List:
Paraphrasing two scientists.
"Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.” Isaac Newton
"As simple as possible, but not simpler." A. Einstein
The meaning of Professor Bloom’s essay can be simplified.
This simple essay is an interpretation of history without either human values
or virtues.
In today’s world, examples of the Bloom thesis are ISIS and a “public”
organizations such as the NRA.
If brute force is the primary driver of human history, what is a second? or a
third? and so forth?
What are the feedback and feedforward loops among the first, second, third, …
usw., that generate humanness (by processing information in terms of values and
virtues)?
Cheers
Jerry
> On Jan 3, 2016, at 11:45 PM, howlbl...@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> The Force of History--Howard Bloom
>
> In 1995, I published my first book, The Lucifer Principle: a Scientific
> Expedition Into the Forces of history. It sold roughly 140,000 copies
> worldwide and is still selling. Some people call it their Bible. Others say
> that it was the book that predicted 9/11. And less than two months ago, on
> November 13, 2015, some current readers said it was the book that explained
> ISIS’ attacks on Paris. Why? What are the forces of history? And what do
> they have to do with information science?
>
> The Lucifer Principle uses evolutionary biology, group selection,
> neurobiology, immunology, microbiology, computer science, animal behavior,
> and anthropology to probe mass passions, the passions that have powered
> historical movements from the unification of China in 221 BC and the start of
> the Roman Empire in 201 BC to the rise of the Empire of Islam in 634 AD and
> that empire’s modern manifestations, the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of
> Iran and ISIS, the Islamic State, a group intent on establishing a global
> caliphate. The Lucifer Principle concludes that the passions that swirl,
> swizzle, and twirl history’s currents are a secular trinity. What are that
> trinity’s three components? The superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas.
>
> What’s a superorganism? Your body is an organism. But it’s also a massive
> social gathering. It’s composed of a hundred trillion cells. Each of those
> cells is capable of living on its own. Yet your body survives thanks to the
> existence of a collective identity—a you. In 1911,[i]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn1>
> Harvard biologist William Morton Wheeler noticed that ant colonies pull off
> the same trick. From 20,000 to 36 million ants work together to create an
> emergent property, a collective identity, the identity of a community, a
> society, a colony, or a supercolony. Wheeler observed how the colony behaved
> as if it were a single organism. He called the result a “superorganism.”[ii]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn2>
> Meanwhile in roughly 1900, when he was still a child, Norway’s Thorleif
> Schjelderup Ebbe got into a strange habit: counting the number of pecks the
> chickens in his family’s flock landed on each other and who pecked whom. By
> the time he was ready to write his PhD dissertation in 1918, Ebbe had close
> to 20 years of data. And that data demonstrated something strange. Chickens
> in a barnyard are not egalitarian. They have a strict hierarchy. At the top
> is a chicken who gets special privileges. All others step aside when she
> goes to the trough. She is the first to eat. And she can peck any other
> chicken in the group. Then comes chicken number two. She is the second to
> eat. And she can peck anyone in the flock with one notable exception. She
> cannot peck the top chicken. Then comes chicken number three, chicken number
> four, and so on. Each one cannot peck the chickens above her on the social
> ladder. But each has free rein to peck the chickens below. Finally, there’s
> the bottom chicken, a chicken everyone is free to peck but who is free to
> peck no one. Ebbe called this a “peck order,” a pecking order, a dominance
> hierarchy.
>
> And in 1976, Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined two new
> terms.[iii]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn3>
> He observed that biological life, all of it from bacteria to bathing
> beauties, depends on the evolution of what Dawkins called “replicators,”
> molecules that can make copies of themselves. Then Dawkins spotted a newer
> kind of replicator at work. The first biological replicators—genes--did
> their thing in primordial puddles. The new replicator worked in a puddle of
> a radically different kind—the puddle of the human mind. Dawkins observed
> that we see replicators at work when our mind fixates on a song we hate and
> plays it over and over again, no matter how vigorously we wish it away. That
> song is using our mind to make more copies of itself. But the most important
> replicators in the soup of the human mind are not pop songs, they’re ideas.
> Dawkins called these mind-based replicators “memes.”
>
> Superorganism, the pecking order, and ideas—memes--that’s the holy trinity of
> The Lucifer Principle. That’s the holy trinity that drives the forces of
> history.
>
> Here’s how it works. Social groups compete. They battle for pecking order
> position in a hierarchy of groups. They strive to be at the top of that
> hierarchy and to avoid the fate of the chicken at the bottom. What’s the
> main thing over which groups compete? It’s a badge of group membership. A
> badge of what molecular biologist Luis Villarreal and philosopher Guenther
> Witzany call “group identity.”[iv]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn4>
> That badge? A cluster of memes. A knot of replicators that live in a sea
> of minds. The Babylonians competed with the Assyrians and the Medes. They
> competed using different languages. They competed using different ideas of
> what clothes to wear, what was right and wrong, and, most important, what
> gods to worship.[v]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_edn5>
> The eight states that made war in China in from 475 BC to 221 BC also had
> competing languages, religions, and philosophies. Rome set itself against
> the Persian Empire using the same tools of group identity: a different
> language, a different clothing style, a different way of worship, and a
> different pantheon of gods-- different ideas. And today militant Islam—in
> the form of the Islamic State and what’s left of al Qaeda--is pitting itself
> against the West, Russia, and China using the ideas of Islam. Using the
> words and deeds of Mohammed, words and deeds that are still making copies of
> themselves in new minds 1,384 years after Mohammed’s death.
>
> Pecking order competitions between groups, pecking order competitions based
> on ideas, are the meat and potatoes of the headlines. They are the forces of
> history.
>
> Where does information come into this? Everywhere. A fact that we shall
> have to discuss.
>
> Why? Because communication, sociality, and information exchange are at the
> very heart of this cosmos. So are competition and hierarchy. Not to mention
> the ancestor of superorganism-ness, the foremother of group identity—the
> cosmos’ obsession with mobs, gangs, flocks, and massively integrated social
> entities. Social entities that range from protons, atoms, galaxies, stars,
> planets and moons to galaxy superclusters. What do all of these things have
> in common? What do they share with megamolecules, DNA, cells, and bacterial
> colonies, not to mention ants, nations, and ISIS? Competition, hierarchy,
> and group identity. Superorganism, pecking order, and ideas—the holy trinity
> of the Lucifer Principle. And guess what else they share? Information!
>
> [i]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref1>
> Jürgen Tautz, The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism, Berlin:
> Springer, 2008, p. 3,.
> [ii]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref2>
> William Morton Wheeler, The Termitodoxa, Or Biology And Society, The
> Scientific Monthly, February, 1920.
> [iii]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref3>
> Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
> [iv]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref4>
> Luis P. Villarreal, Origin of Group Identity: Viruses, Addiction and
> Cooperation, New York: Springer, 2009.
> [v]
> <file:///C:/cnt/the%20new%20forces%20of%20history%20for%20pedro%20marijuna%20and%20the%20foundations%20of%20information%20science%2012-24-2015.docx#_ednref5>
> For more on the battle of the gods in Mesopotamia, see Howard Bloom, The God
> Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2016.
>
> ____________
> Howard Bloom
> Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
> History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post),
> Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st
> Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),
> The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously
> enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),
> The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock
> your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),
> How I Accidentally Started the Sixties ("Wow! Whew! Wild!
> Wonderful!" Timothy Leary), and
> The Mohammed Code ("A terrifying book…the best book I've read on Islam."
> David Swindle, PJ Media).
> www.howardbloom.net
> Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Former Visiting
> Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University.
> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; Founder, Space Development
> Steering Committee; Founder: The Group Selection Squad; Founding Board
> Member: Epic of Evolution Society; Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project;
> Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences,
> American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological
> Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
> International Society for Human Ethology, Scientific Advisory Board Member,
> Lifeboat Foundation; Editorial Board Member, Journal of Space Philosophy;
> Board member and member of Board of Governors, National Space Society.
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