Language programs our behaviour in such heavy ways; how we interrelate and decide one anothers’ fate is hedged about with possessives.
I’ve recently been involved in a couple of different kinds of governance discussions. In one, a group of decision makers is assembled, some of whom are engaged in philosophical disputations, others are rigorously attepting to make decisions. Given a majority, there is no real valid discussion. In the conversation there are a lot of assumptions about what “we need” which don’t stipulate who we are or what our problems are. We need different things depending on who talks. There’s a lot of “I think” in the conversation – exchange of opinions about things which can’t act on things – which aren’t presented in terms of immediate facts, near potential consequences. people talking about what We Need get it pointed out by a couple of others, maybe build a little circuit devoted to it in themselves.
Seven of Nine talks up the concept of a hive mind, of a borganisation – a seeming perfect vehicle for collective action. I read We, Borg then re-read bits of Hobbes’ Leviathan. Inside a hive mind, relations would be all different. “Governance structure” of a cellular network isn’t the right term; just mediation and exchange mechanisms; operations, not instructions. If this-I were inside a hive mind, i’d feel a very different kind of connection to the other-I people inside it with me.
Our words for describing relations are all possessive – emphasise difference between i and you ness, differing status, differing privileges, control ability. My brother, my friend, my staff, my wife. Of-me-ness shouldn’t be necessary. The constant stating of it can be un-learned. Action on any implicit assumption about rights, precedence, ability to tell one another what to do, can be unformed.
In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.
Ralph Emerson, The Over-soul
In a hive mind there would be no such situation where “a blank I loves blankly a blank You“; love in a hive mind would be complete, or be more complete.
