To end this year of BioEssays, I'm going to pick up a thread started by me at the beginning of 2019^[1], continued by Sven Kurbel^[2] later in that year, and then brought into stark relief like never before in 2020 by the COVID (SARS‐CoV‐2) pandemic. It's about time that we started making “memetics” (the study of development, transmission, and persistence of ideas – or “memes” – in society) a formal scientific endeavour with hypothesis‐driven, need‐driven, and applied research and development.

After all, one of the largest memetic “cons” in history drew its substance from a claimed scientific approach to studying human thought and drives: none other than Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. This “con” – which does not refer to Freud's research itself, but rather techniques of modern advertising – is arguably responsible for a large part of the present climate crisis and environmental degradation in general: it drives human society towards even greater consumption and futile cycling of resources than would otherwise be the case. Freud himself was not the architect of the con; rather his nephew, Edward Bernays. “Con” is also an appropriate term for it, because it had a lot to do with confidence – in the sense of variously undermining or strengthening confidence in members of the general public who were, from that point on, increasingly seen by industry and government as mere consumers.

Bernays was very interested in his uncle's ideas about human drives, and as an Austrian‐American public relations expert, he regularly flitted between New England and Vienna, where he visited Uncle Sigmund. What he brought back with him to the US each time was ever more insight into what drives people, makes them feel good, and what makes them insecure or frightened. And the very interested ears that were open to this “informant” were those of corporations and politicians. Bernays was active in a great many arenas where forming public opinion was important, but let us concentrate on just one: consumer opinion.

One of Bernays' most celebrated “successes” (and he probably regretted it) was working with American Tobacco Corporation to encourage more women to take up smoking by using a feminist, liberating advertising strategy where cigarettes were known as “Torches of Freedom.” Another arguable “con” was his advertising campaign for a certain toiletry manufacturer that persuaded consumers that one of their soaps had medically superior properties compared with the competition. Bernays can fairly be described as the father of the advertising of desire and insecurity as opposed to the advertising of need. During the time he advised corporations, their advertising changed from relatively drab “If you need a…” kind of thing to “Have you ever worried about…” accompanied by very cleverly suggestive imagery.

One of the most insidious “worries” that Bernays managed to stimulate to further growth in American consumers – at least those with some money – was the fear of being inferior to one's neighbor: an already deep‐rooted societal angst, if not yet so explicitly articulated as Bernays would do. Indeed, as a frightening corollary to the “best form of defence is attack” maxim, what better way to respond to this fear than actively making oneself superior to one's neighbour and be done with it? Someone else would, sooner or later, surely have hit on the same ideas as Edward Louis Bernays, but when your neighbour goes out and buys the latest expensive SUV, you can bet your bottom dollar that “Bernaysian” advertising is at the root of this purchasing decision. The concepts driving advertising of desire, greed, power (one SUV maker calls upon consumers to “own the city”) and fear (SUVs are often marketed as safer alternatives to normal cars in the event of a serious accident) are no more and no less than highly successful memes: concepts and ways of thinking that survive in human society because their propagators (in the earlier example, car manufacturers) survive and prosper by using them (“expressing” them): basically, it's “social fitness” as opposed to biological fitness. All the same, it shares many features of strict biological evolution via selection of traits; indeed, like a successful virus, it rapidly spread to other developed economies across the world.

And so to COVID and the climate crisis as examples of the pressing need for us to understand memes better and protect society – and the Earth – from the consequences of the trivial and downright damaging ones. Firstly, COVID is a splendid example of the power of memes over behaviour: we might well be the only species that can adapt to pathogens within a generation via concerted behavioural changes. If we manage to keep COVID under control, it will prove a masterpiece of positive social engineering not only against a virus, but also against climate change: the results of behavioural changes implicit in a successful response to COVID are a reduction in consumption of many (possibly most) kinds. We are already seeing it quite starkly: reduced mobility (flying and car journeys) have contributed strongly to a reduction in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions of between 8.8%^[3] (over the first half of 2020 compared with a similar period in 2019) and 17%^[4] (by early April 2020 compared with early April 2019). It is very likely that reduced energy consumption associated with not having to maintain office buildings and production facilities at full working capacity have also contributed (people who can work from home do). If continued, it may well go a long way towards slowing and possibly even halting global warming and environmental degradation – possibly as far as stopping the global average temperature rise at 1.6°C before 2030.

But in time, COVID will go away, and then we will have a problem. As others have remarked, we should not try to “get back to normal” – that “normal” being Bernaysian normal; rather I believe that we should look carefully at the meme‐driven behaviours that we are developing and ask ourselves two questions: one motivated indeed by fear, but the other motivated by need: can we continue to support a global economy based on hyperconnectivity and the ever‐increasing production capacity of global industry that requires such hyperconnectivity – thereby also making ourselves vulnerable to the next potentially pandemic pathogen? Have we, simply by reducing consumption and travel, become unhappier, and what do we need to be happy anyway? Ironically, I wager that the greatest unhappiness resulting from the COVID pandemic is that caused by reduced socialization with friends and family at a local level. Local effects – for example, stores closing, businesses running on skeleton staff – have caused serious local problems that lead to existential crises for some. We're talking about people whom we know – people in our close society of personal friends and acquaintances – and all of this brought about by a global machine that cares not about local communities.

Bernays surely contributed in some measure to getting us even further into the futile cycle of consumption that feeds our global economies via his evidently successful art of social engineering. We therefore need to understand the way in which he created memes, the reasons for their success, and how we can “immunize” ourselves against globally detrimental ones and culture self‐sustaining beneficial ones. Who will be the architects, or the “vaccination‐giving doctors” and “culture‐incubating researchers” of this program? Some might think that Freud is old hat: his theory of psychoanalysis has, after all, been run down or outrightly discredited by so many psychologists and philosophers. However, he had insights into human behaviour that provided the seeds for what is arguably the most striking change in consumer behaviour in human history. Humanity is in desperate need of new tools to face serious challenges, and I'm not talking about mere “technological fixes”, rather it is the behaviour of large sectors of humanity that must change: the drives that make us do things; that often kid us into thinking they've made us happy. Some might think that it's a pretty desperate notion to go back to Freud for solutions, but desperate situations sometimes call for desperate measures…

今年年底BIOESSAYS的，我打算在2019年初回暖由我启动的线程^{[ 1 ]}，继续斯文Kurbel ^{[ 2 ]}后来在这一年，然后才进入鲜明的浮雕像从来没有到2020年，COVID（SARS‐CoV‐2）大流行。现在该到了我们开始将“模因”（对思想的发展，传播和持久性（或称“模因”-在社会中的研究）进行研究）作为一项由假设驱动，需求驱动和应用研究与开发的正式科学努力的时候了。

毕竟，历史上最大的模因“骗局”之一是从声称的科学方法来研究人类的思想和动力汲取了它的实质：西格蒙德·弗洛伊德（Sigmund Freud）的心理分析就是如此。这种“骗局”不是指弗洛伊德的研究本身，而是指现代广告技术，可以说是造成当前气候危机和环境总体退化的很大一部分：它驱使人类社会走向更大的消费和徒劳的循环资源比其他情况要多。弗洛伊德本人并不是骗子的设计师。而是他的侄子爱德华·伯奈斯。“骗局”也是一个合适的术语，因为它与信心有很大关系-从某种意义上说，这是在一定程度上削弱或增强了对普通民众的信任，

Bernays对叔叔关于人为驱动力的想法非常感兴趣，作为一名奥美公共关系专家，他经常在新英格兰和维也纳之间往返，并拜访了Sigmund叔叔。每次带回美国，他所获得的见解都更加深刻地了解了驱使人们，使他们感觉良好以及使他们变得不安全或受到惊吓的原因。对这种“信息提供者”开放的非常感兴趣的耳朵是公司和政客的耳朵。Bernays在很多领域都很活跃，在这些领域中，形成舆论很重要，但让我们仅关注一个方面：消费者意见。

伯纳斯最著名的“成功”之一（他可能会后悔）正在与美国烟草公司合作，通过采用一种女权主义，解放性的广告策略来鼓励更多女性吸烟，其中香烟被称为“自由火炬”。另一个可争论的“骗局”是他为某化妆品制造商开展的广告活动，说服消费者说他们的一种肥皂比竞争对手具有医学上的优越性能。Bernays可以恰当地描述为欲望和不安全感的广告之父，而不是需求广告之父。在他为公司提供咨询服务期间，他们的广告从相对单调的“如果您需要……”变成了“您曾经担心……”，伴随着非常巧妙的暗示性图像。

Bernays设法刺激美国消费者（至少是有钱的消费者）进一步增长的最阴险的“担忧”之一是担心自己不如邻居：已经根深蒂固的社会焦虑，即使现在还没有这么明确就像伯纳伊斯所说的那样。的确，作为“最佳防御方式就是攻击”格言的一个令人恐惧的推论，有什么比积极地使自己凌驾于邻居之上并能做到的更好的应对这种恐惧的方法呢？肯定会有其他人迟早会想到与爱德华·路易斯·伯奈斯（Edward Louis Bernays）相同的想法，但是当您的邻居出去并购买最新的昂贵SUV时，您可以打赌自己的底价是“伯纳西式”广告是这一点的根源。购买决定。推动欲望，贪婪，动力（一家SUV制造商呼吁消费者“拥有城市”）和恐惧（在发生严重事故时SUV通常作为普通汽车的更安全替代品在市场上销售）的概念已不多且成功：之所以能够在人类社会中生存是因为他们的传播者（在较早的示例中是汽车制造商）通过使用它们（“表达”它们）得以生存和繁荣：基本上，这是“社会适应性”而不是生物适应性。尽管如此，它通过选择性状具有严格的生物学进化的许多特征。实际上，它像一种成功的病毒一样，迅速传播到世界其他发达经济体。在人类社会中得以生存的概念和思维方式，是因为其传播者（在较早的示例中是汽车制造商）通过使用它们（“表达”它们）得以生存和繁荣：基本上，这是“社会适应性”而不是生物适应性。尽管如此，它通过选择性状具有严格的生物学进化的许多特征。实际上，它像一种成功的病毒一样，迅速传播到世界其他发达经济体。在人类社会中得以生存的概念和思维方式，是因为其传播者（在较早的示例中是汽车制造商）通过使用它们（“表达”它们）得以生存和繁荣：基本上，这是“社会适应性”而不是生物适应性。尽管如此，它通过选择性状具有严格的生物学进化的许多特征。实际上，它像一种成功的病毒一样，迅速传播到世界其他发达经济体。

因此，以COVID和气候危机为例，迫切需要我们更好地了解模因，并保护社会（乃至地球）免受琐碎和彻头彻尾的破坏性后果的影响。首先，COVID是模因对行为的力量的一个出色例子：我们很可能是唯一能够通过一致的行为变化适应一代人中病原体的物种。如果我们设法控制COVID，它将证明是积极的社会工程学杰作，不仅针对病毒，而且还针对气候变化：成功应对COVID所隐含的行为改变的结果是减少了许多消费（可能最多）。我们已经非常清楚地看到了这一点：行动不便（飞行和乘车旅行）减少了人为产生的二氧化碳₂排放量介于8.8％^{[ 3 ]}（在2020年上半年与2019年同期相比）和17％^{[ 4 ]}（在2020年4月上旬与2019年4月初相比）之间。不必维护办公大楼和生产设施就可以满负荷工作所带来的能耗降低也很有可能做出了贡献（可以在家工作的人可以这样做）。如果继续下去，它可能会大大减缓甚至阻止全球变暖和环境恶化，甚至可能在2030年之前将全球平均温度上升控制在1.6°C。

但是随着时间的流逝，COVID将消失，然后我们将遇到问题。正如其他人所说，我们不应该试图“恢复正常” –“正常”是伯纳西主义的正常；而是我相信我们应该仔细观察我们正在发展的模因驱动行为，并向自己提出两个问题：一个确实是出于恐惧动机，而另一个则是出于需求动机：我们能否继续支持基于超连通性和全球化的全球经济？需要这种高度连通性的全球工业生产能力是否在不断提高，从而使我们自己容易受到下一个潜在的大流行病原体的侵害？我们是否仅仅通过减少消费和旅行而变得不快乐，无论如何我们要幸福吗？讽刺地，地方一级。局部影响，例如，商店关门，由骨干人员经营的企业等，已经引起了严重的局部问题，导致一些人面临生存危机。我们正在谈论的是我们认识的人–亲密朋友和熟人的紧密社会中的人们–所有这些都是由不关心本地社区的全球机器带来的。

Bernays无疑在某种程度上做出了贡献，通过他显然很成功的社会工程艺术，使我们进一步进入了无用的消费循环，这种消费为全球经济注入了活力。因此，我们需要了解他创造模因的方式，模因成功的原因，以及我们如何“免疫”自身免受全球有害的模因和文化自我维持的有益模因。谁将是该计划的建筑师，或“疫苗接种医生”和“培养文化的研究人员”？有人可能会认为弗洛伊德是一顶旧帽子：毕竟，他的心理分析理论已经被许多心理学家和哲学家推翻或彻底抹黑​​。但是，他对人类行为有深刻的见识，为人类历史上消费者行为中最引人注目的变化提供了种子。人类迫切需要新的工具来面对严峻的挑战，我并不是在谈论纯粹的“技术修复”，而是必须改变的是人类大部门的行为：促使我们做事的动力；经常让我们以为他们让我们感到高兴。有些人可能认为回到弗洛伊德寻求解决方案是一个非常绝望的想法，但绝望的情况有时需要采取绝望的措施……