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." Bloodshed "bonds superorganisms, from tribes to nations and empires." What is the nature of this "ghost," the nation, that consumes the blood of human beings?

Richard Koenigsberg explains: "That which we die for becomes real." Sacrificial death 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. We live within a dream or delusion: possessed by a demon which consumes the blood of human beings.

Andrew C. Hammer (THE HAMMER)

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