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Worldviews As The Welding Torch of the Hierarchical Chain
"Philosophers are men hired by the well-to-do to prove that
everything is alright."
                Brooks Adams, brother of Henry Adams,
                  to Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes
Poetry, science, ideology and religion--the blindmen's canes with
which we feel out the invisible world, the glue that binds us together as
a collective creature whose cells are individual souls--help stir the
social beast to a pecking-order inspired cannibalism.  And once the
battle is over, the meal is complete, and the rival society is no more,
poetry, ideology and religion may serve a new purpose.  They often
become the torch that welds the citizens of the swallowed loser into a
new pecking order.  They help turn captive chunks of the vanquished
group into parts of the superorganism that sits there licking its lips.
Take, for example, Hinduism.  The Hindu religion has seemed to
its admirers in the west a profoundly spiritual view of the world.  It
rejects materialism, lays aside earthly desires, tells its adherents to go
with the flow, to accept the world as it is, to build up a positive karma
and strive for nirvana in a selfless world.  What could possibly be more
benign?
But under the surface, the Hindu religion is not what at first it
seems.  In fact, it is the device with which one conquering group
managed to validate its theft of power, prestige, and goods from a rival
superorganism.
In approximately 1,500 B.C., a cluster of Aryans drove their herds
of cattle from Iran to northern India through the Hindu Kush
mountains.  These were men who centered their lives around two
things: their cows and their fighting.  So inextricably were the two
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