviruses are damaging, but those, which survived for a while, often become symbiots, actually helping their carriers and preserving them form damaging kinds of memoviruses. I wrote more about why it happens in the book, but essentially time-tested moderate churches spread symbiotic memoviruses that act in your mind very much like Norton Antivirus on your computer. And like with Norton AnitiVirus, you have to pay a “subscription fee” - church fees, donations, etc. But it’s well worth it.

And, of course, all these ways will not clean you up 100%. Both services and packages will hep you to get rid of dangerous ones, but first, they will plant some of their own, and, second, when you serve just as a carrier, they cannot prevent that usually.

Say, Bush or Obama? Even assuming one of the sides is right, you opinion won’t directly affect your current well-being. You are just a carrier, infecting other people with your opinion. Church or miltary does not have a say in the way you do in terms of the elections. How to clean up if you’ve got a wrong one? You cannot do that second or third way, because nobody can do that for you. You have to think rationally and decide for yourself. Generally, rational thinking (as opposed to emotional) is the way to go. You cannot beat that.

A question from the mail:

I thought your article on memetic vs. cognitive skills and the exercises very interesting. Im already fairly skilled at basic English grammar skills but was wondering if you have any good ideas on how to read faster and also how to disinfect subliminals from your mind. Thank You for reading this!

Speaking of speed reading, there are already very good techniques out there, just use them, and you should get results pretty quickly.

As to using memetics to speed up the process, like in a case of improving memory, unfortunately I don’t know verified methods to do so. I suspect that those comon methods will likely to give you the best results anyway.

From unverified ideas, you can try to link your success in improving speed reading to some deep positive anchors in your mind. That would certainly speed up the process.  However, which anchors to use and avoiding side effects may be a challenge.  Say, a lot of people can reward themselves with food, but it’s important not to overdo that, otherwise your next self-improvement project maybe a diet.

Also, measuring success in a way, subconsious mind can get it, is tricky. If you read 20 pages in 5 minutes, is it success or not? Depends on if you can recall anything from those 20 pages, right?

As long as your keep fidelity to reality, you can try these techniques and may have success (as getting results faster than with standard techniques alone), but the temptation to cut corners will be high. And once you do that, it will be useless.

Actually, I can imagine somebody developing proper techniques for speed reading based on these memetic accelerators, verifying them in their practice, getting with those which work best, but so far I don’t know of anybody doing that. Could be a business idea for you?

As to submilimnals, it’s a very big question. Let me get to it in another post.