Swarm Intelligence
Harnessing the Power of Collective Action
The other day I was clearing out some old firewood. It was the size of stumps because I hadn’t gotten around to splitting this Spring. I wasn’t watching very carefully, just tossing from one pile to the next.
Before I knew it, carpenter ants were crawling all over me – up my arms, my pants, under my shirt and other places that had me doing a pretty wild dance.
I had disturbed those ants, caused a tsunami, an earthquake, a derecho. I had traded their comfort and safety for chaos. I had done it without their consent, and they were going to make me pay.
And so it goes with any sudden change. We can be acted upon, we can act or we can react. We can respond chaotically and all out for individual selves or we can organize and protect the collective good. At the moment, those ants were disoriented and in chaos, but I knew it was just a matter of time before they communicated with one another and started doing real harm.
“Although they do not sting, this black ant does bite. These black ant bites are followed by a spray of formic acid into the wound to increase the pain.” https://www.preferredpest.com/blog/guide-to-ant-bites-and-stings
I feared exactly that, multiplied by hundreds. I stopped everything I was doing and stripped down in the middle of the woods to swipe ants crawling on every limb.
So I ask you now, if ants with brains the size of, well, ants, can take down a nearly 200-lb giant, why can’t we humans pull together when our world is threatened?
I believe there are 2 reasons: The giants these days create incremental change so we get used to it at each step. The giants go after each of us separately to make us blame each other for our ills.
It’s an old but effective playbook.
Incremental change: Wal-Mart is the go-to (for anyone who doesn’t know about the boycott). It has to be. That one corporation has driven wages down across the entire world so that it is now the only place most people can afford to shop! Then there’s Amazon, which puts anything we want at our front door with a click and some debt. We never think of the child labor, assaults on workers or environmental destruction that makes each order so cheap and easy. If we did think, we’d be paralyzed.
Turning us against each other: Coalminers learned who won when Irish workers turned against Italians against Blacks more than a century ago. Meatpackers learned when Whites turned against Blacks during those same times. Many died before they finally united and won at least some concessions from the robber barons of their day.
Two decades ago, it was “Muslim terrorists will destroy America” (as if every Muslim was a terrorist). Now it’s, “Gays and Mexicans are ruining our kids, stealing our jobs and bringing crime to our communities.” Want to divide straight white people? Let’s go here: “Rural people are hicks. City people are citiots.”
I call bullshit.
Just about everyone in this country, Black, Brown, White or Green, gay, straight or in between, gets up in the morning to do the best they can – care for themselves and their families, provide a decent home, raise good kids, do a job, make a difference.
Then why do we buy into this garbage?
Fear of scarcity.
So-called leaders like the extremists-in-charge here in Iowa have convinced us there’s not enough of anything to go around. While corporations and their CEOs (add Dollar stores and McDonalds to the mix) swipe billions in profits and salaries from us every single day
Our small town has to choose between laying off the librarian and hiring a police officer (the police won).
We cut arts from our schools to pay for sports facilities hoping sports will pay for our kids’ college. (And still, parents have to raise money for such activities.)
We complain that public schools can’t do the job after we’ve underfunded them for decades. (So we send public funds to private - often religious - schools that then raise their tuition.)
We fight over the crumbs while the wealthy walk off with the feast.
But what if we acted like ants? What if we decided to bite back in concert? Marching, demonstrating, shutting down malls and storefronts, causing a ruckus at public events…I’ve done ‘em all. They get the juices flowing. They feed us adrenaline junkies.
But these are just tactics. Plus, it’s exhausting to keep that up and impossible keep people together, especially when - unlike ants - they have day jobs, mortgages and kids to tend to. See also: Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
Yet I’ve never been a fan of electoral politics. I’ve never seen a big difference between Dems and Republicans – both are on the corporate dole. When Dems had the trifecta in Iowa (governor’s mansion, House and Senate) nobody reined in Big Ag or regulated pesticide drift. Our minimum wage didn’t go up. Our water didn’t get cleaner. No one demanded that retail chains or casinos pay a living wage or respect a union vote.
Still, I’m beginning to realize electoral politics might be an important tool in the toolbox if we want any change at all. A combination of electoral politics and grassroots organizing might be all that’s left. Bernie showed us it’s possible to move the needle that way. That’s a strategy.
Everyone I know has at least one thing in common: We’re not making a billion bucks sitting in the CEO seat and despite our fantasy of the American Dream, we never will.
So let’s stop the giants from doing what they’re doing. Let’s make them do a wild dance to get rid of us. Let’s at least distract them long enough to get ourselves together.
We can learn a lot from the intelligence of ants.
Some more pretty pics below from Draco Hill Nature Farm, homebase of Postcards from the Heartland. (All photos © by Suzan Erem.)
Come visit us! Paid subscribers get farm goodies and a tour. Upcoming events include a prairie walk/seed collecting with County Naturalist Sarah Subbert and a Sweet Taste of Dignity meet-and-greet with Phil Wiese, who’s running for the state house by organizing the grassroots!
I love the Postcards from the Heartland change Suzan!