Rogue animals, pack Animals, herd animals or hive animals?
The right wing idealogues, the Ayn Randians, would like to see us as rogue animals. It’s every man for himself, social Darwinism, survival of the fittest in their view of the world. It’s a
More alike than we like to admit
romanticized notion; the lone wolf, the maverick. That kind of person makes for a great hero in an action adventure movie, and it’s a fantasy we can all identify with. All of our problems would go away if we were just enough of a badass, if we suddenly let our rage pour forth and beat all of our opponents to death, or at least into terrified submission.
But, it’s unrealistic in modern civilization. We have to share the roads with other people, we share the same office space, we breathe the same air. True rogues are rare, they are a pain in the ass to everyone around them and, for the most part, they live unhappy lives.
Pack animals is the closest to what we are biologically and evolutionarily. All of the primates live in packs, and many wolves and other dogs. Sure, it’s an imperfect system. Tribes and clans are packs, and a family is sort of a micro-pack. But there are rivalries and animosities with tribes, packs and families, too. Also, a gang is a pack and that’s definitely a socially unhealthy amalgamation.
Then, there is the herd. Are we sheep? Are we cattle? Well, we certainly are sometimes. When you’re part of a crowd in a football stadium or at a rock concert, or when you’re parading down the street with banners to support a particular political cause, chanting along with thousands of others, you are displaying herd behavior, regardless of the virtue of your cause.
What about the hive? Although it is the image of the future in many dystopian novels, there is an admirable efficiency to it. We don’t want to be like the bees and the ants (unless you are part of the 1%, in which case you would be the queen – for we drones, it would suck horribly) but we admire their work ethic and ability to form complex societies and get things done.
So, what kind of animals ARE people? Well, fortunately, we are people and, in an important way, different from all other animals. We can decide what kind of animal we want to be. We don’t need to limit ourselves to these models. We can pick out the best elements of each and leave behind those elements we don’t like.
Of course, the internet changes everything. It is a collective mind of sorts, it changes our society more and more depending on how we use it and, despite all its obvious benefits, it pushes us, frighteningly, in the direction of the hive.
Que sera, sera. All we can do is to be what we are and, collectively, we will become that which we are destined to be.
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