    62

    The Lucifer Principle

    Over 200 billion red blood cells a day die in the interests of keeping

    you alive.162  Do you anguish over their demise?  Like those red corpuscles,

    you and I are cells in a social superorganism whose maintenance and growth

    sometimes requires our pain or elimination, suppresses our individuality

    and restricts our freedom.  Why, then, is it of any value to us?

    Because the superorganism nourishes every cell within it, allowing a

    robustness none of its individual components could achieve on its own.

    Take, for example, the Mediterranean superbeast known as the Roman

    Empire.  Rome was an evil creature with a despicable lust for cruelty.  Julius

    Caesar, according to Plutarch, "took by storm more than 800 cities, subdued

    300 nations and fought pitched battles at various times with three million

    men, of whom he destroyed one million in the actual fighting and took

    another million prisoners."163  Caesar did not carry out these deeds with

    kindliness.  When he leveled enemy cities, he occasionally killed off every

    man, woman and child164 just to teach would-be resisters a lesson.

    The affluent folks back in the home city of Rome were even hungrier

    for the sight of blood.  Their favorite recreation was an afternoon at the

    Coliseum watching desperate captives disembowel each other in the arena.

    Roman sports fans took bets on which contestant would manage to live until

    nightfall.

    The governors sent out to rule the Roman provinces periodically lost

    their tolerance for non-conformists.  They crucified a back-country preacher

    of peace and humility named Jesus because his views disagreed with the

    standard-issue dogmas approved by imperial authority.  But the former

    carpenter was only one of thousands who twisted for hours, hanging by nails

    from a crude wooden beam.

    Rome stamped out or swallowed entire rival civilizations.  She even

    reduced the land she most revered-- Greece--to a sleepy, sycophantic

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