Howard Bloom states 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." He says that bloodshed "bonds superorganisms, from tribes to nations and empires." What is the nature and meaning of these "ghosts" that consumes the blood of human beings?

Richard Koenigsberg: "That for which we die becomes real." Sacrificial death constitutes a principle of verification. Death confers reality on the objects for which we die.

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.

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