Quotes from Howard Bloom

Inner-judges measure our contribution to the social learning machine by two yardsticks: (1) our personal sense of mastery; and (2) the hints we get from those around us telling us whether they want us eagerly or couldn't care less if we disappeared like a blackhead from the face of decent society.

Roughly 130,000 years ago,1 the diversity generator of creative bickering drove tribes to run an artificial crease down their centers, sorting shoulder-rubbing neighbors into two opposing groups. These primordial forms of fabricated cleavage, known to anthropologists as moieties, were apparently a way to keep the deformities of inbreeding at bay.

Memes have an ultimate ambition: taking vast chunks of the world into their possession and restructuring it according to their form.

Terrified humans by the score allow unprovable concepts to take up residence in their skulls.

Spit me out, says the meme, and you will tempt a fate worse than death.317

The modern growth of Islam is the coalescence of a superorganism drawn together by the magnetic attraction of a meme. But this meme has an advantage: The social body it is trying to pull together has existed as a unified social beast in the past. The old reflexes of solidarity are still there, waiting to be aroused. The meme of the new Islam is not laboring to generate a small and fragile embryo. It is simply attempting to awaken a sleeping giant. VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AMERICA AND AFRICA

In the two million years during which we climbed from stone-tool-wielding Homo erectus with sloping brows to high-foreheaded Homo urbanis - man, the inventor of the city - we underwent 60 glaciations, 60 ice ages.

Nearly every tribe and nearly every human being has gods. Belief in gods is all over the place. It's universal. It squeaks and squoozes from every pore of humanity.

Divinity is an emotion of being lifted out of yourself and being part of something much bigger than yourself that makes you go, 'Oh my God.' And that sense of awe? It's the second rule of science.

All of us dream of being part of something greater than ourselves. All of us want to make a contribution. The greatest contribution you make isn't in the money you give to charities. It isn't in the nonprofit foundations you establish. And it isn't in the work you do as a volunteer. Your greatest contribution to something greater, to the lives of others, comes in what you do from nine to five.

The individual is a cell in the social superorganism. When he feels he is no longer necessary to the larger group, he, too, begins to wither away. As

Superorganism, ideas, and the pecking order—these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle.

Of such rejected pieces of ourselves are our devils made.

Humans need to vigorously pursue goals, to wrestle with problems, and to master them. They need much of what has been popularly interpreted as stress.

Progress is possible only when people believe in the possibilities of growth and change. Races or tribes die out not just when they are conquered and suppressed but when they accept their defeated condition, become despairing, and lose their excitement about the future. Norman Cousins Americans

There are no righteous societies; there are simply different degrees of depravity. To

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . . For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. Isaiah 14:12–14

Opposites are joined at the hip. Night and day, poisons and pleasures, innovation and destruction are usually different facets of the very same thing. [...] Opposites work together in the very opposite of the way they seem - not tearing each other to bits or threatening to annihilate each other.

Good times can be just as damaging to peace here in the United States. When the economy goes up, murders do not go down, they rise.

An equality of nation will never exist in our lifetime. Why? Because peace, freedom, and justice are deceptive concepts. Hidden beneath their surface are the instincts of the peking order.

The five elements of the complex adaptive system are conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. Henry Adams

The Athenian strategy moves to the top when things are going well. Spartanism grabs the throne when the world is going to hell.

Here was an arch lesson in the games subcultures play. Reality is a mass hallucination. We gauge what's real according to what others say. And others, like us, rein in their words, caving in to timidity. Thanks to conformity enforcement and to cowardice, a little power goes a long, long way.