The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
Bloom, Howard. 1997. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History. 1st ed. Atlantic Monthly Press.
Rating:
5
Summary:
The book combines two approaches – history and sociobiology – to provide a theory behind what drives humanity. That theory is what the author refers to as “The Lucifer Principle.” The Lucifer Principle is an extension of the primitive, animalistic drives of humans – survival of the fittest – to a societal level (see p. 27; an actual explanation of the principle is never presented, at least not clearly). In other words, Bloom is trying to extend evolutionary theory by claiming that the competition for survival and procreation goes beyond competition between individual humans but applies to societies as well. As Bloom puts it, “Superorganisms are hungry creatures, attempting to break down the boundaries of their competitors, chew off chunks of their opponents’ substance, and digest and redistribute it as part of themselves” (p. 182). In short, Bloom’s argument says that not only is there competition between individual humans for survival but that humans come together in coalitions (he calls them ‘superorganisms’; most people call them societies) to ensure the survival of their coalition. Thus, Bloom applies the ‘survival of the fittest’ argument to both individuals and superorganisms.
In an early effort to clarify what he means by The Lucifer Principle, Bloom claims the principle is based on the following concepts (see pp. 10-11):
1.the principle of self-organizing systems (living things self-replicate)
2.the superorganism (refers to societies; according to Bloom, they also self-replicate)
3.the meme, a self-replicating cluster of ideas (in fact, a meme is nothing other than an idea)
4.the neural net (the group mind; also known as collective conscience)
5.the pecking order (social hierarchies)
While I generally withhold my comments until the next section of my review, it is worth noting here that these concepts are not presented in the traditional fashion of axioms as used in social theory. Most axioms used as the foundations of social theory are presented in such a fashion that testable hypotheses can be derived from them. Reformulated into axioms, Bloom’s concepts would look like this:
Axiom 1: All living things are self-organizing systems at multiple levels (at the genetic, social/superorganismic, and cultural/meme levels).
Axiom 2: Members of a society share a culture that can also be understood as a neural net or collective conscience.
Axiom 3: All societies have a social hierarchy or ‘pecking order.’
If Bloom then wanted to, he could derive theories explaining human society from these axioms. As he has presented these ideas, they are nothing more than concepts and certainly are not the foundation of a well-developed theoretical argument. What’s more, as may be apparent by my attempts to clarify what Bloom was attempting to say, Bloom introduces new vocabulary for old concepts. Superorganisms are societies (a group of people who share a culture). Memes are ideas. Unfortunately Bloom uses ‘meme’ interchangeably with both ‘idea’ and ‘culture’ throughout the book, which is an unfortunate confusion between ‘idea’ and ‘culture’. ‘Neural net’ is the same thing as a ‘collective conscience’ (a shared sense of community and culture). Pecking order is a lay term for social hierarchy; while people are more familiar with ‘pecking order’, it certainly isn’t a new term that extends the definition of social hierarchy. In short, Bloom has re-packaged concepts from biology, evolutionary theory, genetics, and sociology into his own brand of theory. In so doing, he belies the immaturity of his theoretical development.
From these concepts, Bloom begins his examination of history and science, cherry-picking examples from both that seem to support his theories. There is no clear order to his discussion, but the stories are engaging and entertaining. There are, what I perceived, two ultimate goals of the book. The first is to present evidence for his poorly developed theoretical ideas. The second is to warn the U.S. of its impending slide down the pecking order. Bloom argues that, “Today America seems to be following the path that led the British to their downfall. In 1945, the United States produced 40 percent of the world’s goods. By the mid-eighties, our share was half of that. Until the early seventies, we were the biggest exporter in the world. Today, we are the biggest importer. Our federal deficits are soaring, and the amount of money we’ve borrowed from the citizens of foreign countries is so large that we are now the biggest debtors since the prehistoric invention of the loan”(pp. 280-281). Bloom goes on to argue that the U.S. educational system is in dire straights and that if the U.S. wants to prevent a decline to a lower position in the social hierarchy, it will have to take concerted efforts to change the way it functions.
The only clear solution Bloom offers to U.S. decline is a proposed revision of the popular understanding of ‘stress’ (p. 310). According to Bloom, stress is a good thing as it drives people to create and excel. As long as United Statesians continue to view stress as a social and physical ill, Bloom believes they will continue their inevitable descent into a much minor role on the world stage.
Bloom also discusses peace as though this is his ultimate vision for humanity, but his ideas on this point are so unclear that I have decided to discuss them in more detail in the following section.
Review:
Engaging historical anecdotes; unclear and flawed theoretical arguments
As noted in the above section, the organization to this book isn’t entirely clear. While Bloom seems to be making good points in each chapter and he generally connects those points to the cherry-picked examples from science and history, the book does not really work to develop his theoretical arguments throughout. It’s almost as if he is just trying to convince people that the concepts he outlines (which I argued above should have been presented as axioms) exist and are worth discussing just for the sake of discussion. The book holds a lot of potential for presenting a fascinating theoretical approach to understanding society. Unfortunately, that potential is wasted in the pointless re-hashing of commonly understood principles in sociology and biology.
It is also the case that after having read this 330 page text I found myself wondering what exactly was meant by ‘The Lucifer Principle.’ Perhaps my confusion stems from the poor choice of label for his “principle”. When someone includes a term that is closely tied to religious thought – Lucifer – the obvious implication is that the theory/principle will somehow relate to religion. I think Bloom’s intent was to make people think not of religion but of evil. My summary of Bloom’s ‘Lucifer Principle’ outlined above is far clearer than any presentation of this idea presented by Bloom. To connect this back to the inclusion of Lucifer, while Bloom never says so explicitly, I am assuming he views the competition between individuals and superorganisms as an ‘evil’, thus the inclusion of Lucifer in the title of the Principle. If he really wanted to justify the title of his principle, he would have spent several chapters early on exploring the development of the Lucifer figure and how Lucifer represents evil in society. In fact, Lucifer can be and often is seen as a scapegoat for society’s ills. While the title may be catchy, it’s confusing and never clearly explained. A better title for the book might be ‘The Battle for Superorganismic Supremacy: How Our Biology Leads to Competition Between Societies’.
In the introduction to the book, Bloom claims he is going to provide a new understanding of society, transcending the work of early sociologists Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Either Bloom doesn’t really understand what these theorists explored, or he is making a fallacious claim. In one instance (see p. 148), Bloom presents a critique of Marxist thought I believe misrepresents Marxism entirely. On page 212, Bloom analyzes Hinduism from a clear Marxist perspective, arguing that religion exists to maintain social hierarchies, “Why does the Hindu religion tell its adherents to go with the flow, to abhor the things of this world, to set aside earthly desires, to hope only for an improvement of their lot after this life is over? Because Hinduism was designed to keep the conquered Shudras in their place.” If his goal was to superceed Marx here, using Marx’s analysis isn’t going to help him accomplish that end.
Continuing in this vein, Bloom also touches upon Durkheim’s work on social solidarity and anomie. Bloom tries to develop the argument that humans, like individual cells in organisms, begin to ‘wither away’, “When [they] feels [they are] no longer necessary to the larger group…” (p. 56). While Durkheim’s discussion of anomie and suicide seems to lend some support to this idea, by claiming this is a biological component of humans is not supported by any evidence (Bloom’s anecdotes notwithstanding). Bloom is committing a fallacy discouraged by Stephen Gould – reifying a concept as though it were an actual, physical thing. In this case, Bloom is arguing that social isolation and the breakdown of one’s sense of purpose and connection to society triggers a biological response in people. If the isolation and lack of purpose are substantial enough, the result is death. Not only do I think this is an over-extension of the argument, but it clearly falls into the fallacy described by Gould. Until Bloom can pinpoint the biological triggering mechanism, he is much better off simply saying this is a psychological or sociological phenomenon.
Bloom also, somewhat unjustifiably in my opinion, takes issue with allopathic medicine (a.k.a. most medical doctors in the U.S. today). Bloom claims medical doctors are not in the business of curing people but rather the business of providing people a sense of control over the uncontrollable (p. 117). This would certainly be an accurate argument applied to religions, but it doesn’t apply to allopathic doctors who have developed the means to treat thousands of illnesses and diseases. Bloom depicts allopaths as the true ‘quacks’ and idolizes homeopathic health practitioners, claiming they were driven out of health care by greedy, conniving allopaths (p. 192). I’m not sure what beef Bloom has with allopathic medicine, but it’s certainly clear he’s biased. Bloom goes so far as to draw a comparison between allopathic doctors and priests, claiming germs are like “the cloud-riding spirits of the Native Americans” (p. 126) and that we only believe they exist because someone in a position of authority claims they exist. Not only is this claim ignorant and deceitful but it’s stupid! Shame on Bloom for making such a fallacious comparison. Allopathic medicine has made untold contributions to social life. To claim otherwise is to obfuscate bias for reality
There are a few minor issues where Bloom is clearly wrong. For instance, on page 157 Bloom claims “Humans are built to eat meat.” This is simply not true. We are built to eat protein; it does not have to be in the form of meat. Comments like this lead me to believe this is more a book presenting the author’s personal philosophies (and, in this case, rationalizations for eating meat), then it is a scientific work on the history of humanity. Bloom claims on page 327 that, “The Renaissance thinkers and the nineteenth-century scientists were both wrong. The universe has not been drifting from order into chaos. It has, instead, been marching in the opposite direction.” Once again, Bloom has missed the point. Life (as in, living things that self-replicate) leads toward growing complexity, but this is clearly taking a micro-view of the cosmos. The macro-view of the cosmos is entirely different – the universe is growing increasingly entropic or chaotic. For some reason, life seems to work against that trend, though life is really only a temporary reversal of the process (bodies decay and move toward chaos when they die).
Another significant error on Bloom’s part comes about when he claims a relationship that is entirely spurious. Bloom claims that alleviating poverty will not result in the reduction of conflict (pp. 252-263). Instead of reducing conflict, he actually believes “Good times can be just as damaging to peace…” (p. 258). Bloom goes so far as to claim that prosperity is correlated with increases in social conflict. What Bloom is missing is that prosperity in all of the examples he cites was accompanied with increases in disparity – the wealthy had more money, the poor had less (or relatively less). It isn’t prosperity that leads to conflict (Bloom’s claim), it’s disparity that leads to conflict. Statistics on crime rates throughout the world bear this out. Bloom also argues that what people in less-developed countries want is not food, water, good housing, etc. but rather prestige. I find this reasoning shocking because it claims a secondary drive – prestige – is actually more pressing to individuals and societies (remember, Bloom takes most individual-level evolutionary ideas and applies them to superorganisms) than are basic needs like food and shelter (he doesn’t have a reference for this claim on p. 252). This understanding leads Bloom to say, “Even if we eliminate starvation and disease, only one thing will allow third world nations to overcome the emotional laceration of their pecking order fate: an upward move. Such is the nature of the hierarchical ladder, however, that whenever a creature moves up, someone else must be shoved down. Many would like the one stomped toward the bottom to be us” (p. 257). The way Bloom presents this element of his ‘principle’ leads to only one conclusion: Keep the people in less-developed countries down! Somehow Bloom has failed to realize his claim that helping poor nations develop won’t lead to peace is completely undermined by his own theory. If the pecking-order is done away with – people are made equal – there is no reason to fight to get to the top. By his own argument (unless he truly believes there will always be a social hierarchy with some people oppressing others), his reasoning is flawed.
Following his discussion of the inevitable rise of low-status nations, Bloom seems to present his perspective as though it is actually predictive; he seems to think his explanations for the rise and fall of nations can predict which ones will fall and which ones will rise. But he doesn’t give any clear predictions other than to submit that he thinks the U.S. will eventually decline; he doesn’t say who will take that superorganism’s place at the top. He pervasively applies his theories in a post-hoc fashion, looking for historical incidents that seem to support his arguments. But in so doing, he commits another fallacy – the imputation of motives to historical characters and groups (the motives that fit with Bloom’s theory). For instance, Bloom talks about the Hebrews who holed up in the Masada fortress in Israel during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. These Hebrews eventually committed suicide rather than be defeated by the Romans. Bloom claims the following motivation, “These fighters preferred death to a fate as featherless chickens on the bottom of the imperial pecking order” (p. 253). This is Whiggish history. An alternative, and in my opinion more likely explanation of their actions, is that they wanted to avoid the punishment that came with defeat, be it death or slavery. Cherry-picking history to fit your theory and imputing motives where they are not clear or do not exist is dishonest.
Having roundly critiqued just about every element of this book, I should point out that Bloom does make a few good points here and there. For instance, he does provide substantial evidence to bolster his claim that “Killing is an invention not of man but of nature” (p. 25). In other words, in direct contrast to some theorists who have claimed modern life is responsible for human-on-human violence, Bloom points out that it is a part of our biological and evolutionary heritage to kill in order to survive. Bloom clearly reiterates this point a number of times. A particularly clear treatment of this point is found on page 25, “Hegel, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, said that true tragedy occurs not when good battles evil, but when one good battles another. Nature has made that form of tragedy a basic law of her universe. She presents her children with a choice between death and death. She offers a carnivore the options of dying by starvation or killing for a meal.” This is a noteworthy point and one where Bloom does hit the mark. (See pp. 29 and 44 for further discussion of these points.)
My last comment addresses Bloom’s vague conclusions about the future of humanity. Bloom seems to think that, while humans have an inherent drive toward conflict, this drive is surmountable. On pages 318 and 319 Bloom begins to outline some possible solutions (other than the one mentioned above, redefining stress). He seems to be headed in a direction I would agree with – the unification of man under a single banner and the concerted effort so save our species through interstellar exploration and colonization. But he doesn’t ever state this clearly. As is the case with most of the book, he kind of beats around the bush without diving in and strangling the creature he’s trying to catch. He has the opportunity at the end of the book to paint a hopeful picture for peace and prosperity but hems and haws and ultimately leaves the reader with the impression that he doesn’t have a solution other than to encourage the U.S. to maintain its hegemony over less-developed countries. This is a disappointing conclusion to a disappointing book.
Overall, as noted previously, this book had potential. That potential was squandered on a haphazard journey through history and scientific research with the aim of convincing the reader that Bloom’s principle is noteworthy. But the book never develops a clear theory and fails to provide solutions to the problems intimated. The Lucifer Principle reads like a rough draft of a potentially interesting theoretical argument. Maybe Bloom will revise it to a readable and coherent state.