The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History

Why I Picked It Up / How It Read

I picked up this book as a part of a book club. It was a light read packed with many ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I found it a bit disorganized and repetitive sometimes.

What I Took Away

• I totally agree and adopt the view that the dichotomy of humans are good/bad by nature is erroneous and reductivist. I believe that humans are capable of acting in a manner that is incredibly good or incredibly evil within the same lifetime without feeling any sense of contradiction or hypocrisy. Howard Blooms makes a very compelling case for that by explaining how the roots of both types of behavior can be found in the human brain and its evolution history.
• Another idea that I also liked a lot was the superorganism, and the applicability of evolution and natural selection on levels other than the individual. That explains how many individuals could act against their self-preservation instincts without having to resort to supernaturalist or unquantifiable virtues or values to explain that type of behavior.
• Even though, many an example of a superorganism was given in the book, it still failed to define exactly what a superorganism is, and how to delineate between a group of people who form a superorganism and another that do not.
• One thing I didn't like about the book is that many examples were added to drive the same point, which felt like piling anecdotal evidence to support the idea. A very few, fleshed out, and well-defended examples would've been better.