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    sculptor carving a figure from stone, nature creates by destroying.  Her

    hammer and chisel strike over and over again.  Each time there is a shower of

    chips.  And as the splinters pile up on the floor, a new form emerges where

    the blade has been at work.  The sculptor at the end of his day simply sweeps

    away the heaps of useless dust and shards of stone.  So does nature.  But

    those discarded scraps in the natural workshop are the bodies of creatures

    who moments before were alive, creatures like you and me.

    Nature creates by placing her inventions in competition with each

    other.  In the world of humans, the bloodiest of these contests is between

    social groups.  The voice of our meme's ambition tells us to pound our rivals

    into submission and force them into servitude--servitude to the cluster of

    ideas that sits at our culture's core.

    The hunger of the superorganism  and the ambition of the meme trap

    us in a moral dilemma.  Violence is the most appalling of human expressions.

    Yet we cannot wish our way to peace.  We cannot lash each other with

    lectures, pound our chests with guilt, and voluntarily throw away our arms.

    We live in a threatening world--a world of other human beings very much

    like ourselves.  And like us, our fellow humans are dangerous.

    There is one small consolation in this grim picture.  Snapping and

    snarling at each other may be automatic, but holding, caring and

    collaborating are built into us too.  In one Harvard study, a group of

    experimental subjects was shown a film.  Watching the footage actually

    boosted immune system activity.  The nature of the healing cinematic piece?

    A documentary on Mother Theresa, who has centered her life on helping

    others.  The mere sight of a work focused on kindness triggered a deeply

    buried response in the human brain.171

    We desperately need each other.  And in that need is hope.

    We must invent a way in which memes and their superorganismic

    carriers--nations and subcultures--can compete without carnage.  We may

    find a clue to that path in science.  A scientific system is one in which small

      But there is a dark side to this movement toward the light.  Like a

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