2
The Invisible World As A Weapon
Humans rally around ideas because they solve some of our
problems, because they offer the biological blessings of the illusion of
control, and because they are the threads that hold us together in the
vast network of a superorganismic mind, weaving scattered
individuals into a cooperative beast of awesome power and size.
But webs of ideas also do more.  As hungry replicators eager to
remold the world, they often turn their ultimate weapon--the
superorganism--into a killing machine.  And, contrary to the doctrines
of some modern critics, they do not engage in this "hegemonic
imperialism" only in the malevolent west.
Two hundred years after the fall of Rome, a merchant named
Mohammed lived in the desert town of Mecca, a bleak and isolated
community on a caravan route over which passed camels carrying
goods to far-off, elegant cities like Damascus.1  At the age of twelve,
when he was an apprentice to his uncle--a trader-- Mohammed had
made his first trip to cosmopolitan Syria to learn the export/import
business.  When he reached 25, Mohammed married a well-to-do
woman of 40 and became a respectable, wealthy burgher, a man whose
opinions were listened to.
But all that changed when Mohammed reached a mid-life crisis
at 39.  He began to have visions.  He'd been sitting in a cave in the
mountains one day, he said, praying in solitude, when the angel
Gabriel had appeared in a blinding light, grabbed him in a bear hug,
and forced him to read a message from God.  Since then, claimed
Mohammed, he'd been functioning as God's spokesman on earth.2
Some modern scholars feel that Mohammed's visions may have
been the result of epileptic fits.3    The  citizens  of  Mecca  would  have
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