[FRIAM] Homo Hiveus

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus -

> If person with skill 1 delegates to individuals with distinct skills 2 and 3 and person with skill 3 delegates to individuals with skills 4 and 5 the kind of overlap of the kind you mention still can occur.     If developing any these skills takes decades, why is it important that everyone have some practical understanding of the other skills?   More importantly, why should we ever want to decrease the total number of skills?   So that we can `relate' to one another and keep the peace (be luddites)?  

I think that can (and does) work already.  We are already becoming a
eusocial species in many ways.   I am (instinctually/habitually?)
distrustful of hive-like contexts/behaviour (for myself).   That is
likely a product of my ego's desire to remain a distinct individual with
(inter)dependencies on others and/or any system kept to a minimum, so as
not to threaten said ego (as formed).  

It is interesting to note that even *bees* who we tend to hold as the
archetypal form of eusocial creature, apparently are only about 30% (by
number) eusocial and the remaining 70% operate as individuals.  I
remember as a child being told that "some bees are rogue bees and do not
live in a hive" which suggested that they had left their hive to live on
their own.  As it turns out, those bees were the "native" or "wild" bees
which were simply not of the same species as the European Honeybee...
the one we have elevated, husbanded, and celebrated.  In retrospect, I
do not believe there were any beekeepers in my remote region, yet there
were plenty of bees going about their business collecting nectar and
distributing pollen for the donors.   I also assumed that *bumblebees*
always lived as individuals because I never saw (or heard of) their
hives, nor knew anyone who "kept" bumblebees for honey/wax.    It seems
that what I know of as a bumblebee is likely to be a member of a tiny
(by bee standards) colony of perhaps 200 and most likely the hive is
underground in a natural cavity or one created/abandoned by other
burrowing creatures.   

I should also acknowledge that my own model of the "renaissance human"
or "polymath" is a caricature developed/formed/held by the cultural
embedding of our (sometimes) hyper-individualistic Western/Frontier culture.

I will withdraw to the position that *diversity* is what is worth
maximizing or at least conserving and that diversity can be within an
individual, distributed across a community, a species, and all of life
or existence.   My ego was simply formed in a context where diversity of
the "individual" organism was held high.   It is reflected in my choice
of living rurally (most of my life) and being somewhat uncomfortable
within any overly organized matrix (large institution, city, etc.).    I
know others for whom this is acutely uncomfortable and instead seek
their complexity within a group (tribal?) or built environment (city) or
cultural (regionalist/globalist/culturalist).   In the abstract, it
would seem to be nothing more than a question of the distribution of
entropy and optimization of structure and information/energy flows
through a "system".   As often is the case in such questions, the
scoping of our observation might be the key... individual, family,
tribe, city, nation, species, etc?

Homo Hiveus would seem to have emerged in the last 10,000 and would
appear to dominate our actual behaviour and context even if not in the
imaginations of those of us who continue to identify as homo sapiens or
homo faber or homo ???

- Steve