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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