Belief is the Battlefield. Explaining the post-truth world.

The Selfish Idea: How Richard Dawkins’ Meme Escaped the Page and Took Over the Culture

Front cover of The Selfish Idea, a report on Richard Dawkins’ meme theory.

The Selfish Idea traces Richard Dawkins’ meme theory from The Selfish Gene to internet culture, meme magic and political messaging. Download the four-page report exploring how ideas spread, mutate and compete for attention.

Download the report (PDF)

Free download · 4 pages · 306 KB

See how deep the rabbit hole goes …

9/11 25th anniversary memorial artwork, presented in full

9/11: Remembering the Lives Lost, 25 Years On

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Grant Morrison chaos magic infographic comparing traditional sigils with narrative hypersigils, belief, symbols and comic storytelling.

The Wizard of Glasgow: Grant Morrison’s Reinvention of Magic

Neo's passport artwork from The Matrix: Thomas A. Anderson, issued 12 September 1991, with an EXPIRED stamp highlighting 11 September 2001.

Neo’s Passport – The Matrix and the September 11 Expiry Date

Wireframe head targeted by arrows from media, institutions and algorithms, with a red target inside the brain.

How The Matrix and 9/11 Framed the 21st Century – Slides

Straw Hat Pirates’ skull and crossbones wearing Luffy’s straw hat against a dark neon city, with “here we go again” above and beliefisthebattlefield.com below.

Here We Go Again – One Piece’s Straw Hat Jolly Roger

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Phil Tyson in a suit within surveillance crosshairs

Belief is the Battlefield is a conceptual art project investigating how 9/11 and The Matrix framed our ‘post-truth’ century. Through podcasts, video, stories and memes, it traces the technology and history of ideas behind today’s cognitive warfare - a contested world where what we believe has become the battlefield.

More about the project

Phil Tyson PhD is a psychotherapist and sociologist whose work - from clinical practice to systems research - has returned again and again to one question: how minds create meaning in an unstable world. philtyson.com