Through our sentences and paragraphs long-gone ghosts still have their say within the collective mind. - Howard Bloom

Conformity-enforcing packs of viscious children and adults gradually shape the social complexes we know as religion, science, corporations, ethnic groups, and even nations. The tools of our cohesion include ridicule, rejection, snobbery, self-righteousness, assault, torture, and death by stoning, lethal injection, or the noose. A collective brain may sound warm and fuzzily New Age, but one force lashing it together is abuse.

The first two rules of science are: 1. The truth at any price including the price of your life. 2. Look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen them before, then proceed from there.

The ultimate repository of herd influence is language—a device which not only condenses the opinions of those with whom we share a common vocabulary, but sums up the perceptual approach of swarms who have passed on.