Behold, the honeybee. Marvel of civilization.
An animal intelligent enough to play ball (look it up- bees love balls!), with large social groups, that communicate in sophistocated ways, that build cities, nests, for themselves.
Surely this is a civilization.
Behold, the ant, the bee, the social wasp, the termite of the great termite mounds of Africa.
Welcome to the world of Eusocial insects.
Think of this as an alien civilization far older than man- going back to the late Cretaceous- for insect intelligence (which is more than we give them credit for, especially certain groups), like that of the octopus, evolved completely independently from man. Our last common ancestor with the honeybee was barely even a roundworm, and had nothing like the intelligence of a housefly, or even a non-insect arthropod, let alone a bee or a dog.
So, among the non-human animals, there are two clearly different levels of sociality.
The normal, let's form a herd and fight over mates type.
And the Eusociality of bees and ants.
Scientists give this second, far more sophistocated type a name: Eusociality.
We need a name for the other, more primitive type of sociality. Prosocial does not work. Because this means any kind of beneficial sociality that benefits the group, at least in psychology, and thus includes both groups. I suggest Midisocial for more simple sociality, since Simplisocial sounds akward.
So, thus the question of man: is man Eusocial or Midisocial?
Midisocial.
Do we humans fight over mates, over money, over power within the same social structure?
Yup.
We ain't Eusocial.
You don't see two worker bees from the same hive fighting over who will get laid.
You don't see policemen among honeybees, because you don't see no crime.
You only see soldiers to defend the hive from outsiders.
You don't see no crime in honeybee hives.
Humans ain't Eusocial.
And so I present: the four types of sociality.
Simple Midisociality, the basic stuff, from herds of horses to packs of lions.
Simple fortress Eusociality, where some groups have developed a simple form of Eusociality because they inhabit a small space and have limited room, such as some gall-forming insects, where a simple form of Eusociality has evolved out of the simple need to coexist in limited space
And the two forms of true Civilization.
Humanity's highly complex higher Midisociality
And full-blown true Eusociality, where the whole social group rallies around just one reproducing female that leads the hive, where no one commits crimes or fights over who will get laid.
I love human civilization, and humans have higher intelligence than insects- not nearly as much as we think, insects are clearly among the more intelligent animals- but humanity's highly complex Midisociality is not the higher of the two.
Humans have higher civilization by virtue of our higher intelligence, though again, don't underestimate the intelligence of insects, especially the Eusocial ones.
But the Fully Eusocial insects and naked mole-rats have the higher form of social group.
No crime, complete cooperation.
How do they do it?
What if everyone in Philadelphia was the child of the same mother.
A mother who was there to lead the family.
Wouldn't it be so much easier to cooperate?
Further, say that only that mother could have children, and only a few guys could get her pregnant.
No one fighting over who gets laid.
Wouldn't it be so much easier to cooperate?
This is full Eusociality, and this is how it works.
Fun fact: worker ants and bees are not 'slaves'. The Queen may have a Kim Kardashian ass and give birth a hundred times a day, but she is no slave driver.
We do not know that the Queen makes all the decisions. For all we know an ant colony may be a Republic with an implied Bill of Rights. What we do know is that
they cooperate for the same reason that you're good to your grandma and help out your family, and for the same reason that people volunteer to die for their country in
a just war. They just simply have an easier time keeping the cooperation smooth because they all have one mom to rally behind and they don't fight over who will get laid.
The only question is, howcome this has not evolved more often?
This is clearly rediculously successful!
Just look at the ants, bees, and wasps!
And all those termite mounds in Africa! No other nonhuman architecture even comes close!
Ants are arguably the dominant form of life on Earth!
Why has this not evolved over and over and over again!
In fact it has, among Hymenopterians, the group that includes ants, bees, and wasps.
Clearly some preconditions must be met before a species can be fully Eusocial.
First, a decent amount of intelligence.
The insects are one of three groups that show higher intelligence, along with vertebrates and cephalopods, and although all insects descended from flying insects have a decent amount of intelligence, certain groups, including all the Eusocial insects (and also the dragonflies), have especially high intelligence, probably mammalian/avian level intelligence.
Second, care of the young- and not just the guarding of the eggs- by the mother.
This limits it down.
I will add one more: I suspect that it is easier to evolve Eusociality among small animals, simply because a large animal can defend itself more easily as an individual.
There is much more of an immediate advantage in Eusociality among small animals.
After all, we might step on a bug, but who will mess with a beehive?
Even a stinging insect, if solitary, we might just swat.
But we don't go messing with that beehive.
Even a Green Beret does not go messing with a beehive without a very, very good reason.
Now, that doesn't mean that a large animal cannot be Eusocial- it just means that that big first evolutionary leap is harder to make.
We'd better be happy that that leap didn't happen in anything much larger than a naked mole-rat. Cause, if it did, humanity would not be the dominant mammal on the planet.
Then again, humanity is probably the best candidate for evolving Eusociality, so there you go.
But we ain't there.
Not until every human city has just one main reproducing female at any time.
This does not mean that every city has to be a seperate nation. Look up supercolonies. They exist in ants. This is what you get when several colonies merge, with all of their queens intact, into a single supercolony with many locations. With maybe a dozen queens rather than thousands of reproducing females, among millions no less, it is still far easier to keep social cohesion intact, especially as you have at least one location for each Queen.
But until every human city has just one main reproducing female- and humanity is just not built to keep up a population that way- we are not Eusocial.
Because there is only one other thing that has inspired a species to such a high degree of sociality that they eliminate crime. And we humans don't want to be stuck in some tiny space all our lives. We ain't gall wasps.
We're just going to have to turn to philosophy to keep our wonderful complex higher midisocility working as well as it can. Right now there is room for improvement, but it has been done before. We are not that many generations after the worst disaster in human history, after all.
One more detail. Why do I not consider the simple fortress Eusociality of gall wasps civilization? Well, maybe it is. But a honeybee colony has a far more interesting interaction with the wider world, and a far more interesting life.
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson