Memetic Engineering - Applied Memetic Engineering

Applied Memetic Engineering

Memetic engineering as a social science lends examples of itself in multiple areas and disciplines. It is currently being examined and researched by the US military as a means to counter insurgency and combat terrorism as explained below in From the Clash to the Confluence of Civilizations by Thomas P.M. Barnett an American military geostrategist, the Pentagon and Richard J. Pech's Inhibiting Imitative Terrorism Through Memetic Engineering.

Other examples of applied memetic engineering are present but not exclusive to the marketing and advertising industries. The question is whether these individuals can be truly considered memetic engineers. Marketing and advertising professionals create memes on an ongoing basis however, this alone doesn't necessarily qualify them as being memetic engineers. Few if any actually fall into this category. This is possibly due to a lack of understanding of the various memes that have taken root in their target audience minds. According to the definition, industrial designers, music artist, athletes and other entertainers would more likely better serve this definition. This is because of their ability to create products, phrases and ideas that disseminate the population triggering a response within the brain causing a cultural phenomena.

Game theory provides an empirical means of advancing the science of memetics. Memetic game theory, attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations; where an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others, based on past experiences, emotional behavior and learned behavior. It also offers a scientific approach to analyzing social interactions.

According to G.Burchett and his research from G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, the concept of currency or money is considered a meme developed by early bankers. Here we have an example of a meme that was created to better serve the economic foundation of a society. This is a positive example of memetic engineering. However once the meme of legal tender was created it forced individuals to accept and use the currency under the guise of law. Once an individual is forced to accept currency by the government, essentially the government now controls the means of that individual's survival. In the case of the United States legal tender; the economic control of the citizens was placed in hands of the Federal Reserve which is a private entity.