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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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