HIVEMIND: The Real Story
The Question: What is this book actually about?
This week I published a book, one that I hope fulfilled my book manifesto.
The question I seem to get most often is — um, so what is it actually about?Delivered with a friendly smile but also a puzzled head-tilt.
Others seem to believe they’ve figured it out based on the title alone — that the book is principally focused on “mob mentality” or echo chambers or the dangers of ingroups — but that isn’t really what the book is about.
I cannot fault anyone for all of this confusion.
For one thing, the book has had multiple subtitles before settling into its current one, and you can still find mentions and images of the past ones scattered across the web — Thinking Alike in a Divided World was my personal favorite. The Perils and Promise of Our Collective Social Selves was probably the closest to its actual book’s topic. But still, none of these — nor its current subtitle — reflect the book’s focus on the impact of modern social technologies on human experience, which is both a huge focus of the book and the one that reviews so far have focused most of their attention on.
For another, she’s a strange little book. A little too scholarly to be popcorn reading, a little too casual and familiar to be scholarly, part memoir and part popular science and part my favorite literary quotes. Plus some Stephen King and good ole dog-worship.
But in case you’re trying to figure out whether you have any interest in reading the book, I’m here to clarify what she’s all about.
A Three-Layered Honeycake
I see the book as having three layers.
The first layer is a primer on contemporary social psychology and social neuroscience, an overview of some of the most exciting research happening in these fields. To organize this review I use the metaphor of the hivemind — the extent to which we share collective thoughts and emotions and ideas about how the world works, how astonishingly hypersocial we really are. We discuss collective effervescence, ecstatic group ritual, emotional contagion, neural synchrony, and nudging social norms.
The second layer is a consideration of the impact of smartphones and social media on our ultrasociality. I argue that these social technologies are neither innately positive or negative, but rather act as an amplifier of both our most prosocial and antisocial tendencies. I also argue that rather than bin all our smartphones and delete all of our profiles, we should think deeply and intelligently about how our social media is designed, how often and in which ways we wish to use these technologies to enhance our best selves, and how to encourage our children to be good digital citizens.
The third layer focuses on our current moment of political polarization and panic. This third layer was almost unintentional, as it largely emerged from the fact that I began all of the interviews for the book in the wake of the 2016 election and so these matters were at the forefront of the minds of both me and the experts I interviewed.
Oh right — and the book is also a collection of some really brilliant other people’s thoughts. Check out some of my favorite of their quotes in this Twitter thread.
An Plea for Complexity
In addition to examining how our hiveish natures inform our moment-to-moment experience, I also argue in the book that there are certain dangers inherent to thinking collectively, and principal among these is the tendency to see everything in dichotomies rather than in their gorgeous, rich complexity. And yes, also our tendency to polarize toward extreme opinions when we only sync up with people who already agree with us.
There are also specific hivemind narratives that dig their claws deep into us, and we have trouble seeing beyond their blinders.*
Some of these covered in the book are:
Technology is inherently good or bad: Certain technologies are either good or bad, and this essential nature is coded within the technology itself rather than its use.
Good guys and bad guys: That the world is made up of heroes and villains that need to be conquered, and we’re pitched in an epic battle for the fate of the universe.
Happiness is individual: That to be our best, happiest selves we should focus on self-improvement, life-hacking and meditating and bone-brothing our way to fulfillment.
Two years ago in my book manifesto I wrote: “I do not believe polemics are the only interesting sort of book to read, and I refuse to write one. I don’t have a horse in this race, and I’m not selling a viewpoint. I think that complexity is inherently interesting, and that probing boundary conditions and contextual influences is fun. I think we’re smarter than the need for soundbites.”
As a guiding principle I quote writer and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom in the Preface: “For if there’s one thing I know from studying wicked problems and reading the great writers who wrote into existence our world, it is that a smart person avoids certainty.”
I hope that the book actualized these promises.
An Appeal to Our Collective Selves
Related to the third dangerous hivemind narrative listed above, I argue that happiness is more collectively sourced than individually sourced, and that our ingroups can be a rich source of personal identity and emotional nourishment. That we don’t have to abandon our cherished ingroups to embrace the larger ingroup of humanity.
Moreover, research I review from multiple areas of study — neuroscience, mental illness, sociology — suggest that a relentless focus on the self and on individualism is a recipe for unhappiness.
To make some of these arguments I interview the Head of Training at NEADS: World Class Service Dogs, and take a deep dive into that bible-of-individualism The Fountainhead to evaluate its tenets.
Reading recently that Prince himself intended on dismantling Ayn Rand “brick by brick” in his autobiography reassures me that I’m on the right track here.
So there she is — the book.
It probably isn’t for everyone. But maybe it is for you! You can find it here.
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NOTES:
*Don’t tell my wonderful editor that this mixed metaphor survived into the final version of this essay.
