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Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century Paperback – August 1, 2001
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Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a ""grand vision,"" says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.
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"With this bold vision of evolution and human behavior, Bloom has raced ahead to explore possibilities that the timid scientific herd may well be forced to follow."--David Sloan Wilson, Coauthor of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
"Filled with scientific firsts."--Elizabeth Loftus, past president, American Psychological Society
"I doubt there is any stronger intellect than Bloom's on the planet."--Joseph Chilton Pierce
"A soaring song of songs about the amorous origins of the world and its almost medieval urge to copulate."--Kevin Kelly, Editor-at-Large, Wired
"A superbly written and totally original argument. . . . A must-read."--Robin Fox, coauthor of The Imperial Animal
"As someone who has spent forty years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement."--David Smillie, Duke University
"Howard Bloom is next on a very short list that includes Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Buckminster Fuller."--Richard Metzger
"Howard Bloom may be the new Stephen Hawking."--Aaron Hicklin, Gear
"You have not lived until you have interacted with Howard Bloom."--James Brody, organizer of the "Healing the Moral Animal" seminars
"Bloom's concept of collective information processing may startle skeptical readers with its explanatory power."--Publishers Weekly
"I am awestruck."--Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus, Coercion, and Ecstasy Club
About the Author
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTrade Paper Press
- Publication dateAugust 1, 2001
- Dimensions6.58 x 1.05 x 8.86 inches
- ISBN-100471419192
- ISBN-13978-0471419198
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Product details
- Publisher : Trade Paper Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0471419192
- ISBN-13 : 978-0471419198
- Item Weight : 1.09 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.58 x 1.05 x 8.86 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #143,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Organic Evolution
- #142 in General Anthropology
- #432 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

"I know a lot of people. A lot. And I ask a lot of prying questions. But I've never run into a more intriguing biography than Howard Bloom's in all my born days. What's so striking, besides the you-gotta-be-kidding details, is the coherence of the narrative -- the arc that still has Bloom thinking and striving with regard to space, science, transcendence, and simple clarity, 55 years later. Sweet." Paul Solman, Business and Economics Correspondent, PBS NewsHour
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Howard Bloom has been called "the Darwin, Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st Century" by Britain's Channel4 TV and "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine.
Bloom calls his field "mass behavior" and explains that his area of study includes everything from the mass behavior of quarks to the mass behavior of human beings. He is the founder of three international scientific groups: The Group Selection Squad (started in 1995), The International Paleopsychology Project (1997), and The Space Development Steering Committee (2007), which has included Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to set foot on the moon), and decision makers from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Air Force. And he's the founder of a mass-communications volunteer group that gets across scientific ideas using animation, The Big Bang Tango Media Lab (started in 2001).
Bloom comes from the world of cosmology, theoretical physics, and microbiology. But he did 20 years of fieldwork in the world of business and popular culture, where he tested his hypotheses in the real world. In 1968 Bloom turned down four graduate fellowships in physiological psychology and embarked on what he calls his Voyage of the Beagle, an expedition to the dark underbelly where new myths, new historical movements, and new shifts in mass emotion are made.
The result: Bloom generated $28 billion in revenues (more than the gross domestic product of Oman or Luxembourg) for companies like Sony, Disney, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, and Warner Brothers. He accomplished this by taking profits out of the picture and focusing on passion and soul. He applied the same principle to star-making, helping build the careers of figures like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, John Mellencamp, Queen, Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run DMC, and roughly 100 others. Bloom also plunged into social causes. He helped Launch Farm Aid and Amnesty International in the United States, created two educational programs for the Black community, put together the first public-service radio advertising campaign for solar energy, and co-founded the leading national music anti-censorship movement in the United States, an organization that went toe-to-toe with Al Gore's wife Tipper and with the religious extremists manipulating her.
A former visiting scholar in the Graduate Psychology Department at New York University and a former Core Faculty Member at The Graduate Institute in two fields--Conscious Evolution and Organizational Leadership--Bloom is the author of six books: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"--The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"--The New Yorker), How I Accidentally Started The Sixties ("a monumental, epic, glorious literary achievement." Timothy Leary), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable."James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich), and The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Gave You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram--or How Muhammad Invented Jihad (“a terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam,” David Swindle, PJ Media).
But Bloom's chef d'oeuvre is a project of the kind that normally only lunatics undertake, the 8,200 chapters of what he unabashedly calls "The Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul." Pavel Kurakin of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow says that with the Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul, "Bloom has created a new Scientific Paradigm. He explains in vast and compelling terms why we should forget all we know in complicated modern math and should start from the very beginning. ...Bloom's Grand Unified Theory... opens a window into entire systems we don't yet know and/or see, new...collectivities that live, love, battle, win and lose each day of our gray lives. I never imagined that a new system of thought could produce so much light."
Concludes Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution's End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, "I have finished Howard Bloom's books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom's on the planet."
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This book is essentially a brief history of life and its interconnectedness coupled with Howard Bloom’s “Global Brain” hypothesis, that we are all part of a sort of a “global brain” encompassing all life. Groups of individuals, animals as well as people, often exhibit intelligent behavior that goes beyond that of the individual as if their “brain power” is extended across multiple individuals as they communicate. He gives some astonishing examples of how animals can learn and adapt as a group even though individuals don't have the brain power to do so. Bees can learn and can make intelligent decisions as a group in ways they cannot do as individuals. Even germs form colonies and networks of colonies that exhibit some surprisingly intelligent behavior. The colony, packs, tribes, and groups, are in themselves intelligent "super brains".
Howard Bloom describes and analyses evolution from a communications perspective. He believes in group evolution and rejects the “selfish gene” hypothesis as the sole explanation for what is driving evolution, which might be somewhat controversial. He identifies five basic principles of the complex adaptive system of any group. The first one is "conformity enforcement". Every society and group, human or not, enforces conformity, sometimes ruthlessly, for the sake unity, group identity, and the effectiveness of the group. The second one, "diversity generators", are needed in times of change or when new opportunities appear, or when the group needs to evolve. The third is "inner judges", which are factors which are inherited factors which determines whether we are needed or not, and if not, causes us to become depressed, or sick, or even to commit suicide. Some people are unfortunately born with relentless "inner judges". The fourth is "resource shifters" which shifts resources away from those who are not needed to those who are. The fifth one is "intergroup tournaments" which is used to perpetuate the most effective group or individual(s). These are often held between groups that are close genetically. In fact 150 millions of us killed a sister or a brother as fetuses while in the womb, we just don't know that we did.
The book also touches on human society. Bloom claims that the mass mind needs its internationalists, cross-cultural floaters, homosexuals, explorers, introverts and oddballs to continue to prosper, invent and adjust. At the same time conformity enforcers like religious and political fundamentalists constantly threaten to crush human freedom and achievement. The fundamentalists invent boogey men/enemies to rally around and it is quite effective. Diversity generators are needed for prosperity and expansion and conformity enforcers are needed to create unified action to stave off existential threats. Overall the book promotes the diversity generators for modern human society.
I found Howard Bloom’s arguments to be both plausible and supported by good evidence, at the same time as I am somewhat cautious in fully embracing his world view. Reading this book was an intellectual adventure at the same time as it was also somewhat depressing. It was well written and well organized and full of both delightful and disturbing ideas. It is one of those books that make you view the world a little differently after reading it. I highly recommend this book.
Incredible!
Howard's original book The Lucifer principle still stands on my list of things that everyone could read to better themselves.
The Art of War
Lucifer Principle
The Naked Capitalist
This book will most likely be added to this list once I give it another read. One thing I will say, however, is that Mr. Bloom's writing has improved in both it's impact and delivery.
I rank this with books like Guns, Germs & Steel in it's explanatory power.





