Page 30 - 2011 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - January 2011

Chimpanzees and Romans Chimpanzees and Romans the American Psychological Society, the Human instantly which previously would have taken Why Both Make War Behavior and Evolution Society, The you weeks. "More important is the impact of a International Society of Human Ethology, and Continued from Page 25 the Academy of Political Science. He has been communal ritual like a rock concert. The star featured in every edition of Who's Who in onstage is taken over by a self he doesn't know, Science and Engineering since the publication's one that seems to surge through him as if he In fact, the restless effort of human inception. were a length of empty pipe. The force of this males to find more wombs that will carry their Bloom has taken an unusual approach to strange passion welds the audience in an almost seed has been dignified by the forefathers of the study of mass moods and cultural transcendent bond." Bloom's task was to first western civilization. The rape of the Sabine convolutions. He started out normally enough, experience the exaltation, then to dissect it. women, a bit of Roman history anyone with a building his first Boolean algebra machine at "The model for this work," he says, "came from modest classical education can recount, was a the age of twelve, becoming a dedicated William James, who attempted to feel the stunt very similar to those frequently pulled off by the Yanomamo. The heros of the tale--a gang microscopist that same year, codesigning a ecstatic experience of mystics, then to probe it computer which won a Westinghouse Science scientifically, a process which led to his 1902 of early Romans--invited the neighboring Award before he left grade school, and being book The Varieties of the Religious tribesmen and their wives over for dinner and granted a private brainstorming session with the Experience." entertainment. The entertainment turned out to head of the Graduate Physics Department of Bloom's forays into power and its be a display of Roman weapons. The hosts pulled their swords, grabbed the girls, then The State University of New York, Buffalo, at manipulations were also intense. "In the music and film industry everyone knew that money the age of thirteen. By sixteen he was a lab attacked and chased away the husbands. There assistant at the world's largest cancer research and career advancement were on the line. But was a high time among the Roman founding center, the Roswell Park Memorial Research few realized how deeply what they did affected fathers as they indulged merrily in sex with the Cancer Institute, where he helped plumb the the lives of millions, and even fewer felt the weeping captives. And nine months later, there mysteries of the immune system. And before his responsibility that demands. It was an amazing was more weeping as the kidnapped ladies gave freshman year of college he designed and privilege to work as an equal with the birth to a fresh crop of infants--the babies of the executed research in Skinnerian programmed entertainment industry's elite, many of whom I banquet hosts. The Trojan War also ended with a scene learning at Rutgers University's Graduate either had to woo or thwart to help my clients that any Yanomamo warrior would have School of Education. reach their audience with a message of genuine Then came an act of academic heresy. value. Some executives were master strategists understood. It started as a battle over one After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta but used their intelligence to increase their own woman, a lovely creature who behaved very Kappa from New York University, Bloom stature, often at a brutal cost to others. Others much like Konrad Lorenz' female duck. You remember, the aquatic female who triggered a turned down four graduate fellowships and were far more ethical. Yet even the best- intentioned employed boardroom and backroom embarked urban 20-year-long on a fight, then ran back to her mate and tried to get anthropology expedition to penetrate what he tactics handed down from the politics of him to join in. The instigator, in the case of the calls "society's myth-making machinery"--the chimpanzees. Without knowing it, they used human conflict, was Helen of Troy. When the inner sanctums of politics and the media. tricks of leadership we share with social animals fighting was over, the winning Greeks were During his foray into "the dark underbelly of from lizards and lobsters to baboons and rewarded with a Yanomama-esque bonanza-- mass emotion" he edited a magazine which won mountain apes." captured plunder and conquered Trojan females. two National Academy of Poets prizes, founded The subculture of Washington politics The warriors took the women home and ravished them. But you can be sure they didn't the leading avant-garde art studio on the East was, to Bloom, the most disturbing of them all. Coast, was featured on the cover of Art Bloom founded Music in Action, a national bother to carry many Trojan infants on the trip Direction Magazine, then gave up listening to anti-censorship organization. This brought him back across the Aegean Sea. (As Troy was Beethoven, Bartok, and Mozart to become into head-on combat with Tipper Gore, wife of going down in defeat, Andromache, one of the editor of a rock magazine. Using correlational Vice President and eventual presidential Trojan wives, told her baby that the odds were good "some Achaean will take you by the hand studies, focus groups, empirical surveys, candidate Al Gore. Says Bloom, "Tipper and the right wing religionists who used her for their ethnographic expeditions into suburban teen and hurl you from the tower into horrible subcultures, and other scientific techniques, ends were masters of perceptual manipulation. death....") Less than a year later, the fresh crop Bloom more than doubled the publication's They perpetrated hoaxes of outrageous of babies from the Trojan captives fattened the sales, and was credited by Rolling Stones' Chet transparency, yet still managed to convince the Greek bloodline. The Yanomamo, the langurs, the Flippo with having founded a new genre--the press and public that their falsifications were Romans and the Greeks were all driven by the heavy metal magazine. Seeking still further true." Twenty pages in The Billboard Guide to ways to infiltrate modernity's mass mind, same force. They were hungry for sex. And that hunger translated into something else--the Bloom formed a public relations firm in the Music Publicity are devoted to Bloom and the antidote he invented, "perceptual engineering," music and film industry and won the confidence desire to populate the world with their own of those whose territory he'd invaded. The which he defines as "a way of finding a valid offspring. But the men were not alone. Effie the payoff in knowledge proved invaluable. truth which the herd refuses to see, then turning cannibalistic gorilla and Livia the Roman Bloom worked with Michael Jackson, the herd around and making that truth self- schemer were out for the same thing. Under the impulse toward violence often lies the simple Prince, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kiss, Queen, evident. It's what we do in much of science-- seeing the ordinary from a new perspective, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Joan Jett, Diana Ross, urge to have kids. Which leads us to one of the Simon & Garfunkel, The Talking Heads, then revealing what makes it tick and in the fundamental forces behind The Lucifer AC/DC, Billy Idol, Grandmaster Flash and the process altering society's views." Principle: the greed of genes. [] Furious Five, Run D.M.C., Simply Red, and the For more information on Howard ABOUT THE AUTHOR heads of many a media conglomerate. He was Bloom or to order Howard’s Books, “The adept at spotting new subcultures, entering them, and helping their members achieve their @0632= $=6:06<82 F&062:?6360 C<8;=.?6;: :?; HOWARD BLOOM goals…a skill which gave him an inside role in The Forces of History,” “Global Brain: The the rise of rap, disco, and punk rock. Evolution Of The Mass Media From The Big Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at The pinnacles of fame provided Bang To The 21st Century,” and “The Genius New York University, is founder of the surprising scientific revelations. "When you're #3 '52 2.>? F%.160.8 %2 )6>6;: #3 International Paleopsychology Project, at the center of the sort of attention-storm which Capitalism,” visit his website at: executive editor of the New Paradigm book hits when you're working with a superstar," series, a founding board member of the Epic of Bloom says, "it's as if the laws of physics www.howardbloom.net Evolution Society, and a member of the New change. Hormones charge you up in ways you York Academy of Sciences, the National never imagined. Time perception alters. You and listen to his interviews on The ‘X’ Zone Association for the Advancement of Science, resolve crisis in minutes, seeing solutions at www.xzonepodcast.com