The idea of mind control has been around for centuries. From science fiction to mystery movies, plenteous characters own the ability of mind-controlling and a lot people dream to have alike powers. In the essay “Who Holds the Clicker?” , the author Lauren Slater discusses how psychosurgery and deep brain stimulation surgery could let neurologist control the patient’s moods, even minds and the unresolved controversies it brings. Susan Blackmore argues how meme theory and the ability of imitation distinguishes human from other creatures and thus points out how people’s minds are limited with their own ideas. Each individual on earth has different minds with different thoughts, but somehow people will not be capable to gain full control of their …show more content…
First of all, people do have choices about controlling about their own minds in normal situations. As Blackmore argues, “successful memes are the ones that get copied and spread, while unsuccessful ones do not” (37). With the concepts of memetics, most times, successful memes which get copied and copied are regarded as memes. The unsuccessful ones that fail to get spread are usually ignored from the theory of memes because it is associated with peoples’s nature of imitation. Likewise, in “Who Holds the Clicker”, Slater presents the situation with Mario and the psychosurgery Mario went through. She says that “[Mario] said yes [to the surgery] in part because he knew that if he did not like the neural implants, he could simply have them switched off” (Slater 234). Even after the surgery, the implants could still remain as an option for Mario. He could just turn the switch off when he is willing to do so which implies the slight but critical control he has with his own mind. As the two examples state, in some scenarios, people are