It is pretty well documented that hive mind thinking is toxic. We may not think so on a normal basis because that is the entire concept of what society tells us. We are raised to believe a certain body type is the ideal beauty, we're raised to desire the same things of our given interests - A Porsche or a Corvette if you're a car guy, a type of purse if your a fan of fast fashion, and on and on. As an individual, we may diverge from these things we're hive minded into a little bit, but they always remain as a tether.
These things aren't inherently a problem. Who cares why the root of what we enjoy is due to a societal hive mind? No, the problem comes much, much deeper than this. One of the biggest problems with hive minded societies is the ignorance that it trickles into the individuals of a society.
Let's take governments all over the world as a prime example. Nearly all countries across the world have societies that support their governments by the masses. This is true for countries ranging from China to Russia to the United States of America. Even Germany in the nazi era had the masses in support.
I will narrow it down a little bit to the United States of America, since it is what I am most familiar with. We currently have a president who thinks he inherently knows better than everyone around him even though he shows next to no ability to even research the things he comments on. He was running the economy into the shitter before COVID-19 wrecked the economy in the most expedited fashion I could have never imagined, and was only sustaining it as much as he was by dumping federal dollars into the economic sections he was wrecking (think farming, think education, think infrastructure, think trade). He consistently does things to collapse these sections of the economy. As with farmers, he shut down huge profit margins by reducing trade with foreign countries, and then supplemented the farmers losses by giving them money. This is not sustainable and only put a band-aid on the problem he created. Yet, even though he has done these things, he has still maintained a very consistent fan base among the society - to the point that he will very likely be put in office for another four years.
Quite literally, the government can do anything to the society it wants to do so long as it can convince the hive minded society that it is in their best interest, which isn't even that hard whatsoever. From the time we're born, it is pretty ingrained in our minds that our country is the best country. There really is no substantial evidence that any first world country is better than any other at this point - they all have pros and cons. China has the capability to mass produce just about anything and their lack of copyright laws mean lower prices for similar products. Cuba has some of the best healthcare in the world. Meanwhile, Sweden is miserably cold and damn near impossible to become a citizen, and things we take for granted in this country - like our cars and guns - are severely restricted in other countries.
But just like those things, this country continues to vote against a healthcare system that works for the people because people in this country hate taxes - even though they are already paying such an astronomical amount in taxes and see relatively little in return for it. Hive minded society tells us that seeing things being beneficial to our society as a whole from taxes is bad. I was a small child, likely under 10, when I had a concept of taxes taught to me. I then asked what they were used for and was explained that they go towards roads. For the record, the roads in Indiana are fucking horrible. I may not have had the best grasp on this stuff as a small child, but even as a small child I understood that there were more people in the country that I could ever count and if each of those were paying a bit of money into something that it would equal a lot more money than I could comprehend and all we were getting out of it were shitty roads. Obviously, I understand there is a much larger amount of things that the tax money goes towards now, but it is still millions, if not billions, of unaccounted for money that could easily be distributed into a system of providing healthcare for every citizen of this country. Hell, even non-citizens.
So then I've heard the argument - in regards to healthcare specifically - that the pay method we use leads to more innovation. But does it really? All research points to no, that it doesn't. Our "innovation" in the medical field pales in comparison to the likes of Cuba and Canada. Even our own politicians who vote against healthcare systems go to Canada for services (here is looking at you, Ted Cruz). Hive minded society will come up with any and every reason to believe what they are being told by the government that guides them.
I am not even trying to come up with a solution here. The only way to truly get away from hive minded societies that work against their own benefit is the have an anarchy, except that brings up a whole bag of other issues - like, how do you create a society without a government that has intelligence enough to not kill one another just for basic survival needs, or how do you allow freedom enough from simple survival to explore innovations?
It has also been documented that the reason that the government in this country was formed the way it is setup was to ensure that the government acted as a buffer between the rich and the poor, so the rich could gain wealth exponentially without worrying about the poor killing them off. This does make sense in regards to how wealthy the wealthy become in this country - which is arguably one of the countries with the worst distribution of wealth in the world, especially when compared to how wealthy the country is to begin with.
There is also the whole hive minded thought process that a human being's value is solely based around the job they do. That fast food worker, even if they are the hardest working person in the world, will never be worth as much as the regional manager of the same fast food restaurant even though their job is to just crunch numbers and push policies that usually work in detriment to the mental well being of that hard working individual. They will be the first to come down with orders to the store management to lay people off even if the company is creating record profits because that's typically what their job revolves around. And when that fast food worker stands up for themselves, crying out to be heard as a person with value, then the hive minded society decries that their jobs aren't valuable enough to render being treated as a human. It is nice to see that there is a shift in this thought process in this country, but it isn't happening fast enough and that is especially evident through this COVID-19 crisis when so many of those low wage people were forced to work as essential while others for the same company were getting laid off and can now no longer make their rent. And this country handed out 1,200 dollar one time payments as if that is even remotely close to compensate, but I guess it would be tremendously nice for those who have big bank accounts to have a bit more money to invest into their stocks.
There is a wave of politicians now who are fighting for change, but they will fall into the same traps that the politicians before them fell into. It takes too much money to run for a political office and as such will require major money from lobbyists to hold their positions. In order to maintain those donations, they will have to work hard to keep those donors happy, and while that is happening then they will be forced to convince their supporters that what is in the best interest of their donors is also what is in the best interest of them as an individual.
An interesting side note in all of this is that if you were to go to a financial advisor with a huge sum of money and ask them where you should put it, they'd tell you to split it up into several different sources so if some do bad you don't lose everything. The economy works the same way. The more people with extra money, the more money gets spent in the economy. It doesn't matter if it gets put into the hands of a toy manufacturer or investment into an upstart, the money gets put back into the economy. And another benefit to this is that the more people with extra money means that when something like COVID-19 happens again, people won't be getting kicked out of their homes for missing payments, or losing their source of transportation to get to their jobs.
But then again, who am I?
-Dustin S. Stover
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