eThoughts : Individual and Group Intelligence and Retardation

There is an article in the July 2007 edition of National Geographic about swarm theory, which essentially is about swarm intelligence and how bees, insects, some birds, herbivores, etc. work in tandem.

Such organization seems like a stark contrast to the leader-driven hierarchy of most predators—including humans (but excluding such predators as the piranha). However the category stacks up, what emerges from swarm theory is that of a leaderless group that exhibits cohesive group behavior by attention to local energies—what is your immediate neighbor doing? Essentially, the individual deer that picks up on the proximity of food, water, or danger transmits that energy, via emotional/behavioral communication, to its nearest neighbor who then emits a similar energy signature to its immediate neighbor and so on. The result is a coordinated group movement and increased survival for both the individual and the collective. If the individual is crazy, there may be the beginnings of crazy group behavior, but it will not generally sustain itself as insane behavior is based on a deluded reality while sane behavior is based on grounded, apparent reality (though what lemmings are doing when they periodically run off cliffs is not clear, at least to me). In other words, crying wolf when there was none might get others’ attention for a while, but in the absence of an actual wolf, the reality is only the crying that there is a wolf.

Certainly swarm intelligence (or retardation) is not unknown in human activity. And it seems obvious that human political/economic/religious organizations based solely upon the collective at the expense of the individual do not fare well for long. However, an organization based on leaders, especially alpha-leaders, will also not function appropriately if the leader is whacked out—most groups, with humans as a notable exception, will not follow an insane, unstable leader. Furthermore, an organization where individual rights reign supreme is an organization that can exhibit massive inconsideration to others.

So, what organization will work?

Maybe that’s part of the problem—the assumption that there is a static magic-bullet, a one-time-one-size-fits-all method.

Sometimes I suspect the gift of awareness and attention is just too much—it’s the tool we simply haven’t learned to master, perhaps because the darn thing is always changing. Change is a double-edged sword, we like novelty, but we abhor sustained uncertainty. We like stability, but we abhor stagnation. We can’t get around change and we can’t continually sustain sameness. We see and experience predictable rhythms and we see and experience great upheavals. In the face of this seeming turmoil, what we’ve learned to do is to either impose or subject our will, to take over or to give up (as in being a leader or letting others lead whether they’re any good at it or not). In this manner, we’ll create stability and hold on to it.

Though this imposition/subjugation may work at times, it seems largely retarded. But to even entertain the idea of keeping up with all the changes, with all of the attentions, is outright exhausting. We can’t allow it, because we imagine it will sweep us away into that dark cave of sustained uncertainty. So humans tend to turn to power—as in powerful ideas and/or powerful leaders. The problem is that if powerful ideas are contextual and context changes, what was a powerful idea can become a lame idea. And if the context that brokered a powerful leader changes, then that leader can become lame—though they have a military or population to support them. And if people are acting crazy—as in engaging in behaviors that promote individual power, influence, and/or idiocy, there is little in the way of organization that will work.

Imposing or giving up is tough work and we aren’t doing so well. Maybe it’s the big-picture phenomenon that plagues us—the God view. It’s not that the big picture is unimportant, but maybe the local view is mostly all we need—as long as the local individuals are not whacked—along with the ability to be occasionally empty from our attachments. I gather that what the deer does is to pay attention to localized info, and having satisfied its immediate needs, stops attaching. It’s called rest, though that rest is attentive, but not attached to something until something demands the deer’s attention. In other words, the deer doesn’t demand, it attends.

What’s crazy about us is that we do demand and as a result, it is not too far off the mark to say we suffer from individual and collective retardation. If we want, as the character Don Quixote proposed in Cervantes’ Man of La Mancha, to live the life we wish rather than the one we have, we might spend more time living it rather than either wishing it or bemoaning its absence. For the most part, each of us is responsible for our local energy and if we live responsibly and emanate honestly, we communicate that to our neighbors and so it goes.

Behaving responsibly—recognizing our stewardship for all we take on as our possessions and our interactions, including the understanding of how those possessions and interactions affect others—is a dynamic, adaptable organizational format. Such a format begins with the individual, but includes and reflects the community. Such a format does not exclude leadership, it just does not rely on the leadership principle—if a leader is working well, good, if they’re not, dump them, in a nice way. Such a format does not honor either the big or small picture at the exclusion of the other, it relies on our individual and group ability to focus as needed. And, if we provide empathy and support, when an individual or group is exhausted from paying so much attention, another steps in to temporarily stand watch or take up the cause, rather than to seize another’s position as though standing down means giving up and thus the right to invoke the “finders-keepers” rule.

What we get with stewardship and down time is a cycle of work and then rest and not so much of an eternal worry that something is going to get us if we blink. If we really want to live free, it might be well to remember that there is nothing quite like the freedom of existence after taking care of that which exists around us.