BEWARE OF THE MURDER MEME!

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©2011 Nahu Lanham

Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An
idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost
impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in
there somewhere. Inception

There is madness afoot in the land. People are literally running amuck.
Their behavior reminds me of the movie Night of the Living Dead. It is
as though people are being infected with a deadly, mind virus that
drives them into horrible acts of violence against each other. When it
strikes, people suddenly become soulless, degenerate creatures without
empathy or self-control. This mind virus seems to feed off of the worst
kinds of emotional extremes that end in despicable acts of violence.

I believe this virtually invisible mental microbe is a violence meme every

bit as infectious and overpowering as any physical virus. This
meme/virus is infecting the whole world today, bringing about a
violence pandemic. To survive, it needs fear, hate, stress, so it shows up
where extreme emotions predominate. When it manifests one gets a wild
urge to inflict pain just to see someone else hurt. Evidence of its
presence historically can be found in the worst personal and social
qualities of perverted leaders, tyrants, bullies and demented criminals.
It survives in some of the most inconspicuous, subtle and even comedic
productions like ABC’s television show Wipe-Out, where audiences
gather to see other people thrown about, perhaps even permanently
maimed for life.

It hides in the sick emotions generated by thrill sports like car races
where people enjoy the excitements of wrecks. This negative viral
energy is nourished by the nation’s lust for highly flammable emotional
confrontations generated by gladiator blood sports - ground and pound
events heighten its strength. It surfaces in the perverted zeal to squeeze
a trigger to feel the power over some innocent creature or unsuspecting
individual. Clearly, this insidious meme has highly specialized receptors
for absorbing toxic emotional chemicals from a frenzied limbic system.
Emotionally tinged mass gatherings spread the virus. It is especially

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Dawkins, Richard. 1989. The Selfish Gene. The term ‘meme’ refers to the behavioral equivalent of
a gene. Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas or cultural
phenomena.
attracted to highly agitating, hysterical speeches where collective
paranoia gives it power. It can even surface during fires, funerals; car
accidents, situations where people gather to the sound of sirens and
screaming. Coincidentally, the virus drives producers to make movies
that draw imbalanced people to view vicious, murderous acts when the
real thing isn’t available. The meme does this specifically to feed off the
intensity of the horror in each well orchestrated scene. Unilaterally, it is
manufacturing a whole army of hosts which it can drive at will.

The violence meme is infecting the world. Socially, it feeds off fear,
hatred, bigotry, religious intolerance, poverty and, yes, even loneliness.
Terrorism is the passion fruit of its evil spawn. The murder meme
particularly haunts the U.S., where nearly everyday we witness the
horror of gang violence, random shootings and sudden, spontaneous
massacres. It spares no one, infecting the young and old alike. Its
insidious presence creeps into urban and suburban worlds to infect the
innocent. We get sightings of this invisible destroyer of sanity when our
children, fathers or mothers suddenly flip out, go berserk, gunning
down their loved ones or fellow students by the dozens before executing
themselves. Its infectious destructive swath sweeps back and forth
across the nation in cycles of insane, often meaningless wholesale
slaughter. Just recently, we saw the effects of this vicious meme
materialize outside a mall in Arizona in the attempted assassination of
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the senseless murder of five other people
including a federal judge. No one is safe and no one is spared.

It is the dawn of the night of the living dread meme – the most infectious
and destructive killing virus ever known to humanity. The
aforementioned events are only a few in a long line of killings. I have
personally been keeping up with the appearance of this highly toxic,
creature of the mind for many years. I know that it feeds off the
visceral, high anxiety of our times. Perhaps it was evoked by the
particularly negative, stressful energy of our present political and
economic issues, but vestiges of it were here since time memorial.
However, there are those in our society who are its carriers, those who,
perhaps unintentionally, cultivate our minds for the inoculation of its
spore. They nourish the meme’s longevity by encouraging us to engage
in fighting, revenge or when they teach us to sabotage each other and
our government.
As a professional sensitive I have tuned into its affects upon an
individual. For instance, it invades the mind of a person during an
emotional issue such as anger, fear or depression. When this occurs, the
individual might feel an overwhelming, uncontrollable urge to do
something unusually violent. At first, such a person may quickly become
highly nervous, somewhat disoriented or experience vertigo. Usually
these symptoms follow the initial phase of the inoculation. The meme
thrives on any imbalance or weakness in one’s character such as
jealousy, low self-esteem, sexual hang ups, suspicions, paranoia, etc.
When it is well entrenched within a person’s mind, it radically distorts
one’s perceptions and alters the ability to reason. Thus, these victims
will often tend to overact over minor agitations and behave aggressively.

There are those among us who are semi-conscious of the presence of this
toxic invader and have created programs to counter and hopefully
eliminate its presence. This is why there are innumerous spiritual
teachers evolving in our midst, those who are trying to engender a
modicum of reservation, loving tolerance and a peaceful state of mind.
Gentler methods of social communication are the only antidotes that
can offset these invasive mind microbes.

The other alternative - a probable end-game: its demise may come after
it has parasitically sucked the life energy from humans and we have
destroyed each other. Then it will automatically decode and dissolve
going back into that negative field from whence it came.