Global Brain Quotes

“The five elements of the complex adaptive system are conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“The early-twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinker Carl Jung, says Kagan, originated the concept of introverted and extroverted personalities. Jung also believed that each had a slightly different brain structure.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Some of us are born with inner-judges whose verdicts are perpetually harsh. The result is depression, shyness, and heightened susceptibility to pain. Others arrive from the womb with inner-judges preset to treat us generously, endowing us with energy, few inhibitions, a deep sense of security, and little sense of guilt or shame.9 But most of us are in the middle—our inner-judges sentence us sternly or magnanimously depending on the snugness with which we fit our social network’s needs.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“From the beginning, we’ve been yanked together by the tug of sociality. Three and a half billion years ago, our earliest cellular ancestors, bacteria, evolved in colonies. Each bacterium couldn’t live without the comfort of rubbing against its neighbors.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“The journal Science went so far as to predict that farmers might go from eking out pennies in old-style agriculture to making a handsome profit in the twenty-first century by turning their efforts to “pharming” 40—raising pharmaceutical-producing herds and crops.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Sponge cells sieved apart frantically regain their hold by constructing fresh communities. Chimps and rhesus monkeys clump together on the basis of similarity. Displaced humans find common ground by rallying around a common sentiment, a shared sense of experience, a point of connection whose expression offers hope and certainty. When the formulae of the center prove powerless to save one’s soul from chaos, the new hypotheses to which men cling may be peculiar “truths” which come from the periphery.33 Often these beliefs stress the Spartan fist instead of Athenian creativity.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Human groups in times of trouble stiffen up their unity,12 squelch ideas,13 rally ‘round their leaders,14 and spit out those who fail to ape the top dog faithfully. Group members project their own forbidden emotions onto others, and in their ferocity become enforcers for the group’s norms. They spot the smallest sin among their fellows and punish it intolerantly.15 In biology, emergency measures like these have a tendency to cut two ways. In short jolts they produce bursts of power. But used in the long run, they destroy.16 The oneness which gives society the punch of a bayonet produces over the course of time a paralyzing rigidity.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Here was an arch lesson in the games subcultures play. Reality is a mass hallucination. We gauge what’s real according to what others say. And others, like us, rein in their words, caving in to timidity. Thanks to conformity enforcement and to cowardice, a little power goes a long, long way.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“The Athenian strategy moves to the top when things are going well. Spartanism grabs the throne when the world is going to hell.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Ling’s electrostatically connected water molecules sheathing long, thin protein braids are as easily swayed as Carlyle’s sheeplike critics—a little influence applied in the right place goes a long, long way. Each water molecule shifts the interior balance of its neighbors’ electrons, and every water molecule is able to pivot its electrostatic charge. The result is a typical crowd response: when conditions change, every molecule of H20 swivels in the same direction. The result, in Ling’s words, is a “functionally coherent and discrete cooperative assembly.” If a relatively small but insistent molecule called a cardinal adsorbent*48 steps up to one of the many podiums (docking sites) along the protein chain, it galvanizes attention, making all the water molecules swivel their “heads”—the polarity of the electrons in their shells—simultaneously. This changes the chemical properties of the assembled multitude dramatically.49 But, hey, that’s life—quite literally. When the molecular crowd disperses, a cell is dead.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Says Ling, “Jell-O is almost all water and yet in Jell-O, water can ‘stand up’ as no normal pure liquid water ever can. This ability of the water in Jell-O to stand—which ice can also—indicates that the water-to-water interaction in the Jell-O water has been altered by the only other component present, gelatin.” The key to this transformation, according to Ling, is the material from which gelatin is made—collagen, a protein which pulls coats of water molecules around itself as if it were dressing in layer after layer of winter clothes.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Robert Hooke was a member of another which had used the mails to go intercontinental—the British Royal Society. Hooke picked up on Galileo’s innovations, built his own telescope, used it to discover a new star in Orion and to sketch the planet Mars, then turned it on its head, transforming it into a microscope with which he could examine the invisible intricacies of snowflakes, mosquitoes, feathers, and fungi. He hit the jackpot when he pointed his lenses at a slice of cork, for here he spotted what he described in his best-selling book Micrographia as “the first microscopical pores I ever saw.” Because they reminded him of the chambers in which monks slept, Hooke called these microrooms cells.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“At the same time, Europe’s long-dead postal service was resumed. Now Erasmus could become a snail-mail junkie, using a stream of letters24 to unite a community of international eccentrics into a movement which downgraded religion’s death ride to heaven and exalted earthly humanity. The moment was appropriate. For the first time since the rise of multicellularity, there was no longer just one global brain but two—one microbial, the other that of man- and womankind.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“crucial turning point. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the human information network finally spanned the planet.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“But a receptor community’s tastes shift rapidly. A “discovery” which was hot stuff an hour ago may now seem cold and boring as can be. Should a receptor strike a form of pay dirt whose provision has become routine, the yell it sends will lose what Cambridge University’s Dennis Bray calls its “infectability”—its ticket to fame and popularity. Other receptor molecules will ignore its “yikes, I found it” almost totally.13 In the struggle for attention, timing is everything.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Pericles’ Golden Age produced the flowering which would lead to Athens’ place in history and would crest in the marble-columned buildings and literary works which cornerstone the civilization of the West.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“At home in Athens, Pericles was pluralism personified. His friends were immigrants from all over the Greek world. He enjoyed gathering them together and taking them to the theater of Dionysus to see the latest exercises in free speech … like tragedies by Euripides which trashed the ancient gods and turned tradition on its head. At the leader’s side were Phidias, the sculptor, Socrates the idea-mincer, Anaxagoras the protoscientist from Clazomenae,8 and Pericles’ mate in sex, childbearing, and enterprise—not his wife, but his mistress, Aspasia, a brilliant Milesian who ran one of the world’s first intellectual salons.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Pythagoras turned his budding cult into exactly what flock-seeking introverts most need—the haven of a tyranny. Ambiguity is a tension-provoker68—and the sheep among introverts go bonkers at the strain. Indecisive grays savage the flockers’ limbic systems, so they desperately need the tranquilizer of a world spelled out in black and white.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“complexity-seeking introverts embrace potentially useful strangers52 whose alien nature tosses their fellow citizens into a tizzy. Complexity-seeking introverts can also calm the rhythms of their brain at times when others panic53—a gift that puts them among those charismatic heroes who keep their heads when all others about them are losing theirs. But the bottom line of complexity-seeking introverts’ success is probably their tenacity. Extroverts jump into diversions glittering with excitement, run through them quickly, and make a slew of mistakes. Introverts are slow and steady. They take on long and monotonous tasks, but make few missteps and plow through to the bitter (or sweet) end.54 Research shows that this sort of persistence is the raw stuff of greatness.55 And greatness is something Faustian introverts frequently achieve.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Extroverts lust the most fervently for money, status, and power,42 but it’s the less-materialistic introverts, of all the ironies, who make the best businessmen and entrepreneurs.43 Business often involves not only risk, but the building of a miniculture. Entrepreneurs, in particular, have to craft a microsociety of employees who champ at the bit to challenge giants … and who can pull it off. There are good reasons complexity-seeking introverts like those discovered by Bryson and Driver do well at such social engineering. First off, they dive eagerly into theory, penetrating the surface to root out cause and effect.44 They also have a flair for left-field solutions to problems which leave more conventional types perplexed.45 And they tend to think with both mind and emotionality. Imaging of their brains shows that when they’re pondering, the cerebral web of feeling called the striatum lights up46 like Tokyo’s Ginza district at midnight.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Introverts break down into two types—the flockbound and the Faustians. Faustians cross the boundaries of the system31 and wrestle with forbidden mysteries.32 Flockers bury themselves in a bevy of others like themselves33 and follow the certainties preached by an authority.34 Faustians take off on odysseys,35 occasionally returning with fresh visions,36 Promethean flames around which to shape subcultural societies. Flockers crowd into the warmth provided by the Faustians’ discoveries”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Foreigners like Zeno—who laid out what would be recognized for thousands of years as the three basic domains of philosophy: logic, ethics, and physics—arrived in Athens from Italy’s Elea carrying the seeds of an intellectual sport for thrill-seeking underexcitables, those whose perpetually parched limbic systems thirsted for neural thrills. Zeno’s contribution was the mental rough-and-tumble Aristotle called the dialectic. Socrates gave this gift a local twist and presented it as his own “Socratic method,” within whose social confines a variety of convention piercers found abode.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Humans are much the same.20 Children whose gifts or disabilities make them seem bizarre, for example, manage to find each other and to congregate.21 Among our kind it’s called validation. Without others on our wavelength the strangeness of our emotions can make us feel we’re losing our minds.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“We mammals are uncannily good at gravitating toward those who share our hidden joys and woes. This talent for emotional homing crops up among beavers, wolves, and even deer.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Kagan feels that in his own way, he has proven Jung right. He’s found that 10 to 15 percent of infants are born with a tendency to be fearful and withdrawn, while another 10 to 15 percent are born with a flair for dauntless spontaneity”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Inner-judges measure our contribution to the social learning machine by two yardsticks: (1) our personal sense of mastery; and (2) the hints we get from those around us telling us whether they want us eagerly or couldn’t care less if we disappeared like a blackhead from the face of decent society.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“When we feel like kicking ourselves around the block or curling up and disappearing, our condemnation comes from inner-judges like guilt and shame. What’s a good deal harder to realize is that behind the scenes our inner-judges sicken us and dumb us down quite literally. If they sense we’re a drag on the collective intelligence, inner-judges downshift our immune system and neurochemically cloud our ability to perceive.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“The basic rule of learning machines is one we’ve already seen: turn on the juice to components which have a grip on the problem at hand and turn off the power to those components which just can’t seem to understand. Inner-judges help decide whether the components in which they reside will be enriched or will be denied, then they aid in carrying out the sentence.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“Our brains differ as much as our bodies. Indeed, they may differ more. One part of the brain, the anterior commissure … varies seven-fold in area between one person and the next. Another part, the massa intermedia…, is not found at all in one in four people. The primary visual cortex can vary three-fold in area. Something called our amygdala (it is responsible for our fears and loves) can vary two-fold in volume—as can something called our hippocampus (involved in memory). Most surprisingly, our cerebral cortex varies in non-learning impaired people nearly two-fold in volume. Dr. John Robert Skoyles”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century

“The Socratic dialogues Plato “chronicled” included those with Protagoras from the Balkan city of Abdera, Hippias from Peloponnesian Elis, Parmenides from Italy’s Elea, and Gorgias from Sicily’s Leontini. Each visiting intellect had been shaped by contact with a unique group of surrounding tribes, and by the exigencies imposed on city structure, domestic habit, and vested interest by distinctive forms of enterprise. One result: each arrival presented a philosophy which appealed to a very different configuration of the human mind.”
― Howard Bloom, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century