    5

    5

    The quick identification of us and them is necessary because the

    competition between superorganisms--whether they're cultures or

    subcultures--can get very serious indeed.  The Israelites Moses had

    gathered would soon be battling Canaanites.  In those campaigns, the

    Hebrews could easily have been wiped out.  Mohammed's followers

    were about to take on the superpowers of the entire western world.  To

    an informed handicapper, the odds of Moslem survival would have

    seemed astonishingly slim.  Lenin's converts would soon kill the czar,

    his wife and his children, exile the aristocrats who had tyrannized

    Russia for centuries, and wipe out the entrepreneurs and successful

    farmers who had fueled the country's rapid economic expansion.

    Meanwhile, in 1917 counter-revolutionaries would mount a bloody civil

    war against the Marxists.  Had they been able to, these adherents of the

    old order would have presided over the Bolsheviks' extermination.

    The battle between social groups is no mere parlor pantomime.  Being

    mistaken for a member of the wrong team can be fatal.

    The battles between groups in a society at peace may be far less

    bloody, but they are no less persistent.   Welfare families want to raise

    their payments.  Middle class folks would like to avoid upping the

    taxes that provide the welfare checks.  Landlords want to raise rents.

    Tenant groups want to lower them.  Rockers want to start a club on the

    corner.  The older couples in the neighborhood want to protect their

    peace and quiet.  Conservatives want to seize more power.  Liberals

    want  to  render  them  powerless.    Men  want  to  avoid  housework.

    Women want them to do more cleaning and mopping.  All are clashes

    between clusters of humans who feel you're either with us or against

    us.  They are battles for turf, like the slow struggles between competing

    clumps of anemones on a rock.

    Within the group of those who wear the markings of the correct

    superorganism, all may be cozy and humane.  But if your markings are

    wrong, watch out!  Bertha Krupp, heiress of the German industrial

    family that armed Hitler's Third Reich, regularly visited Krupp factory

    workers who were ill.  She generously comforted those in need.  Bertha

    saw herself as warm, compassionate and giving.12    But she had no

    compunctions about the fact that her son ran slave camps in which

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