Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45637 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 466 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The "Lucifer Principle" is freelance journalist Bloom's theory that evil-which manifests in violence, destructiveness and war-is woven into our biological fabric. A corollary is that evil is a by-product of nature's strategy to move the world to greater heights of organization and power as national or religious groups follow ideologies that trigger lofty ideals as well as base cruelty. In an ambitious, often provocative study, Bloom applies the ideas of sociobiology, ethology and the "killer ape" school of anthropology to the broad canvas of history, with examples ranging from Oliver Cromwell's reputed pleasure in killing and raping to Mao Tse-tung's bloody Cultural Revolution, India's caste system and Islamic fundamentalist expansion. Bloom says Americans suffer "perceptual shutdown" that blinds them to the United States' downward slide in the pecking order of nations. His use of concepts like pecking order, memes (self-replicating clusters of ideas), the "neural net" or group mind of the social "superorganism" seem more like metaphors than explanatory tools.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Pop-culture Renaissance man Bloom-former PR agent for the likes of Prince, writer for Omni magazine, and so on-seeks to explain why civilizations rise and fall, why nations go to war, and why violence and aggression don't disappear with the ascendancy of culture. Big task. The "Lucifer Principle" is based on the metaphors of the "meme" (ideas that arise across cultures and epochs) and "the pecking order" (from chickens to nations, and all in between). This sort of slippery extrapolation is at once cleverly neat and maddeningly suspicious, and the pitfalls of trying to unite animal biology, genetics, cultural history, anthropology, and philosophy are apparent in that sundry causes and effects are all lumped together as equals: rats in a cage do this, "primitive" cultures do that, Sumerians did a third thing, so therefore we do this. The 800 footnotes are symptomatic: sources range from the Information Please Almanac to a textbook on surgical nursing and a sprinkling of audiobooks. This book falls somewhere between Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (LJ 12/87) and John Naisbitt's Megatrends (LJ 10/1/82). For general audiences.
Mark L. Shelton, Worcester, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Author Bloom examines humankind to reveal the motivations of individuals and groups and the forces that drive history. He draws on current research in such fields as genetics, molecular biology, communications theory, and political science to develop the theory he calls the Lucifer Principle. Overall, his theory imparts a pessimistic slant to all human endeavor, past, present, and future, for his arguments are presented as immutable principles: that individuals inevitably subordinate personal interests to the group, which, in turn, functions as a superorganism, for example, street gangs, corporations, or nations; that humans instinctively strive for status in a pecking order arrangement, much like chickens or rats, and, thus, subjugating groups on the lower rungs of the ladder is instinctual. Utilizing historical examples, from the Roman Empire to Communist China, from Kamikaze pilots to terrorist bombers, Bloom pecks away at the edifice of "human kindness," "justice," and "peace." A disturbing book, but its broad generalities wear down the sharp edges of its arguments, leaving something that becomes food for thought rather than reason to despair. Bonnie Smothers

Customer Reviews

Unique Analysis
This book provides a fascinating perspective on history and current society.

If you are looking for a strictly academic work, this is probably not for you. Instead, this book looks at parallels between trends and processes in various parts of the world, and in various parts of history. If you are looking for brilliant insights and a unique perspective, strongly consider this book.

Overrated but interesting
The general themes and ideas presented in this book are interesting: That we are all part of a competitive social superorganism driven by memetic transmission. However, I find his understanding of certain concepts (e.g. stress, religion, philosophy) to be extremely limited.

So while I found the book to be thought provoking, it was hard to overlook the cherry-picking of factual "evidence" and limited understanding of important concepts (see above).

Life Changing
This is one of those books that once you read it, you simply change. My views of life, the way that I go day to day are different because now I have an understanding that wasnt there. Exceptional book, 20 Stars!