    2

    The Invisible World As A Weapon

    Humans rally around ideas because they solve some of our

    problems, because they offer the biological blessings of the illusion of

    control, and because they are the threads that hold us together in the

    vast network of a superorganismic mind, weaving scattered

    individuals into a cooperative beast of awesome power and size.

    But webs of ideas also do more.  As hungry replicators eager to

    remold the world, they often turn their ultimate weapon--the

    superorganism--into a killing machine.  And, contrary to the doctrines

    of some modern critics, they do not engage in this "hegemonic

    imperialism" only in the malevolent west.

    Two hundred years after the fall of Rome, a merchant named

    Mohammed lived in the desert town of Mecca, a bleak and isolated

    community on a caravan route over which passed camels carrying

    goods to far-off, elegant cities like Damascus.1  At the age of twelve,

    when he was an apprentice to his uncle--a trader-- Mohammed had

    made his first trip to cosmopolitan Syria to learn the export/import

    business.  When he reached 25, Mohammed married a well-to-do

    woman of 40 and became a respectable, wealthy burgher, a man whose

    opinions were listened to.

    But all that changed when Mohammed reached a mid-life crisis

    at 39.  He began to have visions.  He'd been sitting in a cave in the

    mountains one day, he said, praying in solitude, when the angel

    Gabriel had appeared in a blinding light, grabbed him in a bear hug,

    and forced him to read a message from God.  Since then, claimed

    Mohammed, he'd been functioning as God's spokesman on earth.2

    Some modern scholars feel that Mohammed's visions may have

    been the result of epileptic fits.3    The  citizens  of  Mecca  would  have

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