Now that I have your attention with such an outrageous title, I will be writing about my favorite book. Most people enjoy reading fictional works, or perhaps memoirs. I prefer sociological books that read like a college assignment. To that end, my favorite book is "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard Bloom. The title of the book comes from the first chapter. Mr. Bloom presents the story of Marcion, a Christian heretic in ancient Rome, who said that the creator could not be merciful. After all, evil was rampant, and everywhere you looked throughout nature, violence was to be found. To be able to create such violence, the creator must have understood violence, so he is to blame. Others did not like this idea and began to talk about Lucifer, a being which relished evil. Mr. Bloom states that perhaps Marcion understood the situation better. After all, Lucifer, even within the Christian lore, did not create the evil. He gave into its lure. "Evil" is a by-product of creation, says Mr. Bloom. The remainder of the book is dedicated to examining the evils of nature, creation, birth, etc. He does so through 5 concepts.

1) Self-organizing systems- things are mass-produced with cheap raw materials, and assembled into intricate products. But they are done cheaply so that they are expendable. Lest you think I am talking about cars, I'm not. I'm talking about humans. If you take the chemicals that go into the "making" of a human, they are terrifyingly cheap. I believe each human is worth $2 and change. Yet we assign a higher value to humans, at least until it is not fitting to do so. Any leader who has sent people to war has taken away the perceived value of the person's life. There are a million examples of some humans being worth more than others, and the self-organizing systems have decided which are more valued. When we talk about cells, we may be worried if we are losing heart or brain cells. But what if the cells are merely skin? We take great pride in sloughing off the old ones and making way for the new via exfoliation. If a homeless person is murdered, it is deemed to be not as big a loss to society as it would be if a leader were murdered. Why? They are not deemed as worthy of life. And frankly, males are worth far less than females. One man can impregnate a hundred women, and in 9 months, there will be 100 births. But one woman can only have on average one baby every nine months. Women are to be treasured, but this is an idea that nature enforces brutally. Men are more likely to be miscarried or stillborn, more likely to die in infancy, more likely to be killed in a homicide, and if they manage to avoid all these horrors, they still live a whopping 7-10 years less than women.

2) Superorganisms- In the book, Mr. Bloom provides the example of a sponge. Were you aware that you can place a natural sea sponge in a blender with a bit of water, push any button you want until the sponge is in a billion pieces, and they will reassemble themselves. If instead you separate those cells from each other permanently, they will die. Man is not the individual he wants to believe he is. One of the number one killers of man is not any kind of disease, but retirement. Find yourself without a use to the colony and your natural self-destruct programming kicks in. When it comes to mankind, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Continuing on that thought...

3) Memes- memes are the genes of memory. There is nothing tangible, and nothing to study under a microscope. They are simply thoughts that float around in our subconcious, until they find they right brain capable of bringing them together. Every religion, every type of government, and even every popular song on the radio has been the result of memes. Ideas build from one another, combine, and reproduce. Sometimes the result is benevolent, and sometimes it is not.

4) The Neural Net- This is what processes the memes that encounter us. We encounter so many ideas, especially in this information age, that most simply bounce off of us. But why? Our entire life has been a process of forming our own ideas about the way things work. Mr. Bloom provides an example of a farmer who claimed to have figured out the date of the end of the world. He inspired 50,000 people to wait for the end with him. Some closed their shops, others sold their own farms, convinced they would no longer need them. When the dae came and went without a hiccup from the planet or beyond, the date was changed. Once again, the world did not end. But by that time, people had become so invested in the ideas because their entire lives had been leading them to that belief, that they would not let something so small as the man being wrong about the date of end of the world stop them. By 1981, this movement had over 3.6 million members in 184 countries. They are known as the Seventh Day Adventists. This is merely an example, as the same arguments could be made of any religion by those who do not follow it. That is the point. A recent study said that both liberals and conservatives alike will ignore cold hard facts if it does not support their belief system. This should be remembered when people want to know why there are more people than ever converting to a religion that is seen as violent, degrading to women, bloody, and screams for you to die for your god. The question should not be why are they converting, but why wouldn't they. Everything they have ever known tells them that is the only choice to make.

5) The pecking order- This ties in with #1. After all, let's go on the assumption that Mr. Bloom is correct in his observations about the homeless man being worth less than a leader. Why? The pecking order, which exists in every species. Chickens, when given food have an already established pecking order. The one who eats first has usually gotten there by violent means, and it is by violence that he falls. When he does fall, he falls hard, and his self-destruct mechanism kicks in. Put a new chicken in, and he will determine his own place by fighting for a spot in line. Those at the end of the line will often not take on the higher ones for a better spot. They are convinced of their worthlessness. So what does this mean about "evil"? Many people in the US have begun saying that we are fighting a losing war, even those who were previously for the war. What changed? We lost or are losing our spot in the pecking order. We went from being on top to seeing that we can be bested in certain circumstances. And like the chickens, our self-destruct mechanism is kicking in. This is certainly not a thing I say with pride. It is up to us as a national superorganism, how far we fall.

In presenting this as my blog, I realize just how controversial it is. I am saying that every religion, every government, and every idea that mankind has ever had is destined to fail. They have in the past, and they will in the future. The question ends up being, for ourselves, will it be with a bang, or with a whimper? I post this as a meme that has reached my brain. Will it be latched onto, or will it be discarded? Only time will tell. As Mr. Bloom ends his book, evolution is the only chance we have to end our own savagery, and the evolution of a meme or idea is FAR faster than that of biology.