12
Something was running rampant through his psyche, tormenting
this man. But it wasn't a physical disease in the standard sense of the
term. The tormentor was a set of self-destruct processes that wait
within us for their day of use. In the case of the man with the cancer
phobia, the day of use had arrived, in part, because his career as a
successful executive had come to a sudden halt a year earlier when the
company for which he'd been working shut down.
Wynne-Edwards has demonstrated that red grouse on the moors
of Scotland compete with each other at the beginning of the season for
territory. The winners end up comfortably fed and mated. But the
losers usually die of predation or disease. The deaths, says Wynn
Edwards, are "the after-effects of social exclusion."29
In the body, each cell comes equipped with a mechanism for
what scientists call "programmed cell death," "an intrinsic cell suicide
program" researchers at University College in London say must be
actively restrained from going into action by positive feedback
indicating the cell is necessary to the larger organism.30 When a
hospital patient is forced to spend months in bed, seldom using his
legs, many of the legs' constituent cells, sensing that they are no longer
needed, dwindle to mere shadows of their former selves. Others
simply disappear.31 When a human spends weeks or months in space,
his or her heart no longer has to labor mightily, pumping blood
upward in defiance of gravity's force. The heart shrinks dramatically32
as the cells that no longer deem themselves of value scale down to an
existence just one step removed from death.
The individual is a cell in the social superorganism. When he
feels he is no longer necessary to the larger group, he, too, begins to
wither away.
As we'll see more clearly a few chapters down the road, the
demons driving the ad exec mad were the circuits of social disposal,
"intrinsic suicide programs" similar to those that remove cells whose
lives are no longer needed by the larger social beast. If our instincts
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12
Something was running rampant through his psyche, tormenting
this man. But it wasn't a physical disease in the standard sense of the
term. The tormentor was a set of self-destruct processes that wait
within us for their day of use. In the case of the man with the cancer
phobia, the day of use had arrived, in part, because his career as a
successful executive had come to a sudden halt a year earlier when the
company for which he'd been working shut down.
Wynne-Edwards has demonstrated that red grouse on the moors
of Scotland compete with each other at the beginning of the season for
territory. The winners end up comfortably fed and mated. But the
losers usually die of predation or disease. The deaths, says Wynn
Edwards, are "the after-effects of social exclusion."29
In the body, each cell comes equipped with a mechanism for
what scientists call "programmed cell death," "an intrinsic cell suicide
program" researchers at University College in London say must be
actively restrained from going into action by positive feedback
indicating the cell is necessary to the larger organism.30 When a
hospital patient is forced to spend months in bed, seldom using his
legs, many of the legs' constituent cells, sensing that they are no longer
needed, dwindle to mere shadows of their former selves. Others
simply disappear.31 When a human spends weeks or months in space,
his or her heart no longer has to labor mightily, pumping blood
upward in defiance of gravity's force. The heart shrinks dramatically32
as the cells that no longer deem themselves of value scale down to an
existence just one step removed from death.
The individual is a cell in the social superorganism. When he
feels he is no longer necessary to the larger group, he, too, begins to
wither away.
As we'll see more clearly a few chapters down the road, the
demons driving the ad exec mad were the circuits of social disposal,
"intrinsic suicide programs" similar to those that remove cells whose
lives are no longer needed by the larger social beast. If our instincts
<< < GO > >>