Howard Bloom, on June 30, 2023, stated that the key realization is that "sacrifice--whether on an alter or a battlefield" gives "heft, meat, mass and might to an utter abstraction," to an "emergent property, a ghost, a group identity." Howard says that bloodshed "bonds superorganisms, from tribes to nations and empires." What is the nature and meaning of this "ghost," the nation, that consumes the blood of human beings?

Richard Koenigsberg has explained, "That which we die for becomes real." Sacrificial death, Koenigsberg says, constitutes a principle of verification or validation. Death confers reality.

But what is the nature of these "things" for which human beings die and kill? Koenigsberg calls them "sacred objects." A sacred object could be a nation or Allah. What is the meaning of these entities that generate massive political violence? 

We haven't interrogated this fundamental question: the most fundamental question. We live within a dream; a delusion; possessed by a demon which consumes the blood of human beings.

Andrew C. Hammer (THE HAMMER)

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