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    the

    size of a cantaloupe.  It's millions of those tiny masses, meshing

    through hundreds of forms of contact every single day.

    The sense of helplessness that immobilizes an individual who

    has lost his feeling of control, and the flood of endorphins that

    disconnect the mind and immune system are both manifestations of

    the superorganismic mechanisms that turn a human society into a

    learning machine.  So are the sense of despair that made a toppled

    Russian leader feel like putting a gun to his head, or an unemployed

    husband in the early 1930s end his life.  All represent the loosening of

    connections to elements that aren't making a contribution.

    When a bullet goes through the heart of a human being, a

    delicate interaction ceases--a set of relationships between cells.  Life

    ends.17  The unseen element that we sometimes call the soul has

    disappeared.  The set of interactions that gives a social group its shape,

    the invisible web of connectedness that knits together a society, the

    network of structures that make a culture, these are forces whose

    power transcends the existence of any mere individual.  These are the

    social organism's soul.

    Evolution is not just a competition between individuals.  It is a

    competition between networks, between webs, between group souls.

    The new forms evolving on the face of this planet are not resident only

    in the features of individual animals or men.  They don't merely consist

    of longer legs or bigger brains.  The new forms are impalpable and

    invisible.  They consist of the varieties of cooperation that grow up

    between solitary creatures-- the unseen ties that bind those creatures

    together into a larger unit.  They consist of the entelechy, the shape not

    of the parts, but of the sum of the parts.

    When Japan and the United States battle for economic

    supremacy, when the Crusaders of Christendom march off to

    challenge the Empire of Islam, or even when rival groups of Red

    Guards clash, the struggle is not a battle of men, but a battle of

    networks, learning machines bound together by memes, testing their

    shapes against each other.  From a history filled with these contests, the

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