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    Meanwhile, the head of the class-purity-oriented group that had

    systematically tortured Gao Yuan and his friends for over a year became

    a member of a trucking company.  The leader of Gao Yuan's more liberal

    Red Guard Brigade disappeared for many years.  He resurfaced only

    when China began the modern economic reform that allows a measure

    of entrepreneurial freedom.  Today the former Red Guard leader once

    again uses the ability to organize others that helped him marshal his

    fierce young army of students.  He founds successful capitalist enter-

    prises.

    Only one person really got what he wanted from the Chinese

    Cultural Revolution: Mao Zedong.  When it was all over, he had driven

    his opponents from their roosts and regained control of China.15

    But the Chinese Cultural Revolution had unleashed the most

    primitive and appalling human instincts, providing a clue to the

    biological machinery that leads us into war and violence.

    The formerly shy and well-behaved teenagers caught up in the

    Chinese Cultural Revolution pulled together in tight clusters.  The signal

    that drew them together was altruism of ideology.  Once their groups

    had been formed, ideology served a second purpose.  It became a

    weapon, an excuse for lashing out at rival groups, a justification for

    murder, torture and humiliation.

    Within their tight gangs, the Chinese teens loved each other.  Their

    loyalty to their comrades and to their master--Chairman Mao--was

    ferocious.  But when they turned their attention to outsiders--the folks

    they labeled as counter-revolutionaries--their feelings were different.

    Toward those beyond their tiny circle they radiated only hatred.  And

    they treated those they despised with remorseless brutality.

    The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a microcosm of the forces

    that manipulate human history.  It showed how the insubstantial things

    we call ideas can trigger the loftiest idealism and the basest cruelty.  And

    it demonstrated how under the urge to heroism and commitment to the

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