Cliology

1.3. Cliotheoretical underpinnings

eta 2021-04-23

What does cliotheoretical mean?

Review of the intentions of cliology; The practice of cliology – as engineering

The intention of cliology is not that of a pure science of culture and society, but rather of applied science and beyond to engineering and technology. Its mission is to address real-world problems that stem from cultural maladaptations, replacing them with eusocial strains that benefit humanity and beyond. However, any applied science relies on a solid scientific platform and that platform needs a sound theoretical base. As with much of the proposed jargon in cliology, this involves prefixing “clio” onto some stem; cliotheoretical, as you might expect implies the theory of cliology. This is a mix of engineering principles: the theory of how to implement practical solutions based on more abstract thinking. Software engineering is a good candidate for inclusion as, after all, culture is a soft-system at its heart. Cliotheoretical, however, includes that abstract thinking that is to be tech-enabled. It consists of all the foundational theories that go into understanding culture and society, and this eclectic understanding is somewhat extended from just social study. It is an understanding that ranges from pure mathematics to sacred magic.

The application of science finds uses for those things we have a pure scientific apprehension of. Science might be broad, but it is not the whole of knowledge. Much of knowledge is about that which science has not found a way of tackling yet, but just because we have not reached an established discipline with well-trodden hard methodologies and prestigious journals and societies, it does not mean that that knowledge is not of value. There are things that happen or exist that we just do yet not fully understand, or might never understand. A solid scientific understanding has not stopped humans from taking advantage of such things, nor has pure understanding lead to their exploitation. It is that science, when applied, allows us to take better advantage.

Cliology defaults to mechanism as it upholds a natural evolutionary foundation for culture and society, and as such seeks out science to allow for that better advantage. But cliology is about practice and will draw upon phenomena whether the science is there or not. In lieu of science, and here that is meant to mean having evidence alongside a falsifiable test, we generate hypotheses for what we do not fully understand in accordance with our worldviews, whether they be mechanistic or meta-physical. This is the distinction between experience and how it is explained; explanandum and explanans. In relation to the cliotheoretical and the range of what it is prepared to draw upon, a note on “magical thinking” would be useful. The idea of “magic” is necessarily ambiguous as it is defined to suit whatever the magician wills; accordingly, “magic” can be defined to suit the needs of cliology. This definition is in the vein of Clarke’s laws 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gaslamp_fantasy_gg.png

That some mechanism seems to work like magic, in this sense, simply means that we know something does work, but we just don’t know or why. Clarke third law can be greeted with one of its variants, the trope: Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science! The distinction between the Greek philosophical terms techne (doing) and episteme (knowing) might be informative. Magic the art of getting results rather than knowing why. Perhaps “magic” is the advanced technology of individual and social-psychology of which we are only beginning to get a scientific grasp of. After all, healing has been used for thousands of years, and long before it started to gain scientific recognition as psychotherapy. Their actual practices are uncannily similar. Psychotherapists (or healers), and moreover, their clients, are less interested in a barrage of academic peer-reviewed literature; they just want the results.

Experience and how it is explained relates to the techne/episteme distinction and also to the difference between the academic and the engineer. Sure, modern engineers tend to subscribe to the philosophy naturalistic mechanism, although making assumptions is more in line with dogma and funding than actual empirical science. As practitioners who focus on results, then those results, as with healing, might as well be the effect of magic; the theoretical explanation is of lesser importance providing something works (again though, a better understanding tends to lead to better results). The practice of engineering then, in striving for results, should not be precluded from using anything that is beneficial just because the advanced techne seems to work like magic, yet has not been sufficiently backed by establishment science. Invariably, somebody, somewhere, will be working on that science.

As noted, cliology upholds the philosophy of mechanism or organicism, but this could easily degenerate into a kind of dogma if pragmatism is not afforded its requisite emphasis. Like modern psychotherapy, in difference to academic psychology, cliology is about what works and what generates benefit, and this is where it diverges from cultural evolutionary theory. If something works, then it deserves consideration; we can worry about how and why later. The notion of “magic” has been chosen as an extreme to illustrate the spectrum from which cliotheory, that which underpins the practice of cliology, is prepared to draw upon. For, instead of rejecting “magic” because it doesn’t fit a dogmatic worldview, solutions to real problems might well draw on what were once seen as “magical” practices, and in subsequently applying a revised understanding, begin to formulate a much needed advanced technology for socio-cultural change.

Cliology is explicitly about practice: the engineering and technology intended to address maladaptive cultural traits. Engineering applies science to garner greater benefit but is not a science in itself. Accusations of pseudo-science, based on the scope of techniques, are unwarranted. Indeed, recasting archaic working in modern parlance would constitute a proto-science, but cliology is not about theory. Rather it exploits any and all promising cliotheroretical ideas to produce engineering models, and this is reflected as a set of frameworks.

While this discussion on cliotheory is meant to provide some reasoning behind cliotechnology, it also provides the inspiration for developing that technology, clears up some assumptions that otherwise may be left hanging, but more importantly, as Poly puts it do we understand the questions. In other words, cliotheory is about raising the questions that are pertinent to the understanding and practice of socio-cultural intervention.

Because cliology is about practical engineering, the tone of this site is decidedly less than scholarly – this discussion on cliotheory is perhaps the closest to academia as it needs to get. Its purpose is to hit pay-dirt quickly without getting side-tracked by deep philosophical questions. It is not about academic theory but rather engineering models. It does not defend against the onslaught of meme-denial – this is left to others such as Tyler who appraises various theories. It does not get entangled in, for example, “what is the fundamental unit of culture, or do memes exist?” Such philosophical questions are somewhat distracting as praxis is about what models work and provide us with benefit rather than what is ontologically true.

 

The cliotheoretical and the clioanalytical

Clioanalysis is about distilling practice from theory. It takes among its sources interdisciplinary literature (a “cliobibliography”) and scoops out anything potentially beneficial, such as ideas about influence and cultural change, or concepts that could be tech-enabled for cliology’s purposes.

Clioanalysis may also be situational and may be called in to resolve a particular problem. This could range from increasing widget sales to averting environmental catastrophe.  As with many analytical tools, clioanalysis would reveal the systems functioning, key factors and interaction, and points for building an intervention approach; its focus would of course be socio-cultural.

Tribute can be paid to systems analysis, and in particular software engineering methodologies, as such are well established and culture can be seen as an expression of a kind of software encoding. While being about soft-systems, the analysis can go from loose informal appraisals to the kind of highly formalised schemas seen in hard methodologies. A set of frameworks provide a mathematically based symbolic notation by which socio-cultural dynamics can be described with precision. These frameworks can be used for representing cliotheory, but also situationally for describing a presenting problem, manipulating the variables to find a solution, formulating a specification and intervention plan, monitoring and managing the project, and for documentation and maintenance. By way of comparison, the frameworks could be seen as kinds of API, while the symbolism might look like VDM or Z. The more formalised methods of cultural systems encoding are most relevant where tech-enabled solutions are to be developed. An aspiration is to be able to represent the entire “cliobibliography” in formalised framework terms.

The groups of ideas on which cliology is based

We could form one hierarchy of study (of course there are other views) as follows:

philosophy > maths > physics > chemistry > biology > psychology > sociology > culture

This arrangement sees reductionism from the higher end of culture down to the lower end of philosophy. Of course, the focus of cliology is upon an applied science of culture. Understanding culture then, in scientific and reductionistic terms, involves some understanding of its supporting topics. Supporting topics of particular importance in this hierarchy are philosophy, maths, biology and psychology. Expressing culture in terms of physics and chemistry, while they are components of the real-world, might constitute the greedy reductionism suggested by Dennett, and so we can leap over them. Sociology, as an academic discipline, can also be overlooked on the basis that it is not traditionally rooted in biological science. On the other hand, culture is an extension of social structures, can be seen, in turn as an extension of biological function – that is, a scientific approach to understanding social systems would be in the vein of Wilson’s Sociobiology. Consequently, for the purposes herein, the psycho-social are clumped together as extensions of evolutionary biology. Similarly, culture, as seen by cultural studies, is omitted, but rather taken from a meme’s eye view.

The cliotheoretical foundations are roughly grouped according to this hierarchy. They are presented here simply as convenient, non-exhaustive, over-lapping ways of lumping the ideas together, and is reflected in the “cliobibliography”. These ideas range from the philosophical to the purely pragmatic:

  • Philosophy and Epistemology
  • Chaos and complexity, network science, maths
  • Evolution and Biology
  • Psychology, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Cultural Evolutionary Psychology
  • Memetics
  • Behavioural Economics
  • Persuasion, influence, propaganda, thought-shaping
  • Logic and argumentation
  • Sales, advertising, marketing, PR, consumer behaviour, negotiation
  • Organisational theory, management science, Business
  • Strategy, Tactics, War
  • Contextual Behavioural Science, Behaviourism
  • Psychotherapy, NLP, TA, Hypnosis etc.
  • Religion, Cults, Magic and Illusion, mindfulness etc.

 

Philosophy and Epistemology

Any subject area pretty much stems from its founding assumptions, and those assumptions are often of a philosophical nature. Cliology’s approach to culture is different from other approaches in that it is intended as an applied science for engineering culture with intent. Hence, there are a number of notable founding assumption drawn from philosophy that needs to be taken into account.

Classical philosophy, provided by the ancient Greeks, provides a deep foundation as much of the mathematical and symbolic modelling (inherent in the cliological frameworks) has its roots there; as does much of the software engineering models that have been adopted and adapted for purpose (eg Object Orientation).

Cliology also borrows from classical philosophy via biology; cliology is essentially seen as the evolved biological trait of culture in the human animal. By way of illustration, biological taxonomy (ie. Linneanism), and consequently inference of cultural Linneanism, are about classification and have much in common with Object Orientation. Cliology then inherits principles such as naturalism, mechanism, or rather organicism, and dysteleology which are features of modern biological science. It is common among biologists, to adopt the more familiar parlance of intention, but with an unspoken caveat that most of the processes are blind mechanisms. It might be said that genes are for things, or that there exists a memes eye view. Such uttereances are as convenient as astronomers using the term “Sun rise”.

Epistemologically, cliology becomes quite complicated. Cliology concerns the management of ideas, yet cliology is, itself, an idea, so a self-referential paradox creeps in. Furthermore, its biological heritage suggests the gene analogue of the meme is its focus. Knowledge, as true, justified belief, is thrown out; the capacity to survive and reproduce is admitted. The meta-meme, that is, that memetics is a meme itself, and the principle that epistememes are memes that serve as the epistemic gatekeepers of other memes, compounds the paradox. At the intersection between evolutionary epistemology, constructionism, and radical constructivism, reality is estranged. But cliology, in its engineering guise, is not the pursuit of what is true or real.

Cultural change is mass change; cliology could easily become meddelling with peoples lives. While engineers prefer to concentrate on their intended outcome rather than philosophy, the philosophical subject of ethics is important to recognise where cliology stands as an ethically agnostic toolset.

Continental and postmodern ideas are not ignored; Derrida and Baudrillard and the like do have relevancy. However, they are somewhat detached from the practical orientation and more emphasis is placed on ideas such as those surrounding the American pragmatism of Pierce, James and Dewey. Accordingly, and as much of maths and computer science origniate from the works of classical scholars, then cliological modelling has been borrowed from the analytical tradition. Tasks such as classification and taxonomy are relyant on symbolic logic and are well suited to Object Orientation as a means of tech-enabled implementation.

Chaos and complexity, network science, maths

systems thinking

math: lambda calculus, predicate calculus and logics, grammars, set-class-category theory, taxonomy, graph theory

computer science, software engineering (OOA). particularly graphs and trees – the science and the tech-enabled

psycho-linguistics: pragmatics in their mathematical form

aim of frameworks and symbolism used in cliological engineering models is highly mathematical

?interpersonal communication; persuasion (ie modes of memetic conveyance)

While cliology can be thought of as dealing with culture, it is very much grounded in natural science. Fundamentally, it rests on systems theory: complex adaptive systems, chaos and complexity.

  • Duke, D. Richard.  Gaming: The Future’s Language
  • Gleick, James. Chaos: The Amazing Science of the Unpredictable
  • Godel Escher Bach
  • O’Connor, Joseph & McDermott, Ian. The Art of Systems Thinking: Essential Skills for Creativity and Problem Solving.
  • Polya, G. How to Solve It
  • Slobodkin, Lawrance B. Simplicity & Complexity in Games of the Intellect
  • Smullyan, Raymond: To Mock a Mockingbird
  • Watts, Duncan, J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

 

Evolution and Biology

At the next level, en route to culture, is evolutionary biology, which is an extension of complex adaptive systems thinking.

Memetics and cliology are premised on cultural evolution, which in turn has ist basis in evolutionary biology

processes: variation  selection retention and their corollary dynamics such as: population ecology, lv cycles, r/K, epidemiology, genetics.

heikelian bridge- where things are borrowed from, considers any and all biological processes for evaluation

sociobiology – leads to the next level

human evolution biologically, leads onto psychological aspects and evolution of culture

  • Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species
  • Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene
  • Dawkins, Richard. River Out Of Eden
  • Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype
  • Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
  • Huxley, Julian & Kettlewell, H. B. D. Charles Darwin and His World
  • Ridley, Matt. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
  • Rose, Hilary & Rose, Steven. Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology.
  • Wilson, David Slone. This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
  • Wilson, E. O. Sociobiology

Psychology, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Cultural Evolutionary Psychology

This is the level of culture, evolution and psychology which examines how culture evolves on top of our biological evolution.

From the evolutionary biology of other social species we can extend our inquiry into the more specific topic of humanity.

What features make us human in difference to other animals. How did we get like this?

The ability to communicate and form culture through that is a key feature. culture, in this sense is seen as a biological extension

This theme covers Psych CE, EP, and CEP areas along with primatology and anthropology type areas

These lead onto more human focussed themes that follow

  • Dunbar, Robin. Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language
  • Hayes, Cecilia. Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
  • Rokeach, Milton. Beliefs Attitudes and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change

Memetics

Memetics can be seen as an extension to the theory of cultural evolutionary psychology that explicitly employs the meme-gene analogue to explain culture.

Core scientific metaphor in developing engineering models of cliology

Attempt to find where memes have been applied

Generally overlooks: dismissive waffle and intellectual cleaverness; intertextual analysis of internet memes type stuff

  • Beck, Don Edward & Cowan, Christopher, C. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change.
  • Brodie, Richard. Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme
  • Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine
  • Lasn, Kalle. Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics.
  • Lynch, Aaron. Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society.
  • Mackay, Charles. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
  • Minshall, Britt. The Book of Meme Law: Understand the Hidden Forces that Control Human Existence.
  • Price, If. & Shaw, Ray. Shifting the Patterns.
  • Wilson, Edward. & Unruh, Wes. The Art of Memetics
  • Zarella, Dan. Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness

Behavioural Economics

Cliology is theoretically based in cultural evolutionary psychology, but very much aligns with the practical goals of behavioural economics.

BE – not explicitly memetic, but overlaps and is highly psychological; looks at behaviour especially irrationality/cog bias;

not shy of prescription – but with Libitarian paternalism.

 

  • Ayres, Ian. Super crunchers
  • Barabasi, A. L. The Formula: the science behind why people succeed or fail
  • Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
  • Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow
  • Thaler & Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happyness

Persuasion, influence, propaganda, thought-shaping

Meme’s eye view: persuasion to accept, variation of some part, action itself, action of spreading.

The practical implications of cliology, as aligned with behavioural economics, is that of shaping culture through promoting changes in mass actions and thoughts.

Memes are the vehicle for propagating methods of persuasion.

logos, ethos, pathos

Persuasion and influence factors

Propaganda and mass persuation (PR etc.)

Social impact and intent

  • Bernays, Edward. Propaganda
  • Cialdini, Robert, B. Influence: Science and Practice.
  • Ellul, Jaques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
  • Reucek, Joseph, S. Social Control.

Logic and argumentation

One component of persuasion is that of reasoning and logic (logos, ethos, pathos)

Theories of argumentation are built into methods of constructing memes in an effort to propagate mass behavioural change. ie logic insofar as it leads to action

Pure logic and reasoning

Argumentation and rhetoric

Post-truth and fake news; mass epistemology

Jurispurdence

contract and contract: offer and acceptance

 

  • Heinrichs, Jay
  • Kuhn, Thomas, S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
  • Pirie, Marsden. How To Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic.
  • Ramage, John, D. et. al. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric With Readings.
  • Schopenhauer, Arthur The Art of Always Being Right: Thirty-Eight Ways to Win When You Are Defeated.
  • Shermer, Michael. The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense
  • Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Wierd Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time.
  • Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument

Sales, advertising, marketing, PR, consumer behaviour, negotiation

A clear example of how memetic persuasion is applied goes by less scientifically based but more commonly named commercial activity associated with selling things which I have termed MAPPS: marketing, advertising, publicity, public relations and sales. Other aspects might be those surrounding media and things like negotiation.

Such areas are practical applications of influence, and while not crouched in mathematic symbolism nor psychological terminology, do offer fields by which to formulate more rigorous models. For example the cultural networks PR councils instinctively understand, can be modelled through network science, and therefore simulated in software (eg MENDEL).

  • Brown, Rob How to Build Your Reputation
  • Burt, Tim. Dark Art: The Changing Face of Public Relations
  • Davies, Nick. Flat Earth News
  • Etherington, Bob.  Selling Skills for Complete Amateurs
  • Ewen, Stuart. PR! A Social History of Spin.
  • Kennedy, Gavin. The New Negotiating Edge: The Behavioural Approach for Results and Relationships
  • Linstrom, Martin. Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong
  • Lindstrom, Martin. Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.
  • Lovell, Mark. & Potter, Jack. Assessing the Effectiveness of Advertising.
  • McConnell, Ben &Huba, Jackie. Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer SalesForce.
  • Moore. Geoffrey, A. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Product to Mainstream Customers.
  • Poundstone, William. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)
  • Roman, Kenneth. & Maas, Jane. How to Advertise: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why.
  • Rampton, S. & Strauber, John. Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future.
  • Rampton, S. & Strauber, John. Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq.
  • Silverman, George. The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth.
  • Stark, Peter, B & Flaherty, Jane. The Only Negotiating Guide You’ll Ever Need
  • Strauber, John. & Rampton, S. Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
  • Trout, Jack. Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition.
  • Underhill, Paco. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.
  • Woods, Walter, A. Consumer Behaviour.

Organisational theory, management science, Business

sales etc. are allied to practitioners – businesses etc interface with and need to influence culture

business as systems – the brain

Routines and competences are the backbones of organisations ranging from the rituals of tribal groups to the complexities of governmental departments, international NGOs and global corporations.

Memetics can be used to decipher the “DNA” of organisations, and cliology can be applied to organisational development.

Organisational culture

Organisational development

  • Beer, Stafford. Management Science
  • Burrell, Gibson. Pandemonium: Towards a Retro-Organisational Theory
  • Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisations.
  • Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation.
  • Trompenaars, Fons & Hampden-Turner, Charles. Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business

Strategy, Tactics, War

Memes are implicated in conflict and competition as such emerge from a clash of ideas.

Memes, like organisms, are survival machines and adopt various strategems in their interaction with other memes.

states, business war metaphors (parallels)

  • Ohmae, Kenichi. The Mind of the Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business
  • Tung, Douglas, S. & Tung, Kenneth. More Than 36 Strategems
  • Von Clausewitz, Carl von. On War

Contextual Behavioural Science, Behaviourism

Culture is an extension of human behaviour. One scientific approach to understanding human behaviour, and behaviour generally, is behaviourism. An updated approach to behaviourism is contextual behavioural science (CBS). CBS looks at individual psychology, but also at groups; it also leads to practical applications such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Prosocial, which operates at the group level.

Of course, individual and group behaviour can be investigated without meme theory, but memetics has, to some extent, been integrated by this reboot of behaviourism.

Contextual behavioural science is informative for cliology and contributes much to the cliological frameworks.

  • Biglan, Anthony. Changing Cultural Practices: A Contextualist Framework for Intervention Research
  • Chomsky’s reply
  • Skinner, B. F. About Behaviourism.
  • Skinner, B. F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity
  • Wann, T. W. (Ed.) Behaviourism and Phenomenology: Contrasting Bases for Modern Psychology.

Psychotherapy, NLP, TA, Hypnosis etc.

Methods of psychotherapy and change emerge from the underlying descriptive sciences of psychology.

Behavioural coding, persuasion, and influence employ models for intentional and practical purposes; whether for therapy, commerce or other needs for changing mindsets and culture.

Cliology’s engineering orientation, as a framework and toolkit for changing cultural practice, draws heavily from the array of techniques used in effective communication.

range of therapies

hypnosis as a communication tool (for memes also)

NLP as a markup language

  • Alman, Brian, M. & Lambrou, Peter. Self-Hypnosis: The Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change
  • Ambrose & Newbold: A Handbook of Medical Hypnosis.
  • Andreas, Connirae. & Andreas, Steve. Heart of the Mind: Engaging Your Inner Power to Change.
  • Andreas, Steve. & Andreas, Connirae. Change Your Mind and Keep the Change
  • Bandler, Richard. & Grinder, John. Frogs into Princes: Neuro-Linguistic Programming
  • Bandler, Richard. & Grinder, John. Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning.
  • Bandler, Richard. & Grinder, John. The Structure of Magic: Volume 1
  • Bandler, Richard. & Grinder, John. Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 1
  • Bandler, Richard. User Your Brain for a Change
  • Bandler, Richard. & MacDonald, Will. An Insider’s Guide to Sub-Modalities
  • Battino, Rubin. & South, L. Thomas. Ericsonian Approaches: A Comprehensive Manual.
  • Berne, Eric. Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships.
  • Berne, Eric. What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
  • Brodie, Richard. Getting Past OK: A Straightforward Guide to Having a Fantastic Life
  • Chong, Dennis, K. & Smith-Chong, Jennifer, K. Don’t Ask Why: A Book About the Structure of Blame, Bad Communication and Miscommunication.
  • Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
  • Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self
  • Cooke, C. E. & Van Vogt, A. E. Hypnotism Handbook.
  • Dilts, Robert. Changing Belief Systems with NLP
  • Farrelly, Frank. & Brandsma, Jeff. Provocative Therapy.
  • Grinder, John., DeLozier, Judith., & Bandler, Richard. Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 2
  • Grinder, John. & Bandler, Richard. Trans-formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis.
  • Grinder, John. & Bandler, Richard. The Structure of Magic: Volume 2
  • Hall, L. Michael. Mind Lines: Lines for Changing Minds.
  • Hall, L. Michael. The Sourcebook of Magic: A comprehensive Guide to the Technology of NLP.
  • Hayley, Jay. Uncommon Therapy: The Psychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson. MD.
  • Lankton, Steve. Practical Magic: A Translation of Basic Neuro-Linguistic Programming into Clinical Psychotherapy.
  • Milton H. Erickson. Hypnotic Alteration of Sensory, Perceptual and Psychophysiological Processes.
  • Norem, Julie, K. The Positive Power of Negative Thinking.
  • O’Connor, Joseph. & Seymour, John. Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People.
  • Robbins, Anthony. Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny.
  • Rose Charvet, Shelle. Words That Change Minds: Mastering the Language of Influence.
  • Stewart, Ian. & Joines, Vann. TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis.
  • Seligman, Martin, E. Learned Optimism: How to Change your Mind and Your Life.
  • Seligman, E. P. Martin. Authentic Happiness.
  • Watzlawick, Paul. Muchhausen’s Pigtial: or Psychotherapy & “Reality”.
  • Watzlawick, Paul., Weakland, John. & Fisch, Richard. Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution
  • Watzlawick, Paul., Beavin Bavelas, Janet., & Jackson, D. Don. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes.
  • Watzlawick, Paul. (Ed.) The Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? (Contributions to Constructivism)
  • Wolinsky, Stephen. Trances People Live: Healing Approaches in Quantum Psychology.

Religion, Cults, Magic and Illusion, mindfulness etc.

Religion, in the widest sense, provides cases of how memes that are not scientifically verifiableproliferate.

  • Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society.

Some of the principles are maladaptive: certain cults, restriction on thought and science denial. blinkers.

  • Hassan, Stephen. Combatting Cult Mind Control
  • Singer, Margaret Thaler. Cults In Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in our Everyday Lives.

Many are beneficial (albeit with some metaphysical explanandum), most are benign. Pastoral care, forgiveness etc.

Cliology looks to the dynamics of their spread to learn how to employ those mechanisms within designer memes.

  • Warner, Graham. The Evangelism Handbook: Gaining the World Without Losing Your Soul
  • Howe, Mark. Open Air Evangelism: A Practical Handbook

Memes use illusion, create illusion are an illusion, epistememes dispelling illusion or creating a more useful one.

  • Macknik, Stephen. & Martinez-Conde, Susana. Slights of Mind: What Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about our Brains
  • Houdini, Harry. On Deception
  • Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo. Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds

It also considers how beneficial traditional techniques for change, discredited and lost because of their implausible explanations, can be revised, updated and employed practically given a modern framework of understanding.

Pactical “magic” as getting results from a model without knowing scientifically why.

  • Bonewits, Philip. Real Magic
  • Hine, Phil. Condensed Chaos: an introduction to Chaos Magic