A fascinating book by scientist Howard Bloom (not to be confused with scholar and critic Harold Bloom).

Subtitled "A Scientific Inquiry into the Forces of History," The Lucifer Principle is a piece of natural philosophy in the 18th Century tradition, but with a Nietzschean twist. Bloom takes three popular modern concepts (two from the sciences, one from communication theory), and relates them to the evolution and behaviour of man. Those three concepts: the "superorganism," the "meme," and the "pecking order."

The superorganism is a gestalt -- the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Bloom provides some evidence which suggests what philosophers have been saying for thousands of years: that man is a social animal and must be part of a social body, or he will die by his own hand, conscious or not. Fortunately (for us), the ways in which we can participate in this social body are far more complex than abject compliance. This complexity is directly linked to that which serves as the cement holding a society together: ideas.

However, we don't just automatically shuffle into one huge supersociety, because there is another factor which offsets our tendency to ally: our tendency to compete. Ideas can serve this function too, identifying the reprobate as quickly as the elect. Even the most peaceful philosophy can give license to kill in the hands of someone subconsciously on his way up the pecking order, order upon which is truly determined only by physical force.

So, in short, the "Lucifer principle" is this: Nature is completely indifferent to human life, dignity, or freedom. She cares only for maximizing the complexity of our energy system, which she accomplishes using various replicating systems. The paradigmatic replicant is the gene, but it has become a platform for a higher form of replicant, the meme which is to a social superorganism as the gene is to an organism. In the blind tumbling horror of the fight for replicant supremacy, humans are expendable pawns, and when we think we are otherwise it is part of a lie which may help us just a little bit more successful -- which, in the end, is all Nature is concerned with.

Bloom uses examples from throughout history, primarily European and Asian, to demonstrate this principle in action. His chapters are short and his prose is easy. On the whole, a very good book for someone who has convinced himself that we can look to "nature" as a model for propriety.