About the Lucifer Principle
what is
The Lucifer Principle:
A Scientific Expedition Into The Forces of History
by Howard Bloom
(Atlantic Monthly Press, $13)
The Lucifer Principle is a book with a peculiar mission. Its goal is to provide the reader with a new way of looking at his world. The Lucifer Principle takes fresh data from a variety of sciences and shapes them into a perceptual lens, a tool with which to reinterpret the human experience. It attempts to offer a very different approach to the anatomy of the social organism, a new way of understanding the operation of its tendons, bones and joints.
In the process, The Lucifer Principle contends that “evil” is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and is woven into our most basic biological fabric. This argument echoes a very old one. St. Paul proposed it when he put forth the doctrine of original sin. Thomas Hobbes resurrected it when he called the lot of man brutish and nasty. Anthropologist Raymond Dart brought it to the fore again when he interpreted fossil remains in Africa as evidence that man is a killer ape. Old as it is, the concept has often had revolutionary implications. Why? Because it has been the thread on which men like Hobbes and St. Paul have hung dramatic new visions of the world.
I’ve attempted to employ the subject of man’s inborn “evil” like those who turned to the subject in the past–to offer up a restructuring of the way we see the business of being human. I’ve taken the conclusions of cutting-edge sciences–ethology, sociobiology, psychoneuroimmunology and the study of complex adaptive systems, among others–to suggest a new way of looking at culture, civilization, and the mysterious emotions of those who live inside the social beast. The goal is to open the path toward a new sociology, one that escapes the narrow boundaries of Durkheimeian, Weberian and Marxist concepts, theories that have proven invaluable to the study of mass human behavior while simultaneously entrapping it in orthodoxy.The Lucifer Principle is organized as a dessert tray for the intellect. The table of contents below will give you a sense of its many flavors. But is the tasting worth the effort? That’s for you to say.
I can only promise one small thing. When you’ve finished The Lucifer Principle, you are unlikely to see the daily events around you in the same old way again.
– Howard Bloom
for the Lucifer Principle chapter Isolation: The Ultimate Poison, click here
THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE
A Scientific Expedition Into The Forces Of History
for more on science, art, and history, visit
howardbloom.net
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Lucifer Principle
Who Is Lucifer?
The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
The Whole Is Bigger Than the Sum of Its Parts
The Chinese Cultural Revolution
BLOODSTAINS IN PARADISE
Mother Nature, the Bloody Bitch
Women–Not the Peaceful Creatures You Think
Fighting For The Privilege of Procreation
The Greed of Genes
WHY HUMANS SELF-DESTRUCT
The Theory of Individual Selection…and Its Flaws
Superorganism
Isolation–The Ultimate Poison
Even Heroes Are Insecure
Loving The Child Within Is Not Enough
ONE MAN’S GOD IS ANOTHER MAN’S DEVIL
Us Vs.Them
The Value of Having an Enemy
The Perceptual Trick That Manufactures Devils
How Hatred Builds The Walls of Society’s Bungalow
MAN–INVENTOR OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
From Genes to Memes
The Nose of a Rat and the Human Mind–
A Brief History of the Rise of Memes
How Wrong Ideas Can Be Right
The Village of the Sorcerers and the Riddle of Control
The Modern Medical Shaman
Control and the Urge to Pray
Power and the Invisible World
Einstein and the Eskimos
THE MYSTERIES OF THE EVOLUTIONARY LEARNING
MACHINE
The Connectionist Explanation of the Mass Mind’s Dreams
Society as a Neural Net
The Expendability of Males
How Men Are Society’s Dice
Is Pitching a Genetically Acquired Skill?
Oliver Cromwell–The Rodent Instincts Don a Disguise
IDEOLOGY IS THEFT
The Invisible World As A Weapon
The True Route to Utopia
Why Men Embrace Ideas–And Why Ideas Embrace Men
Righteous Indignation=Greed for Real Estate
Shiites
Poetry and the Lust for Power
When Memes Collide–The Pecking Order of Nations
Superior Chickens Make Friends
Wordviews As The Welding Torch of the Hierarchical Chain
WHO ARE THE NEXT BARBARIANS
The Barbarian Principle
Are There Killer Cultures?
Violence In South America and Africa
The Importance of Hugging
The Puzzle of Complacency
Poverty With Prestige Is Better Than Affluent Disgrace
Why Prosperity Will Not Bring Peace
The Secret Meaning of “Freedom,” “Peace” and “Justice”
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
The Victorian Decline And The Fall of America
Scapegoats and Sexual Hysteria
Laboratory Rats And The Oil Crisis
Why Nations Pretend To Be Blind
How The Pecking Order Reshapes The Mind
Perceptual Shutdown And the Future of America
The Myth of Stress
Tennis Time and the Mental Clock
THE LUCIFERIAN PARADOX
The Lucifer Principle
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About The Author
Bibliography
Notes
for
“A fascinating new evolutionary theory which could deeply change our view of life, and a new worldview which could radically change our interpretation of social structures.” (Florian Roetzer)
see
Howard Bloom’s latest book
GLOBAL BRAIN
for more on science, art, and history, visit
howardbloom.net
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