yes. i would. i have no illusions of a unique or special individuality. the benefits far outweigh the downsides.
if you haven’t seen the show, i guess you should google or something.
nah i kid. please keep reading my blog. in the new show from breaking bad and better call saul creator vince gilligan, an alien virus has made all humans on earth connect into a single mind. all except carol (played by the lovable rhea seehorn) and a few others. the plot centers around carol not wanting to join the hive mind, and the hive mind trying to be nice to her and get her to join.
join, it’s so wonderful, you don’t even understand how great it is, says everyone. carol says ‘no! i’d rather be bitter and caustic and unhappy me!’ no one else understands her. all the other’s who didn’t get connected to the hive mind, due to some unknown dna reason, are waiting patiently to join. carol is the only one who sees a problem.
i don’t see a problem either. to suddenly have all the knowledge of everyone on earth all at once, to be everyone and everywhere and see everything and do anything all at once…. how could i not say yes to that? but i ‘wouldn’t be me’ anymore? so what, in ten years i won’t be ‘me’ anymore either. i’m constantly becoming not me. who cares. in addition to knowing everything, and having no conflict and having access to the entire globe, i also would be immortal. because, people keep being born. as my body ages and dies my mind and knowledge and everything will continue living on in the hive. all of humanity would become one body, and each individual a cell. but unlike the individual human body, these ‘cells’ can replicate. so, i’d have unlimited time as well. remind me again why i should say no?
there would be two downsides. one is the weird limitations the show puts on the hive mind: the inability to lie, and the inability to kill anything, even plants. these limitations do not yet make any logical sense, but i trust the writers with what their doing, and i’m sure it will all be explained in later seasons. part of me, though, can’t help but wonder if these limitations were invented for the sole purpose of making the hive mind have some kind of downside at all. because otherwise it sounds far too appealing for there to be any tension in the show.
the second downside is one that the show hasn’t yet mentioned, but one that i have thought about a lot while watching this show, and that is: loneliness. if everyone on earth is connected into one mind, then who is there to talk to? any conversation would be with yourself about things you already know. that could end up being very isolating and terrible.
the solution, then, would be to split. can you do that? why not. it’s all pretend anyway. split up your hive into perhaps one cluster per continent. then suddenly you have other collectives that have knowledge that you don’t and things to talk about, and you all are still immortal and have all the other benefits mentioned above.
but of course this would lead to disagreements between the minds, and maybe arguments, and maybe fights. war? is it impossible to have a world without war unless you only have one mind left on the planet?
maybe, first, before splitting into multiple minds, i’d spend a bunch of generations breeding the aggression and hatred out of myself…
work on yourself, as they say, before you worry about other people.
Jonas David 