Utility sorters, resource shifters, and intergroup tournaments are different forms of Darwinian selection mechanisms - as in Darwin's characterization of "natural selection...[as] a power incessantly ready for action." (Charles Darwin. Origin of Species. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Simon Hornblower. "Greece

In computer terms, the Persian Wars were a contest between a serial processing system - Persia, and a parallel distributed processing system, Greece. The serial processing system lines up all decisions and runs them through a central processing unit at its center - in this case, the emperor Xerxes or his appointed general, Mardonius. A parallel processing system depends on a mesh of independent decision making centers which pool their attempts at wisdom.

Herodotus, known for his exaggeration, declares that the Persian land army alone amounted to over five million - 2,641,000 soldiers augmented by support personnel. (Herodotus. The History of Herodotus. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

The turning point in the Persian Wars is generally reckoned to be the death of the Persian general Mardonius on August 27, 479 b.c. Though fighting continued for another thirteen years, Mardonius' demise forced the vast mass of troops Persia had sent to Greece to retreat from the Hellenic mainland.

W.G. Forrest. A History of Sparta

Sparta's Peloponnesian League was land-based and confined to the central Greek land mass. Athens' alternative, the Delian League, was a sea-based alliance of island and coastal city states. As de Landa has pointed out, land centered cities and those which act as ports are very different meshwork entities. (Manuel de Landa. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York

"Foreigners were rarely welcomed. Usually they were made to understand that their visits must be brief

For the manner in which Themistocles built the fleets and infrastructure of wharves and other port amenities which put sea-based war and export/import on a massive level, then Pericles hoisted them yet another rung upward (building, for example, Piraeus' grain exchange) see Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Thucydides reports the Athenians reduced the inhabitants of Eion to slavery, did the same to those of Scyros, made war against Carystus, and subjugated Naxos by laying her under siege. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Histiaea was one city-state whose inhabitants were turned to refugees. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.)

Samos, Pythagoras' former home, was one of the recipients of this more gentle social engineering - though a government of the people, by the people, and for the people was only planted by taking 100 hostages, presumably from the displaced oligarchic class, then waging a lengthy and expensive battle when some of the aristocrats who'd fled teamed up with the Byzantines to launch a nearly-successful revolt. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War)

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Here's Victor Hugo's paean to Pericles' mate

The dust-up of 459 may give some idea of why historian Simon Hornblower declares that even in their best of times, the Greeks "never managed to translate their psychological awareness of their 'Greekness' into political unity." (Simon Hornblower. "Greece

Under King Pleistoanax. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.)

The final series of contests which ended the long-running Peloponnesian War pitted a politics-torn Athens against Cyrus, gifted son of the Persian Emperor, and Lysander, a remarkable Spartan general. (Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War.)

Evidence for the swiftness of Athens' partial revival comes from the fact that the city had regained sufficient strength to join Corinth in the Corinthian War, which began in 395 b.c. Demosthenes, in his Philippic, states that during this conflict the Athenians had enough spare cash to maintain a body of mercenaries at Corinth. (Demosthenes. Philippic. 1, 24. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, September, 1998.)

Durant outlines the many flaws which set in during the Athenian restoration - an increase of wealth in the hands of the rapidly rising industrial oligarchy; a virtual elimination of the farming peasantry, whose olive groves had been destroyed by Spartan armies during the wars and would have taken at least ten years to regrow; and a relative impoverishment of the urban poor through an inflationary spiral fed by the flow of silver from the mines of Laurium. (Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

D. Bray. "Protein molecules as computational elements in living cells." Nature, July 27 1995

. G.J. Schütz, W. Trabesinger, T. Schmidt. "Direct observation of ligand colocalization on individual receptor molecules." Biophysical Journal, May, 1998

D. Bray, M.D. Levin, C.J. Morton-Firth. "Receptor clustering as a cellular mechanism to control sensitivity." Nature, May 7 1998

John H. Holland. Hidden Order

Yukimaru Sugiyama. "Social Characteristics and Socialization of Wild Chimpanzees." In Primate Socialization, edited by Frank E. Poirier. New York

John H. Kaufmann. "Social Relations in Hamadryas Baboons." In Social Communication Among Primates, edited by Stuart A. Altmann. Chicago

For an interesting demonstration that weanling rats avoid the example of other infants and hone in on that of the biggest adult they can find, see

Frans de Waal calls the ability of the dominant male to focus the attention of the group "the 'control role' of the alpha male." F.B. de Waal. "The organization of agonistic relations within two captive groups of Java-monkeys (Macaca fascicularis)." Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, July 1977

Frans de Waal. Peacemaking Among Primates. Cambridge

Dian Fossey. Gorillas In the Mist

Hans Kummer. "Tripartite Relations in Hamadryas Baboons." In Social Communication Among Primates

Dian Fossey. Gorillas In the Mist

R. Noe, F.B. de Waal, J.A. van Hooff. "Types of dominance in a chimpanzee colony." Folia Primatologica, 34

S.L Washburn and D.A. Hamburg. "Aggressive Behavior in Old World Monkeys and Apes." In Primates

Phyllis C. Jay. "The social behavior of the langur monkey." University of Chicago, doctoral dissertation, 1962; Stuart A. Altmann. "The Structure of Primate Social Communication." In Social Communication Among Primates

Jane Van Lawick-Goodall. "A Preliminary Report On Expressive Movements and Communication in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzees." In Primates

John E. Frisch, S.J. "Individual Behavior and Intertroop Variability In Japanese Macaques." In Primates

Toshisada Nishida. "Review of Recent Findings on Mahale Chimpanzees

Michael R.A. Chance, ed., assisted by Donald R. Omark. Social Fabrics of the Mind. Sussex, UK

Frans de Waal. Peacemaking Among Primates

For the manner in which the Mayan chief Knot-eye Jaguar used the principles of the attention structure to political advantage, see Linda Schele and David Freidel. A Forest of Kings

Daniel G. Freedman. Human Sociobiology

Without serotonin calming things down, rates of aggression among rats soar. To keep aggression within bounds, serotonin has to make its mark on a particular variety of receptor, that called 5-HT1B. (F. Saudou, D.A. Amara, A. Dierich, M. LeMeur, S. Ramboz, L. Segu, M.C. Buhot, R. Hen. "Enhanced aggressive behavior in mice lacking 5-HT1B receptor." Science, 23 September 1994

A.G. Gitter, H. Black, A. Goldman. "Role of nonverbal communication in the perception of leadership." Perceptual and Motor Skills, April 1975

Michael A. Goldberg and Barry Katz. "The effect of nonreciprocated and reciprocated touch on power/dominance perception." Journal of Social Behavior & Personality, 5(5), 1990

Michael Argyle. "Innate and Cultural Aspects of Human Non-verbal Communication." In Mindwaves

Nancy M. Henley. Body politics

B. Erickson, E.A. Lind, B.C. Johnson and W.M. O'Barr. "Speech style and impression formation in a court setting

J.I. Hurwitz, A.F. Zander, and B. Hymovitch. "Some effects of power on the relations among group members." In Group Dynamics

Adam Smith describes stored labor as "a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other occasion." (Adam Smith. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Dublin

Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine. "The Artistry of Microbes." Scientific American. October, 1988

Thomas D. Seeley. Honeybee Ecology

Edward O. Wilson. The Insect Societies. Cambridge

For a 2,800 year history of the manner in the stored influence of the Iliad was built to monumental proportions from the days of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to those of Napoleon and Hitler, see Leo Braudy. The Frenzy of Renown

In the 1930s, Thorstein Veblen showed how prestige drives culture into many of its most intriguing peculiarities via his theory of conspicuous consumption. A few years later Melville J. Herskovits, in his 1940 book Economic Anthropology

Students in one study swore that they would honk far more impatiently at the well-heeled driver of a shiny new car if he blocked their path than at the owner of a humble older auto. When faced with the reality, they treated the driver of the prestige car with great patience if he cut them off, and saved their road rage for folks who couldn't afford a vehicle betokening plutocracy. (Anthony N. Doob and Alan E. Gross. "Status of frustrator as an inhibitor of horn-honking responses." Journal of Social Psychology, 76(2), 1968

J.W. Thibaut and H.W. Riecken. "Some determinants and consequences of the perception of social causality." Journal of Personality, 24, 1955

Irving Lorge. "Prestige, suggestion, and attitudes." Journal of Social Psychology, 7, 1936

C. Hovland and W. Weiss. "The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness." Public Opinion Quarterly. 15, 1952

Ellen Langer. Mindfulness. Reading, MA

Paul R. Wilson. "Perceptual distortion of height as a function of ascribed academic status." Journal of Social Psychology, February, 1968

We even copy the manners of our social superiors when it comes to adopting new medical practices. The greater the prestige of the patients who flock to a new medical technique, the more of us lower-rankers troop in their wake. Should the privileged shun an effective medical method, it may go unused and ignored. (J. Baruch. "The diffusion of medical technology." Med. Instrum., January-February 1979

This observation by Robert Decker, director of the Palo Alto Center for Stress Related Disorders, was reported in

For an example from the time of Gregory of Tours, see

Elias Canetti. Crowds and Power, translated by Carol Stewart. New York

Elias Canetti. Crowds and Power

Ruth Benedict. Patterns of Culture. 1934. New York

Carlyle was not citing a folk myth, but claimed to be drawing on observations from a naturalist of his day. (Thomas Carlyle. Voltaire. [originally published in Foreign Review, 1829]. Newport Beach, Ca

Daniel G. Freedman. Human Sociobiology

F.W. Jones, A.J. Wills, I.P. McLaren. "Perceptual categorization

For an example of how this status-pull worked its way out in the culinary wars of pre-modern times, see E.N. Anderson. The Food of China. New Haven

Anna Freud called this "identification with the aggressor," a term she coined in 1946 at the end of the Second World War, which had demonstrated the phenomenon all too persuasively. (Anna Freud. The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense. New York

Suzanne Ripley. "Intertroop Encounters among Ceylon Gray Langurs (Presbytis entellus)." In Social Communication Among Primates

David P. Barash. The Hare and The Tortoise

Per Bruno Bettelheim, psychologist and former concentration camp victim, who had the questionable privilege of witnessing this weirdness at first hand. (Bruno Bettelheim. "Individual And Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 1943

Fernand Braudel. The Structures of Everyday Life

For an instance in which an entire nation was reshaped by identification with the aggressor, see

Daniel Burstein. Yen

William Van Dusen Wishard. "The 21st Century Economy." In Edward Cornish, editor. The 1990s & Beyond. Bethesda, MD

Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Victor Hao Li. "The New Orient Express." World Monitor, November 1988

Daniel Burstein. Yen

Robert Whiting. Ya Gotta Have Wa

John Naisbitt & Patricia Aburdene. Megatrends 2000

James Fallows. More Like Us

Victor Hao Li. "The New Orient Express." World Monitor, November 1988

Ezra Vogel. "Pax Nipponica?" Foreign Affairs. Spring 1986

Doug Henwood. "Japan In Latin America." Left Business Observer, May 15, 1989

Tom Buckley. Violent Neighbors

Susumu Awanohara. "Resurgent Rivals." Far Eastern Economic Review, reprinted in World Press Review, November 1990

Earl W. Foell. "Making Sense of the World." World Monitor, October 1988

Mike Mansfield. "The U.S. and Japan

Leon Hollerman. Japan's Economic Strategy in Brazil

Bruno Thomas. n.t. article from Le Monde, reprinted in World Press Review, April 1988

As of the fall of 1998, the card catalogs of the five institutions included in the Washington Resource Library Consortium contained close to 3,000 books with the word Japan in their title. Washington Resource Library Consortium September 1998. The Library of Congress listed 15,070. Library of Congress Catalogs, October 1998.

Akio Morita. "Partnering for Competitiveness

Daniel Burstein. Yen

Leon Hollerman. Japan's Economic Strategy in Brazil

Hassan Ziady. "An African View of Debt." Jeune Afrique Economie, reprinted in World Press Review, August 1989

Barry Shelby. "Japan and Africa." World Press Review, January 1989

As of 1990, more than 750 Japanese companies had manufacturing operations in Thailand. (John Clewley. "Thailand

S. Yasuoka is the author who characterized these organizations as Zaibatsu. (S. Yasuoka. "Introduction." In Family Business in the Era of Industrial Growth

Daniel Burstein. Yen

Daniel Burstein. Yen

Vladimir Voinovich. "An Exile's Dilemma." Wilson Quarterly, August 1990

Daniel Burstein. Yen

Ian Buruma. God's Dust

Ian Buruma. God's Dust

Daniel Burstein. Yen

John Naisbitt & Patricia Aburdene. Megatrends 2000

Deyan Sudjic. "Tokyo's 'Spectacular' Stores." The Times of London, reprinted in World Press Review October 1989

Victor Hao Li. "The New Orient Express"

Clyde Prestowitz. "Japanese vs. Western Economies

Clyde V. Prestowitz, Jr. Trading Places

Today's Japan. Tokyo

Ryuji Katayama. "Can Japan Rescue The Philippines." Business Tokyo, August 1990

Ian Buruma. God's Dust

Ira Magaziner and Mark Patinkin. The Silent War

Peter McGill. "Anxiety on the Road to Foreign Leadership," The Weekly Observer of London, reprinted in World Press Review, August 1992

Today's Japan. Tokyo

Andrew Clark. "Japan Goes to Europe." World Monitor, April, 1990

Robert Graham. "Latin America's Reawakening." Financial Times of London, reprinted in World Press Review, November 1990

Doug Henwood. "Japan in Three Countries." Left Business Observer, May 1989

Sterett Pope. "Japan in the Gulf." World Press Review, June 1989

Glen S. Fukushima. "Affirmative Action, Japanese Style." Tokyo Business, February 1994

Eisuke Sakakibara. Beyond capitalism

Actually, China's leaders wanted a version of the Japanese model which made room for an authoritarian government. They found what they were looking for in Korea. The Koreans had snaffled up their system from the Japanese (Alice Amsden. Asia's Next Giant

When Pericles smashed the aristocracies of the city-states he brought to heel, Socrates provided the conceptual wrecking ball. Socratic questioning helped shatter thought-structures which had supported the old orders' seeming permanence.

Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R.D. Hicks. (1925) Cambridge, MA

Socrates was an acquaintance of Plato's uncle Charmides, subject of one of the Platonic dialogs. (Plato. Charmides. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by R.D. Hicks. (1925) Cambridge, MA

R.M. Doty, B.E. Peterson, D.G. Winter. "Threat and authoritarianism in the United States, 1978-1987." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, October 1991

In the Timaeus, Plato shows his indebtedness to the Pythagoreans for the concept of archetypes. The Timaeus, in fact, is a virtual display case for Platonism borrowed from Pythagorean science and geometry. Plato also puts words about the Pythagoreans constantly upon the tongue of Socrates in The Republic. (Plato. Republic. Library of the Future.)

Said Aristotle, "the philosophy of Plato... in most respects followed" the views of the Pythagoreans. As for archetypal forms, Aristotle felt this was a bald restatement of the Pythagorean proposition that all things reflect underlying mathematical patterns. Plato's contribution, in the opinion of Aristotle, was merely to tinker with one word - instead of "imitating" numbers (the Pythagorean term), all things "participate" in them. Here's the way Aristotle puts it

Diodorus. Historical Library. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, 1998.

Manuel de Landa. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

W.G. Forrest. A History of Sparta

Plato. Laws. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

N.G.L. Hammond. Alexander the Great, king, commander, and statesman. Park Ridge, NJ

Egypt, a major component of the Persian Empire, broke away in 404 b.c. The Persians were so tied up with troubles elsewhere that they weren't able to recapture the land of the Pharaohs until roughly 343 b.c. and even then, lost it again in 335 b.c. In other words, the fourth century b.c. was generally a tough one for Persia. (Diodorus. Historical Library, 15.29.4. Gregory R. Crane, editor, The Perseus Project, September, 1998.

For capsule biographies of Aristotle on the Internet, see

Aristotle was from Stagira, in today's Turkey. Like Macedonia, Stagira was on the path from Persia to the Greek peninsula, and didn't benefit from central Greece's protective barrier - the Aegean Sea. But unlike Macedonia, Stagira was far closer to the heartland of the Persian enemy. For a map locating Stagira, see

Though it's often associated with him, Aristotle didn't use the phrase "golden mean." His term was simply "the mean," as in this archetypal passage from his Nicomachaean Ethics