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<DIV><FONT size=2>Dear Howard!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>That's a good account. Please note that K-strategists, by
investing in quality of the individual, can generate superior survivors. Can -
not must! Nothing obligatory here. Historically, Egyptian power was built on
r-strategy. Jewish survival was built on K-strategy. It's one reason this small
group of people has notoriously filled the ranks of the achievers. In India I
ran into obvious differences between casts, with the peasants betting on r-, but
the warrior cast traditionally betting on K. I was amazed at the children of the
latter! R-strategy is cannon-fodder. Of course they will be led by some - tall,
handsome - products of inadvertent K-strategy! They are the real danger, but the
indoctrinated soldier is much less so. Cannon fodder! And deliberately
structured that way. The islamists are yellow with envy about our ways and our
power. Lure their masses into our way of life and the islamists fade. Lets be
strong and able - and devious as hell undermining them. If we bluster, then they
are winning. I would not want to be in Osama's skin!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>China? Yes, there is a real threat and the closer we tie
ourselves down with effective, well policed global government the better off we
are!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Cheers, Val Geist</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il href="mailto:eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il">Eshel
Ben-Jacob</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">The new improved paleopsych list</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, July 23, 2004 4:34 PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the
petri dish--Osama's reproductivestrategy</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Hi,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>I agree with what you have wrote. I am
convinced that if western society will continue </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>along the current approach it will stop
to exist. What will happen then is not clear. You did not talk about China. It
might become the next power and not the Islam.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2>Eshel</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Eshel Ben
Jacob
E-mail: <A
href="mailto:eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il">eshel@tamar.tau.ac.il</A><BR>Professor of
Physics
Home Page: <A
href="http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/">http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/</A><BR>School
of Physics and
Astronomy <BR>The
Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems<BR>Tel Aviv University, 69978
Tel Aviv, Israel<BR>President of the Israel Physical
Society
Visit the IPS on-line
magazine
<BR>
<A href="http://physicaplus.org.il">http://physicaplus.org.il</A><BR>Tel #’s
Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265<BR>Office: 640-7845;
Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; <BR>Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, July 19, 2004 12:15
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] Jihad and the
petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><!--StartFragment -->Bear with me if I posted this before,
but it's something I wrote up for paleopsych that I think was sent
while our listserv was down. Howard <SPAN class=text>
<P class=MsoNormal>Has anyone noticed that the current World War between
militant Islam and the Western Way of Life is actually something so basic
even a bacterium could understand it?<SPAN> </SPAN>It's a battle of
reproductive strategies.<SPAN> </SPAN>Specifically it's a battle of
what population biologists call r and k strategies.<SPAN>
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>One definition of the r strategy is this.<SPAN>
</SPAN>You're up against the threat of a swift and hungry
predator.<SPAN> </SPAN>You mate with as many females as you can, keep
them pregnant constantly, use them as serial baby incubators, and put very
few resources into each child.<SPAN> </SPAN>Why?<SPAN> </SPAN>So
you can have as many kids as possible.<SPAN> </SPAN>The gamble goes
like this.<SPAN> </SPAN>The more kids I shove out there, the more are
likely to survive.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN>The opposite strategy is k.<SPAN>
</SPAN></SPAN>One version of the k strategy (the let's-konserve strategy) is
this.<SPAN> </SPAN>Have very few kids but put a huge investment into
each one.<SPAN> </SPAN>This only works when you can be pretty sure
each kid will survive.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Predators--like wild dogs and large cats--lions, tigers,
cheetahs--top of the food-chain dominators--tend to use the k
strategy.<SPAN> </SPAN>They don't have to face death at the hands of
bigger enemies, but do have to teach their young an awful lot to turn them
into good hunters.<SPAN> </SPAN>If an adolescent cheetah hasn't
learned her hunting skills well enough to bring down one big kill out of
every four she tries, she is dead.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Prey--like the mice, voles, and other rodents that even
big cats and wild dogs hunt down as quick snacks--go for the r
strategy.<SPAN> </SPAN>Breed like rabbits and hope that 4 out of every
12 pups survive.<SPAN> </SPAN>Cheetahs often have just two cubs at a
time.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Right now we Westerners dominate the worldwide food
chain. We've opted for k. But Osama bin Laden has declared
openly that he's going for the r strategy.<SPAN> </SPAN>He's said that
his form of Islam honors women.<SPAN> </SPAN>It keeps them off the
street, out of public sight, out of careers that might distract their
attention, and keeps them pregnant so they can have between seven and
seventeen children each.<SPAN> </SPAN>Men in Osama's privileged
position can also have four wives at a time.<SPAN> </SPAN>And they can
add to that advantage by wife-trading.<SPAN> </SPAN>They can divorce
one wife and bring in another, running through as many wives as Osama's dad
did.<SPAN> </SPAN>Bin Laden senior, with his 54 children, had eleven
wives.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>We in the Western World, on the other hand, are having
fewer kids than would be needed to replace our current
population.<SPAN> </SPAN>What are we doing with those
kids?<SPAN> </SPAN>We're investing in them hugely.<SPAN>
</SPAN>These days we're doing far more than educating<SPAN> </SPAN>the
hell out of them.<SPAN> </SPAN>We're also accessorizing them with
ability-extenders--the equivalent of mega-arms, macro-legs, super-eyes, and
tele-ears.<SPAN> </SPAN>We are giving them appendages it would have
taken evolution 200 million years to develop...cell phones, digital cameras
and videocams built into those phones, laptops, Google, instant access to
the fastest-growing library in world history--the World Wide Web-- cars,
cheap airline tickets, ubiquitous video displays, and the
imagination-extenders of X-Boxes, Sony Play Stations, and Nintendo
sets.<SPAN> </SPAN>We're turning our kids into digipedes--creatures
with newly-invented cyber-senses and digi-limbs.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>That's precisely why Osama says we will fall as victim's
of our own blindness, obesity, and decay.<SPAN> </SPAN>"We love death
more than you love life," he says.<SPAN> </SPAN>To paraphrase his
communiqués to the Ummah of Islam, "We can afford to sacrifice as many as
250 million of our believers even if you strike us with your nuclear
weapons.<SPAN> </SPAN>The blood of our martyrs will only strengthen
the 1.75 million of us who remain."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>You and I are very different, says Osama.<SPAN>
</SPAN>You, he says, are cowards.<SPAN> </SPAN>You quiver when one of
your soldiers is killed and his body is dragged through the streets of
Somalia.<SPAN> </SPAN>You cringe when the warriors of holiness
cut off a single head.<SPAN> </SPAN>You speak of exit strategies,
Osama sneers, when a mere thousand of your soldiers have died in
Iraq.<SPAN> </SPAN>Osama says he can whip us right left and
center.<SPAN> </SPAN>Again, to paraphrase his speeches, "Our religion
tells us to put ourselves into the battle and to kill and take the chance of
being killed.<SPAN> </SPAN>We know that your corruption will do away
with the brief wisp of putrescence you call a civilization.<SPAN>
</SPAN>But our God has ordered that your destruction shall not be left to
your rot.<SPAN> </SPAN>It shall not be left to your lack of manners
and of decency.<SPAN> </SPAN>Our<SPAN> </SPAN>God has ordered
that your sinews and bones be severed by the swords of our sons, by the
fire and flame of our students-turned-to knights, and by the hellstorms
delivered to you by our teenage heroes."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Osama inspires with the poetry of the r strategy, the
poetry of a rodent reproductive passion.<SPAN> </SPAN>In his own
words:<SPAN> </SPAN>"By Allah, it is either victory or martyrdom and
only those whose life span has come to an end will be killed, so his family
will miss him, only for his soul to be, as our Messenger (peace and mercy be
upon him) said, to be in the bellies of green birds that roam freely in
heaven as they please, then head towards lanterns suspended with the throne
of the Most Compassionate. There is no comparison between the two
vicinities, the vicinity of his family and the vicinity of his
lord.<SPAN> </SPAN>So dear youth of Islam everywhere, especially those
of the neighborhood, where the duty upon you is conclusive, dear Muslim
youths in the Arabic peninsula, and in Egypt and greater Syria, dear youths
of Rabia’a [an Iraqi poetess born in 717 ad] and Mudhr, dear grandsons of
Salahuddine, dear knights of Mohammed the Conqueror, dear Fedayeen of Umm
Al-Fida and Aleppo, and the lions of Muan and Al-Zarqa, and the brave of
Azad, the heroes of Assir, Hashed, Madhaj and Bakil, let your supplies be
continuous so that you may rescue the land of the two
rivers."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Osama's betting on lots of kids.<SPAN> </SPAN>We're
betting on few.<SPAN> </SPAN>Osama's betting on small investments in
each body he sends into battle.<SPAN> </SPAN>Osama's betting that as
one Egyptian contemporary of bin Laden's said way back in the early 1980s
when al Qaeda was just beginning: "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and
grows on severed limbs."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Osama is betting on the strategy of homicidal plague
bacteria-- Yersinia pestis --bacteria that bet on flagrant, fast
reproduction--bacteria that put their chips on the r strategy.<SPAN>
</SPAN>We are betting on the strategy of elephants--the k
strategy.<SPAN> </SPAN>This is far more than what Osama says it is
when he uses Samuel Huntington's words and declares that: "this struggle is
a religious and a doctrinal one and that the clash is in fact a clash of
civilizations."<SPAN> </SPAN>It is more than what Osama calls, "a
rare opportunity…and a priceless one…to sharpen the faculties of the
Ummah and to break its shackles, in order to storm forward towards the
battlefields of Jihad."<SPAN> </SPAN>And it is more than Osama's
"decisive war", the war he says has opened "a crossroads" in
history.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>It is a war between two ancient reproductive strategies
in a new environment, a global, cyber-niche..<SPAN> </SPAN>But
primitive as it is, it is also a war between two different views of darkness
and of light.<SPAN> </SPAN>I choose to believe that the light is that
of the Western religion of human rights, women's rights, gay rights,
democracy, free speech, secularism, and science.<SPAN> </SPAN>Osama
believes the light lies in the purity of a seventh century vision that
muzzles minds and tears the tongues from the mouths of blasphemers.
<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>In the end this is a fight to see:<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN>v<SPAN>
</SPAN></SPAN>whether humanity can continue its technological,<SPAN>
</SPAN>philosophical, and artistic-mindleaps and soul-expansions
<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN>v<SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN>or
whether our race cowers beneath clouds of nuclear soot and the veils of
burqas and trudges back to what it experienced from 550 ad to 1100 AD--a
Mad-Max dark ages.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>It is a war to see which reproductive strategy can grab
the new cyber-global niche--this new wireless planet.<SPAN> </SPAN>It
is a war to see which strategy can mobilize speed, conviction,
whacko-cleverness, extremely long-term thinking, and implacable, adamantine
persistence.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN>Does either of our presidential candidates, Bush or
Kerry, have a clear vision of just how desperate and critical this war of
two colonies of organisms in the petri dish of our planet is?<SPAN>
</SPAN>Does either have the persuasive and poetic capacity to turn a nation
of couch potatoes and self-hating critics into a nation of secular humanist
saviors...saviors of the fast-track experiment in the reinvention of mass
mind, of personal passion, and of human powers that we call our
civilization?<SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN>Howard Bloom</SPAN></P></SPAN>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting
Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member,
The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of
Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The
Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society,
Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member:
Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The
Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV><BR>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<BR>This
Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System<BR>at the Tel-Aviv University CC.<BR>
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