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collective and ecstatic dancing is a nearly universal “biotechnology” for binding groups together.
The WEIRDer you are, the harder it is to understand what those “savages” were doing.
Emile Durkheim.
Social facts—such as the suicide rate or norms about patriotism—emerge as people interact. They are just as real and worthy of study (by sociology) as are people and their mental states (studied by psychology).
Homo duplex,
creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society.
When I act under the influence of the second, by contrast, I am simply a part of a whole, whose actions I follow, and whose influence I am subject to.
I find it stunning that Durkheim invokes the logic of multilevel selection,
These second-level sentiments flip the hive switch, shut down the self, activate the groupish overlay, and allow the person to become “simply a part of a whole.”
“collective effervescence,”
the realm of the sacred, where the self disappears and collective interests predominate. The realm of the profane, in contrast, is the ordinary day-to-day world where we live most of our lives,
One of the most intriguing facts about the hive switch is that there are many ways to turn it on.
1. Awe in Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Transcend...
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Emerson and Darwin each found in nature a portal between the realm of the profane and the realm of the sacred.
17Awe acts like a kind of reset button:
shut down the self, making you feel that you are simply a part of a whole.
2. Durkheimogens
hallucinogens
these drugs could just as well be called Durkheimogens, given their unique (though unreliable) ability to shut down the self and give people experiences they later describe as “religious” or “transformative.”
psilocybin
3. Raves
(Revealingly, the colloquial name for MDMA is ecstasy.)
sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of the universe.
no sense of self-consciousness
one massive, united tribe of thousands of people,
a single unifying group consciousness.
I now see them striving and searching on two levels simultaneously, for we are all Homo duplex.
Oxytocin
Mirror neurons
an organization that takes advantage of our hivish nature can activate pride, loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less closely.
transformational leadership)
firms.Hivish employees work harder, have more fun, and are less likely to quit or to sue the company. Unlike Homo economicus, they are truly team players.
nudge everyone’s sliders a bit closer to the hive position.
Increase similarity, not diversity.
Exploit synchrony.
Create healthy competition among teams, not individuals.
Transactional leadership appeals to followers’ self-interest, but transformational leadership changes the way followers see themselves—from isolated individuals to members of a larger group.
membership.
“Ask not.”
The Doctrine of Fascism,
Fascist rallies,
were spectacles, not festivals.
Let’s imagine two nations, one full of small-scale hives, one devoid of them.
hivish nation,
several cross-cutting hiv...
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Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself.
Our minds were designed not only to help us win the competition within our groups, but also to help us unite with those in our group to win competitions across groups.
the hive hypothesis, which states that human beings are conditional hive creatures. We have the ability (under special circumstances) to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves (temporarily and ecstatically) in something larger than ourselves.
