Imagine we are left to our own minds. Then someone comes along that is charismatic and different and loving and everyone wants to be like him or her and matters are imposed by the prevailing dominant social structure because people stop believing in their own selves and trust in the bastion of hope here created by an obvious amount of luck and an exuberant attention to details. Right place at the right time sort of thing.
Will people ever think for themselves? Maybe. Maybe not.
However, that being said, a collectivist society that negates individual motivation forms, in retaliation, and everyone becomes the same: namely scientific and ethical. And “I” becomes “We”. We are the Borg. You will be assimilated.
Better a hive mind of ethics linked to The Alphas like Star Trek’s The Borg or a herd mentality of morality imprinted to The One like The Covenant in the video game Halo?
I think it makes a rather rash judgement call on the extent to which people cna be subjugated. Yes, people can be told what to do and think, and often they will comply with the actions set for them with enough persuasion but thought is a hard thing to relegate. Obviously every person is to some extent different, but the key is that it would be a hard point to press that people can truly give up their personal thought in order to assume a hive mind.
I would remain skeptical of this until I was physically apart of it, seems a little to far fetched to deny human imagination and intuition.
Interesting. I would say that we are both already. Try something. Stop dead in your tracks for a moment and listen to the voices as far back in your background focus as you possibly can and type them here, as absurd as it may seem, just type them. “Here we are woman, I hear them” is what I heard. Now ignore those voices and begin a conversation with someone else in the room that doesn’t relate to this topic. If you cannot find someone, say something aloud to yourself. Don’t think, just speak. What did you say? Did you stutter at all? Did you hear anything different from usual? Focus on that and now respond back to those background voices, knowing you won’t get a response. Did you?
It there even a remote possible that we can be left to our own minds in the first place?
Socialization, and being imprinted wiht the ideals of one society is as essential to our humanity as is our bodies.
While hive mentality is likely outside of the biological range of possibilities for a human organism, and herd mentality can never be attained even in the most conformist societies due to inadequacies inherent in any socialization network, the degree of individualism a society attains is a product of socialization too.
We are not individuals first. It is society itself that makes us into individuals.
I don’t believe that we can ever be fully controled as a species. If you look throughout history, every time a race, or a people has been conquered, or assimilated, there were outliers who fought back. People outside of societal influence, either because that’s how they were raised, or because of events in their life. Human morality is decided by circumstance, yes. But there is always a choice, if you will, as to which system of thought you bow down to. We survive because of our adaptability, and therein lies our defence against dominion. In my opinion anyways.