The Meme Machine

MEMES OF THE NEW AGE 185
estimates (as low as 10 per cent) have been obtained, and it is claimed that the
boom may now be over in Britain (Ernst 1998). Nevertheless, big money is at
stake.
Some therapies may be effective in appropriate circumstances, such as
relaxation, hypnosis, aromatherapy (massage with scented oils), and some kinds
of herbal medicine. Others may work but not for the reasons usually given. For
example, acupuncture works as an analgesic but the effect is now explained in
terms of endorphins (the brain’s own morphine-like chemicals) rather than the
traditional Chinese theory of ch’i energy (Ulett 1992; Ulett et al. 1998).
Chiropractic includes effective manipulations, although its traditional theory is
false and it can sometimes be dangerous, and many other therapies use mixtures
of the effective and ineffective. However, there are many therapies that are
widely used and known to be completely useless or even harmful to health
(Barrett and Jarvis 1993).
From a memetic point of view we need not ask why people are so stupid as to
pay good money for demonstrably useless treatments, nor how intelligent people
can be fooled by charlatans so easily, nor even how supposedly caring therapists
can be so wicked as to promote false beliefs in vulnerable patients. Instead, we
should look at what meme tricks these therapies are using. Then we can
understand why they spread so quickly and get such a powerful grip on our
society, when far more effective therapies do not. We do not even need to ask
precisely which treatments work and which do not (though we should certainly
do so when we are ill!). The validity of therapeutic claims is only one criterion
for the success of memes, and there are many others. Once we start thinking this
way the familiar signs are easy to see.
Alternative medicine preys on fear; fear of pain, fear of disease, and fear of
death. It uses a natural human experience that (for most people) has no
satisfactory explanation; that is, the experience of going to a therapist and
feeling better. There is no doubt that people do generally feel better after a visit
to an acupuncturist, herbalist, chiropractor, or homeopath. They have usually
invested quite a lot of money in the visit or in the ‘treatments’ prescribed, and
this is particularly effective in a country like England where conventional
medicine is free on the National Health Service. ‘Cognitive dissonance’ theory
explains why this is important – anyone who pays fifty pounds for a treatment
that does not work will suffer the dissonance of concluding that they must be
daft or have wasted good money – so an obvious way to reduce the dissonance is
to convince yourself that you feel better (and note that the bigger the fee the
better you must feel). The ‘illusion of control’ reduces stress, and hence some