Hive Sociality Model
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A Hive Sociality Model is a human sociality model which models people as needing to occasionally lose themselves by becoming part of an emergent social organism.
- AKA: Hive Hypothesis.
- Context:
- It can lead to Human Flourishing.
- …
- Example(s):
- (Haidt et al., 2008).
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Subjective Value, Meaningfulness Feeling.
References
2010
- (Haidt, 2010) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt. (2010). “Jonathan Haidt's Response to (Wolf, 2010).” In: (Wolf, 2010), Princeton University Press. ISBN:9781400834594
- QUOTE: I raise these issues of ultrasociality and hive psychology because Wolf considers the popular advice to find meaning by getting involved with “something larger than oneself.” She asks what size has to do with anything, and she concludes that the crucial thing is to get involved with something outside yourself.
I disagree. From the perspective of hive psychology, size matters a great deal. From the perspective of hive psychology, modern humans are essentially bees who busted out of the hive during the Enlightenment, and who burned down the last honeycombs during the twentieth century. We now fly around free and unencumbered, calling ourselves atheists, reading Waiting for Godot, and wondering, what does it all mean? Where can I find meaning? A good hive must be larger than one’s self.
- QUOTE: I raise these issues of ultrasociality and hive psychology because Wolf considers the popular advice to find meaning by getting involved with “something larger than oneself.” She asks what size has to do with anything, and she concludes that the crucial thing is to get involved with something outside yourself.
2008
- (Haidt et al., 2008) ⇒ Jonathan Haidt, J. Patrick Seder, and Selin Kesebir. (2008). “Hive Psychology, Happiness, and Public Policy.” In: The Journal of Legal Studies, 37(S2).
- QUOTE: We consider three hypotheses about relatedness and well-being including the hive hypothesis, which says people need to lose themselves occasionally by becoming part of an emergent social organism in order to reach the highest levels of human flourishing. We discuss recent evolutionary thinking about multilevel selection, which offers a distal reason why the hive hypothesis might be true. We next consider psychological phenomena such as the joy of synchronized movement and the ecstatic joy of self-loss, which might be proximal mechanisms underlying the extraordinary pleasures people get from hive-type activities. We suggest that if the hive hypothesis turns out to be true, it has implications for public policy. We suggest that the hive hypothesis points to new ways to increase social capital and encourages a new focus on happy groups as being more than collections of happy individuals.