The Lucifer Principle cover art

The Lucifer Principle

A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Lucifer Principle

By: Howard Bloom
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

The Lucifer Priciple is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that "evil" is a by-product of nature's strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric. Though this argument is not a new one - it has been brought forth by such great historical figures as St. Paul, Thomas Hobbes, and Raymond Dart - Howard Bloom here takes fresh data from a variety of sources and shapes it into a lens through which listeners can reinterpret the human experience.

©2015 Blackstone Audio (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Consciousness & Thought Movements Philosophy Religious Studies

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Global Brain cover art
Is Atheism Dead? cover art
Guns, Germs and Steel cover art
Black Rednecks and White Liberals cover art
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution cover art
Upheaval cover art
Beyond Good and Evil cover art
The Devil's Delusion cover art
The Psychology of Totalitarianism cover art
The Right Side of History cover art
The Demon-Haunted World cover art
Maps of Meaning cover art
The Righteous Mind cover art
The Elephant in the Brain cover art
Cynical Theories cover art
The Madness of Crowds cover art
All stars
Most relevant
it makes one think about new ways of seeing life. I loved the comparison with the animal world.

highly enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fantastic look at how we coexist as humans and have done through history. Love it.

Great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thorough and uniquely easy to understand.It has a lovely flow to it.A definite must listen.

Incredibly enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very interesting. Society is in the style of Hobbs linked to a super organism, with goals and decires. Bloom supports his argument with a range of historical, anthropological and biological observations. Showing patterne we share with animals and through time and cultures. It is a warning about where the west is going, since we lost our understanding of why we are in the top.
A great listen.

Interesting and well read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lucifer Principle weaves a well-written and compelling narrative that is bound to shock the reader out of her ideological stupour. This style provides a healthy immunization against some of the illusions and self-deceptions that we all, by nature and education, live under. Thus broken free from dogmas, Bloom jolts the reader to freely exploring the link between dominance hierarchies, violence, genes, memes, and social groups. The very same passion that cures cancer often amplifies our self-righteousness into a blinding plea for world domination.

The book is well-researched and contains numerous fascinating and illustrative stories from history. At the same time, it suffers from a selective exposition of facts presented with a strong interpretative slant. I did not like the anti-Islamic rants that went on for way too long. And I did not like the many dubious empirical generalisations that appeared one-sided and based on anecdotal evidence. I concur with David S. Wilson's estimation, in the foreword, that Bloom has a tendency to exaggerate.

However, Bloom's cynical and pessimistic lens magnifies humanity's dark side in a way that is illuminating. It is illuminating not only of our capacity for evil, but also of the capacity for goodness and excellence in the same human organism. The takeaway lesson, if there is one, is therefore ambivalent. The pitfalls of the Lucifer Principle are ever present in our struggle to self-transcend our animal nature. And yet continually self-transcend we must. To reach for the stars and to perpetuate evolution is a bloody, violent, stressful affair, but without it we face the heat death of the universe. Bloom shows us how we can break free from entropy without succumbing to the worst conquering and genocidal illusions that humanity possesses.

Nice provocation

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well it is not the most accurate but a real good mix of ideas and views

Good read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed this book, but do go into it with a healthy degree of scepticism. It's arguments seem to be based on popular science ideas rather then the research these pop science books are based on (i.e. it often makes reference to Dawkins popularisation of an idea rather the person who actually performed the scientific study), which is ok - & didn't mean the conclusions are 'wrong' - but it does means you are viewing the research through at least two sets of biases. He clearly has an angle and wants to covert you to it, but Hilgartner characterises systems he doesn't approve of (primarily religion or any non-capitalist ideas) so cartoonishly it brings his other conclusions into doubt. His idea of what Christians believe is of a old man with a beard in the sky (i mean most people leave this kind of belief in God in kindergarden; and he thinks America dosn't have an aggressive international policy - clearly these don't reflect the real world). It's a shame Hilgartner can't apply the critical analysis he makes of Muslims and Marxist to his own structures as this would give a more rounded and useful book.

Heavy handed sci-fi pop.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
70% of this book is a work of real genius and some of the best writing I have ever encountered on the human, (and biological) condition, with truly insightful and novel application of robust research. However the last chapters I found to be just unbearably bad with wild personal generalisations that were quite spectacularly disappointing. Overall absolutely worth the read, perhaps just stop reading 3/4 of the way through!

One of the most frustratingly mixed books I have ever read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.