Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (Paperback)

By the way, the very learned and articulate Howard Bloom (our author) is not to be confused with the also very learned and articulate literary critic Harold Bloom.

Bloom's theme is the unrecognized power of group selection, interspecies intelligence, and the dialectic dance down through the ages of what he calls "conformity enforcers" and "diversity generators." These diametrically opposed forces, he argues, actually function as the yin and yang of the body politic, active in all group phenomena from bacteria to street gangs. He is building on the idea that a "complex adaptive system," such as an ant colony or an animal's immune system is itself a collective intelligence. He extends that idea by arguing that a population, whether of humans or bacteria, is a collective intelligence as well. Put another way, intelligence manifests itself as an emergent property of a group. Furthermore, intelligence manifests itself as an emergent property of a collection of interacting groups.

This idea is certainly not original with Bloom--indeed it is part of the Zeitgeist of our age--but his delineation of it is the most compelling and thorough that I have read. It runs counter to the prevailing orthodoxy in evolutionary theory. In particular it is in opposition to Richard Dawkins's selfish gene theories and Ernst Mayr's insistence that natural selection operates on individuals not on populations. It is a synthesis of ideas that will, I believe, in the next decade or two, greatly alter the perspective of many of our scientific disciplines.

Bloom also posits "inner-judges" which function like biological super-egos; and "resource shifters" which function like neural nets, rewarding those strands of the group that are successful, punishing those that are not. To this he adds the playfully named "intergroup tournaments"; that is, war and other competitions between groups as close as human bands and as diverse as animals and their microbial parasites. Bloom defines these ideas on pages 42-44 and elaborates on them throughout the book with a summary in the final chapter.

The key idea that needs emphasis here is that Bloom believes (as I do) that evolution, cultural and biological, operates on groups as well as on individuals--groups of people, groups of animals, groups of microbes--cities, tribes, gangs, herds, species, bacterial colonies and viral masses. He sees all forms of life as interconnected in ways that are not obvious, but discernable if we find the right perspective. Bloom's perspective begins with the physics of the big bang, continues through pre-Cambrian microbial jungle, to the dialectic dance of Sparta and Athens, even to pre-September 11th Afghanistan (perspicaciously, by the way), until he concludes that all life on earth is, and has been, plunging toward an emergent property which might be called Gaia with a planetary brain.

Some observations:

"Reality is a mass hallucination" (p. 193) or "Reality is a Shared Hallucination" (title of Chapter 8; see also page 2 and page 170). This declaration, expressed somewhat differently, is a tenet of Buddhism, but here Bloom makes the case from a scientific point of view, and he makes it very well.

"Humans have been outfoxed...by a collective mind far older and nimbler than any we've developed to this point--the 3.5-billion-year-old global microbial brain." (p. 115) What Bloom is asserting here and throughout the book is that bacteria constitute a superorganism with an intelligence superior to ours that expresses itself through its complex chemistry and tactile behavior.

"...[T]he brain we think belongs solely to our kind achieves its goals by tapping the data banks of eagles, wheat, sheep, rodents, grasses, viruses, and lowly E. coli." (p. 220) This dovetails with "We are modules of a planetary mind..." (p. 219) and "the global brain...is a multispecies thing" (p. 216), and the final line in the text, "We are neurons of this planet's interspecies mind." (p. 223)

In short, this is one heck of a book. And I'm just talking about the text, which is written in a spirited--sometimes even giddy--style that is infectious and thoroughly engaging. There are 66 pages of footnotes and a 62-page bibliography listing perhaps 500 titles. Some of footnotes contain multiple references, and of course there are errors. It is clear, for example, that human class did not exist 25 million years ago (as is asserted on page 148). When one looks at Bloom's footnote for the assertion, one realizes that he probably meant 25 thousand years ago. The point here is that we shouldn't be put off by all of his references. Those references allow us to check on his facts and gauge his interpretations. And, were any of us to actually read all of the approximately 500 titles he lists, I think we could at the very least apply for our own special ivory tower and some kind of honorary degree.

Bottom line: read this book.

Perhaps due to being of a more artistic than scientific persuasion I found Howard Blooms work led me pleasantly by the hand to peer through a development of our universe without isolating me in a quagmire of bewildering scientific theory. Rather it kept my interest by way of its entertaining and humorously creative examples.

The intriguing concept of a collective learning machine defined by the participation of five different elements – (“conformity enforcers” , “diversity generators”, “inner-judges”, “resource shifters”, and finally “intergroup tournaments”) had my appetite whetted for what was to come.

Bloom then poetically drags the reader through a myriad of examples supporting mass mind concept by touching on everything from the biological warfare of sea sponges to the social structure of bees, ants, chimps, and humans; each example illuminating the reader with new insights into the complex and fascinating living universe we share.

From here Bloom makes observations regarding the history of human culture, its spirituality, and the potential successes and dangers it faces within the tournaments of the mass-mind. Blooms angle challenged me to review my understanding of what I called social reality and helped me peel away some of the chaff that encapsulates what he refers to as part of the mass halucination.

This book is one of those books that you can open up at any page and become absorbed, and refreshingly makes a scientific approach seem exciting and poetic. Whether convinced by Blooms conclusions or not, the book cannot help but leave one feeling a new sense of awe and wonder for the peculiarly detailed universe we share. On a personal level, this book enlightens the reader into new perspectives of the collective world that ultimately can be related to the purpose and identity of the self.

Howard Bloom is knitting up the once painful fissure between science and religion, and in my belief, is one of those heralding in the new age which will further deepen our understanding, appreciation and participation within nature for the coming zeitgeist; and, not a moment too soon.

My copy - ( now a little battered ) has been borrowed by both friends and family, and has been enjoyed by all!

Bloom's thesis starts off with the tenuous argument that sub-atomic particles and the birth of the cosmos is a product of some social imperative. He tells us neutrons have a burning need to have "inorganic copulation" with protons. It sounds like dear old Freud is alive and well inside the Cyclotron.

Bloom goes as far as saying the Big Bang was some kind of love-in, with the subatomic particles courting each other. No mention of the mutual annihilation of matter and anti-matter that most cosmologists now consider occurred in the early moments of creation. It was a little bit of surplus matter that went on to form our universe.

The "Global Brain" is one of those books that cover the fuzzy area between the natural sciences and the social "sciences". Bloom's writing style makes his work accessible to the average reader. Following his book requires no specialist knowledge, with his arguments being carried more by the attractive prose style, rather than the coherence of the logic. This style of writing when dealing with these topics has some risky tendencies. When Bloom anthropomorphises primitive life forms he is voyaging very close to the shady world of pseudo-science.

When Bloom advances the evolutionary clock to comment on the progress of human civilization we get immersed into the dubious world of "cultural studies" where subjective value judgements become dominant. Attributes such as the degree of violence in a society is used to explain the rise and fall of great civilizations such as Ancient Greece and Rome. When the best efforts of modern social scientists (and diplomats)can't solve contemporary ills of the human condition then you have to be sceptical about social commentaries and the lessons learnt from the conflicts between ancient Athens and Sparta.

Howard Bloom argues that modern man is a victim of some mass hypnosis, and that our perceptions of reality are in large part a "shared hallucination". This sounds like some dubious high brow version of the UFO school of cosmology.

To put some structure around his hypotheses Bloom invokes the technobabble term "Complex Adaptive Systems", which we are lead to believe underpins learning machines or intelligent networks. He proposes five characteristics of such systems, namely, conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resources shifters and intergroup tournaments. At one point he calls these five elements his "Pentagram". Together with his futurist's crystal ball this contrived analysis verges on the world of hocus-pocus.

Like all good academics his book is well endowed with footnotes and a bibliography. In fact they take up 150 pages of this 370-page book. It's a shame that he does not check the credibility and veracity of many of his citations. On page 59 we have the "in the wild" aggression of chimpanzees throwing stones at tigers. It's a shame that tigers are only found in Asia and chimps are restricted to Africa. That chimp had a strong arm! It's this sort of sloppiness that gives the behavioural sciences a bad name. The recent imbroglio over the anthropological studies of the Yanomamo Indians in the Amazon jungle is a product of such ill-disciplined research.

Bloom's book claims to cover the "Evolution of the Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century". We are given endless details on the sex-life of Archaeozoic primitive life forms and gory descriptions of pornographic Neolithic cave paintings (p103 -104). The flowering of western civilization in the past 500 years with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the last 150 years of technology development is dismissed in a few flimsy chapters. Surely if there is a Global Brain emerging the best evidence would be seen in the work of Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Our Italian seer is dismissed by Bloom in a few lines as an improver of telescopes, whereas Isaac and Albert don't rate a mention in his book at all.

The weakness of Bloom's arguments is in his emphasis on collectivism and conformism as the main factor underpinning his intelligent machines. Although acknowledging individualism and creativity as being part of his system, those eccentrics and renegades who dare to go outside the comfort of the city-mass culture-hive are generally dismissed as forces counter to the advancement of the social machine.

Bloom seems to endorse the mentality of the mob. He gives himself away when describing the maverick ants (p38) who go hunting for new food sources away from the colony. Bloom says they merely "stumble" on food, they don't explore systematically or work rationally towards their discoveries. This behaviour which can result in saving the colony from starvation is done by individual trailblazers, not by the "mass mind" of the collective machine.

It is tempting to accept Bloom's position that the interconnected collective intelligence of a tribe/society/culture/nation is the prime driver of human advancement. One test of his hypothesis would be to look at the most dynamic and successful contemporary societies.

Outcasts and renegades founded the United States, with individualism and risk taking being seen as admirable qualities. The irony is that the most obvious external expression of a modern society is its mass media. Are we to judge the US as an intelligent "Complex Adaptive System" from the typical output of the entertainment industry? Alternatively, should we look at the quirky contributions of web-connected cyber-geeks (eg. peer-to-peer Napsterites) who are pushing the bounds of human ingenuity and arguably building truly global intelligent machines?

Bloom weaves his way on a convolute voyage along the paths already well worn by followers of Darwin, Marx and Freud. Despite his many tenuous arguments and his histrionic style Bloom may just be right after all. The real test will be when the Global Brain takes up chess.