lauralh | devil is in the details

I've been reading The Lucifer Principle. It goes fast unless you look up each footnote. Or, I guess, if you've never read any Dawkins or Ridley. Anyway I'm finding the history bits a lot more interesting than the biology/meme bits. Bloom sure hates communists and Islamic fundamentalists. But then, who doesn't, right? Basically the idea is that while genes form organisms, memes form Superorganisms. These can be religions, political philosophies, countries - I guess you could call it "culture." And every single one of these, as they are made up of humans, will contain seeds of barbarism, or what he calls "the lucifer principle." So, there's no utopia, except for the leaders of the superorganism. FYI.