The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History Paperback – March 13, 1997

Reading the widely divergent views expressed about this book makes me smile. Is Bloom completely correct? No. But neither is any other author I have read. Is he all washed up and shallow? Not unless his style offends you so you reject everything he has to say from the outset. He can a bit harsh on his views on religion and I know of many people who would 'throw the baby out with the bath' due to this. Some of the 1 star reviews below probably bubbled up from this well. And some admit to never having read the book! So from the outset I would say, read it and make up your own mind.My recommendation of 5 stars is because Bloom forces you to think. You may not agree with him, and you may certainly disagree with some of his more forcefully stated conclusions about some groups, but if you are open enough to listen to some arguments which challenge most of what we have been brought up to believe (and therefore becomes what filters what we read), reading this will give you plenty to think about. Personally, I enjoy being forced to think and look at the world in ways that are different and challenging, even if I wind up rejecting their positions. In this, Bloom succeeds wonderfully. Just the vociferousness of some of the reviews below show that, if nothing else, he forced people to think, even if they rejected his views. Just be aware that he sometimes allows his opinions on some things become so strongly stated that if you are a member of the particular group he is lambasting, you may well be offended. Then again, sometimes it is hard to see or admit to the truth when `inside' the group.On that front, some reviewers comment on his offensive references to Muslims and Indians, although I find him is equally harsh on fundamentalists of all stripes, including Christians. I extrapolate Bloom's thesis to essentially warn all of us that ANY group's ideals which help it survive and become successful versus other groups risks becoming the group's foundational beliefs that can, in turn, build barriers to competing thoughts and is capable of doing evil in defense of those ideals. Does he overstate the case for some groups and understate for others? Yeah, probably he does. But that should not, a priori, relegate the theory to the trash heap in its entirety. I, personally, would cite some of our preemptive US policies and actions over the years as serving to validate his theory in a very uncomfortable and unpleasant manner.Bloom's theory, on the whole, attacks our desire to believe in a 'paradise lost,' where ancient civilizations lived in oneness with the land and their neighbors. He attacks the popular notion that most of the world's evils are due to modern civilization and posits instead that they are a part of our nature. And if you take his ideas objectively, strip out the rhetoric which may offend, you might end up, as I do, seeing each of us as being personally responsible for trying to bring about more openness between people, groups and societies.One final note: I loved this book because it forced me to think, even where I disagreed with Bloom or found him overbearing. If you enjoy this type of mental challenge, my other long time favorite that contains some outright errors and problems, but forces you to think and perhaps enables you to view the world in new ways is Julian Jaynes' 'The Origin of Consciousness'. This was widely criticized by his peers, in part because it challenges so many deeply ingrained beliefs and in part because it does extrapolate some things beyond their usefulness as Bloom can be accused of. But both Bloom and Jaynes also are rejected by some because they have the audacity to paint an entire grand theory or worldview that differs from the 'tabla rosa' of western philosophies and religious teachings we are all raised with.Take a chance. Read them both!(Okay, one more final note. Before some of the reviewers paint me as only a reader of `Tom Clancy novels' as one reviewer wrote to castigate those who liked this book, I admit to reading Clancy and other fun novelists. But I also read many more history, physics, anthropology, archaeology, genetics, cosmology and other books in various scientific and factual realms. And Bloom's book is one of the first in a very long time that had me writing notes to myself while I was reading so that I could follow them up with further research! So even if he is wrong on every point, which he is not, it was still well worth the effort!)

That we are almost by design always trying to displace some other culture from the top of the heap is disquieting but Bloom's well-researched history of the world is thought provoking. I'd like him to be wrong but I worry that he is right.Research in psychology that shows posing an external enemy to a group creates cohesion lends support to what he proposes though he does not address the psychological factors. . It works in gangs and in running a business and in war.If he's right, every country falls and another will displace it and his well-researched history gives much credence to that idea. I'm not convinced his solution of conquering outer space will solve that problem on earth but it at least provided direction away from the inevitable up and downs of countries and empires.Most scary for those of us in the U.S. is he shows some of the internal turmoil now showing here was often predictive of an empire's slide to the end. Of all the history, I found the evolution of the caste system in India the most enlightening.

"Their prosperity," writes Howard Bloom, "depended on the fact that they were ahead of any other country in the commercial utilization of technology". Their fall, he continues, came when the British "grew fat with prosperity" and ignored three basic facts: "a) every technological breakthrough eventually grows old; (b) new innovations arrive to replace it; and c) the country that dominates these new technologies often rules the world".In The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Exploration Into the Forces of History, Howard Bloom covers topics ranging from the biological basis for human evil to the rise and fall of the British Empire. The "Lucifer" in the book's title - the fallen angel of the Bible - is a literary reference in a well-researched work which contends that "evil is woven into our most biological fabric". Although Bloom consigns technological complacency to a less prominent place in the text, his brief history of British industry is instructive.Don't mistake this installment of "The Y Files" as a bit of post-Independence Day Britain-bashing. It's not. After all, Bloom's discussion of national complacency comes in a chapter called "The Victorian Decline and the Fall of America", an eight-page tract which warns that "when hot new innovations come out of American labs, no American company scoops them up and turns them into the gadgets of tomorrow."As evidence, Howard Bloom notes that while Bell Labs invented the transistor in the 1940s, Japanese companies made their fortunes by selling transistorized televisions in the decades that followed. American companies also invented the videocassette recorder (VCR), flat panel display (FPD), and amorphous crystal solar panels. Once again, however, Asian companies reaped the financial rewards.So what about the rise and fall of Britain's technological empire? Bloom begins this part of his study with a discussion of coal tar - a byproduct of efforts to use coal for lighting, and to find a synthetic equivalent to malaria-fighting quinine. Although a British chemist named William Perkin discovered coal tar's use as a cloth dye, Bloom writes that "British industrialists turned up their noses at his discovery." German companies did not, however, and soon built a dye business that formed the kernel of that nation's chemical industry.Britain also ignored opportunities in electricity and steel. Although "some of the greatest physicists of the age" worked in British labs, the electrifying discoveries of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell were maximized by the Germans and the Americans. The first electricity-generating plant in Britain was built by an American, Thomas Edison. By the time the Ohio native's British-born rival, Sir Coutts Lindsay, built his own power station, the alternators had to be imported from a German firm - Siemens. As for steel, the stuff of skyscrapers and weaponry, a Scottish-born American named Andrew Carnegie produced more of it than all of Britain by 1902.So is the United States technologically complacent and in state of decline, an empire whose scientists still make great discoveries, but whose industrialists lack the vision to apply them? Bloom's 1995 book is dated, a product of a time when "Japan, Inc." put fear in the heart of American industry. Also, whereas German industrialists once built a chemical industry out of British-trained recruits, the United States remains a magnet for foreign-born students and scientists. Plus, modern industries are multinational or transnational, providing jobs from Michigan to Mississippi.

very interesting albeit depressingly accurate

O livro aborda o tema de maneira simples e trás o conhecimento de forma eficaz. Worth Reading.Donot miss it

This book will leave you with understandings that will change your life. By giving a cold, rational outlook on relationships and structures of power, you will no longer be so defeated by your own illusions. A great read and a great lesson on life itself.

Approach this book with an open mind and you will find that the filters you view the world through will have changed shape once you have completed it.Next to Illuminatus!, I have never read a book that fundamentally changed the way I think like The Lucifer Principle. If you consider yourself a serious thinker on politics, sociology, biology, evolution, or psychology, then this book will demonstrate how many of your assumptions about the world just might be a bit misguided. Or it might just confirm your suspicions that many of the things you've been told are wrong.After reading this, I found that I could do nothing but tell everyone I know about it, and get into lively discussions based upon the content of this book. There is hardly a day that goes by where I haven't thought about what this book contains (and it has been a year since I read it.)And Howard Bloom is the only person I've ever written fan mail to.

Really clever man offering a new way of seeing society as a whole.