The Hive Mind in Pluribus
Jan. 4th, 2026 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI have been enjoying Jessie Gender’s reviews of Pluribus. I appreciate her perspectives and agree on many points but also had some disagreement with points raised in her review of the finale. Namely, I think her use of the word “hegemony” is sometimes inaccurate or, at least, imprecise, and I am not prepared, as she is, to definitively judge the hive mind as “bad.”
Spoilers below for season 1 of Pluribus
Hegemony
Jessie has repeatedly remarked that the hive mind is in conversation with real-world critiques of hegemony. That’s a valid and useful point, one I probably wouldn’t have considered deeply on my own because I tend to come at sci-fi from a different vantage point. (In brief, I think she leads with looking for “allegorical” readings, while I lead with trying to understand the in-universe worldbuilding.) But while I agree that the hive mind can be usefully compared to real-world hegemony, I disagree that it is a hegemony, literally in-universe.
In the real world, a hegemony is an ideology so pervasive and culturally dominant that it effectively silences non-hegemonic views (pushes them outside the “Overton window”). Jessie called Le Guin’s Ekumen a “hegemony,” and I don’t think that’s accurate. The Ekumen is a socially powerful institution that has its own culture and values, but it does not silence non-hegemonic views. In fact, by design (both Le Guin’s and the Ekumen’s), it honors and values others’ cultures and beliefs. Its whole reason for existing is to learn about how other cultures do things, not to assimilate them Borg-like, but to broaden appreciation for human diversity.
In contrast to hegemony, (almost?) no one is ”from” the Ekumen’s dominant value system, not even the Hainish, the center of Ekumen culture. In Four (or Five) Ways to Forgiveness, for example, Havzhiva is a Hainish person who goes to “college” to become a representative of the Ekumen. His first experience is to have his worldview radically challenged because the Ekumen’s beliefs, broadly, are very different from his own culture’s. He is taught to resolve this by simultaneously holding the truth and value of both “local” and “historical” knowledge, not by marginalizing or silencing the local. In other words, even on Hain, he is not culturally “from the Ekumen”; he is from the community of Stse.
If a real world hegemony is, for example, the United States’ belief in radical individualism and growth-based capitalism as the only imaginable worldview, the Ekumen would be more analogous to the US university system in, say, the 20th century: powerful, influential, but also not a governing body, not the major power holder, largely separate from most folks’ daily lives, and actively engaged in the work of learning about diverse cultures and beliefs and, to some degree, voicing them.
In Pluribus, one could, indeed, say that Carol and Manousos are effectively silenced in terms of having no sway over the hive mind. But in the real world, a hegemony is a phenomenon of human culture, that is, of individuals living together in a society. We simply don’t have hive minds; they are categorically different, so I don’t think a label that belongs to a society made up of human individuals can apply. Which brings me to...
Is the hive mind “bad”?
Jessie argues it is bad because it (sometimes) ignores consent and effectively destroys human cultures and diversity by no longer seeing any need to practice them. She gives the example of the Peruvian village being shuttered, and I agree this was heart-wrenching. I found it sad, but I’m not prepared to declare it unequivocally “bad.”
To be clear, I’m not sold on the hive mind either. It has a lot of contradictions and open questions for me. For example, why does consent matter in a physically invasive procedure but not an mentally invasive procedure? How is valuing all life consistent with giving someone an A-bomb? Why is serving someone’s every whim the best way to make them “happy”? Surely, the 7 billion-person intelligence that is the hive mind has ample examples of how serving every whim, whether of children or emperors, stunts people and ultimately makes them miserable. If they care so much about life, watch over people’s dogs, etc., why abandon the baby goat? If they’re so happy to have something new to read, doesn’t that suggest a value to having individuals who can write new things for new readers? But while I have many questions, I can’t justify declaring the hive mind necessarily “bad.”
The hive mind’s premise is that they make people extraordinarily happy, and this seems to be true. They have certainly eliminated war, most violence (arguably minus the consent issue), abuse, racism, sexism, etc. They argue that this immense happiness is better than what the human race had before, so it must be shared with everyone so they can be happier.
This brings us to core ethical questions. What’s the greatest good? Maximum happiness with minimum suffering or something else? Freedom? Self-determination? If one argues “self-determination,” for example, then Carol (and Jessie) are right. But I find this a little hard to defend. The advantage of the happiness/suffering criteria is that it’s demonstrably obvious. By definition, we like being happy and dislike suffering. Sure, there are lots of comparative exceptions, people (perhaps like Carol) who would rather be miserable. But usually, I think, that speaks to a deeper, underlying issue, a lack of “happiness” that isn’t addressed by the standard prescription for being happy. In any case, it remains clear in basic, daily terms, the vast majority would rather be happy than suffer.
That’s not as clear with self-determination. We generally want that too; I agree it’s a human need. But how do we perceive that want? When we don’t get it, we’re unhappy. When I have to make life decisions based not on how I want to live but on what job will give me health insurance, I feel unhappy. I suffer. Happiness/suffering seem the underlying issue. If one could be denied self-determination, in the conventional human sense, but be blissfully happy, I’m not sure I can defend that as bad.
But what about the loss of all the beautiful things in human culture? The Peruvian village, new books, falling in love? I agree these are all sad losses. But I’d offer that “loss” or “sad” are not necessarily “bad,” in the sense that the greater good may be served by sustaining some loss and sadness.
Let’s take, for example, the end of Winnie the Pooh; I mean the second of the original books. Christopher Robin has to say goodbye to his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood because he is getting older and is going to off to school. And somehow he knows that even when he comes back, he won’t be able to slip back into that early childhood imagination where stuffed toys can be like real people. He will see those toys again, but they will never be his friends again, not in the same way. It’s heartrending. I cry every time I read it. The loss is real. But we wouldn’t say the correct response is for Christopher Robin to strive to never grow up, or for his parents to say, “Okay, you don’t have to go to school.” In addition to its being in evitable, there is value to being an adult too: to having that greater understanding, great capacity for empathy, greater self-sufficiency, and so on. Growing up is good, and it is also sad and involves irrevocable loss. It seems to me possible that the same is true of joining the hive mind, even involuntarily.
Here's another analogy—and I’m on shakier ground with this one as a total non-expert, so please take it with a grain of salt. In some ways, the world of the hive mind reminds me of a Buddhist pure land. Pure lands are realms of Buddhas, at a higher cosmological level than heavens. To hear them described, it sounds like not much is going on. The image I get in my mind is a sort of white blankness with a few pale sketchings of lines. It doesn’t sound all that awesome, but that’s presumably because we are not awakened, as the Buddhas are. We’re still in a zone where having stuff to do and experience matters. We have not yet comprehended that “matter is emptiness, and emptiness is matter.”
To us, as outside observers, the hive mind looks like a lot of people with bland expressions doing daily tasks in silence. Very disturbing. But we don’t know what they’re experiencing. We haven’t experienced it. They say it’s immense happiness; they say this consistently and without variation, so I wouldn’t leap to disagree. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s not “bad”; maybe it just seems bad from our vantage point.
Of course, in Buddhism, no one is forced to pursue enlightenment. Not interested in practicing the Dharma? Okay, it’ll be there if you change your mind. Then again, in Buddhism, as I understand it, this is fundamentally so because no one can be forced to pursue enlightenment. Buddhas can teach; they can’t open your mind and drop enlightenment in like a software update. If they could... would it be a bad thing? I don’t have an answer for that. Maybe it would be. Maybe it’s wouldn’t.
I have to stay agnostic about that for the same reason I’m an agnostic, in general. I can’t judge something I can’t conceive of. I can’t conceive of the type of entity we label “God,” so I can’t possibly begin to analyze whether that entity exists. I can’t know that means. I can’t conceive of the hive mind either, so I don’t see how I could pass judgement on its ultimate good or badness, until and unless its claims to this higher level of happiness are put in doubt. (If it’s not happier than individualized humanity, then, yes, I’d agree it’s not good in and of itself.)
Those are some of my thoughts in response to Jessie’s review. I am really grateful for the time, energy, and thought she has put in to unpacking this show for us.
Spoilers below for season 1 of Pluribus
Hegemony
Jessie has repeatedly remarked that the hive mind is in conversation with real-world critiques of hegemony. That’s a valid and useful point, one I probably wouldn’t have considered deeply on my own because I tend to come at sci-fi from a different vantage point. (In brief, I think she leads with looking for “allegorical” readings, while I lead with trying to understand the in-universe worldbuilding.) But while I agree that the hive mind can be usefully compared to real-world hegemony, I disagree that it is a hegemony, literally in-universe.
In the real world, a hegemony is an ideology so pervasive and culturally dominant that it effectively silences non-hegemonic views (pushes them outside the “Overton window”). Jessie called Le Guin’s Ekumen a “hegemony,” and I don’t think that’s accurate. The Ekumen is a socially powerful institution that has its own culture and values, but it does not silence non-hegemonic views. In fact, by design (both Le Guin’s and the Ekumen’s), it honors and values others’ cultures and beliefs. Its whole reason for existing is to learn about how other cultures do things, not to assimilate them Borg-like, but to broaden appreciation for human diversity.
In contrast to hegemony, (almost?) no one is ”from” the Ekumen’s dominant value system, not even the Hainish, the center of Ekumen culture. In Four (or Five) Ways to Forgiveness, for example, Havzhiva is a Hainish person who goes to “college” to become a representative of the Ekumen. His first experience is to have his worldview radically challenged because the Ekumen’s beliefs, broadly, are very different from his own culture’s. He is taught to resolve this by simultaneously holding the truth and value of both “local” and “historical” knowledge, not by marginalizing or silencing the local. In other words, even on Hain, he is not culturally “from the Ekumen”; he is from the community of Stse.
If a real world hegemony is, for example, the United States’ belief in radical individualism and growth-based capitalism as the only imaginable worldview, the Ekumen would be more analogous to the US university system in, say, the 20th century: powerful, influential, but also not a governing body, not the major power holder, largely separate from most folks’ daily lives, and actively engaged in the work of learning about diverse cultures and beliefs and, to some degree, voicing them.
In Pluribus, one could, indeed, say that Carol and Manousos are effectively silenced in terms of having no sway over the hive mind. But in the real world, a hegemony is a phenomenon of human culture, that is, of individuals living together in a society. We simply don’t have hive minds; they are categorically different, so I don’t think a label that belongs to a society made up of human individuals can apply. Which brings me to...
Is the hive mind “bad”?
Jessie argues it is bad because it (sometimes) ignores consent and effectively destroys human cultures and diversity by no longer seeing any need to practice them. She gives the example of the Peruvian village being shuttered, and I agree this was heart-wrenching. I found it sad, but I’m not prepared to declare it unequivocally “bad.”
To be clear, I’m not sold on the hive mind either. It has a lot of contradictions and open questions for me. For example, why does consent matter in a physically invasive procedure but not an mentally invasive procedure? How is valuing all life consistent with giving someone an A-bomb? Why is serving someone’s every whim the best way to make them “happy”? Surely, the 7 billion-person intelligence that is the hive mind has ample examples of how serving every whim, whether of children or emperors, stunts people and ultimately makes them miserable. If they care so much about life, watch over people’s dogs, etc., why abandon the baby goat? If they’re so happy to have something new to read, doesn’t that suggest a value to having individuals who can write new things for new readers? But while I have many questions, I can’t justify declaring the hive mind necessarily “bad.”
The hive mind’s premise is that they make people extraordinarily happy, and this seems to be true. They have certainly eliminated war, most violence (arguably minus the consent issue), abuse, racism, sexism, etc. They argue that this immense happiness is better than what the human race had before, so it must be shared with everyone so they can be happier.
This brings us to core ethical questions. What’s the greatest good? Maximum happiness with minimum suffering or something else? Freedom? Self-determination? If one argues “self-determination,” for example, then Carol (and Jessie) are right. But I find this a little hard to defend. The advantage of the happiness/suffering criteria is that it’s demonstrably obvious. By definition, we like being happy and dislike suffering. Sure, there are lots of comparative exceptions, people (perhaps like Carol) who would rather be miserable. But usually, I think, that speaks to a deeper, underlying issue, a lack of “happiness” that isn’t addressed by the standard prescription for being happy. In any case, it remains clear in basic, daily terms, the vast majority would rather be happy than suffer.
That’s not as clear with self-determination. We generally want that too; I agree it’s a human need. But how do we perceive that want? When we don’t get it, we’re unhappy. When I have to make life decisions based not on how I want to live but on what job will give me health insurance, I feel unhappy. I suffer. Happiness/suffering seem the underlying issue. If one could be denied self-determination, in the conventional human sense, but be blissfully happy, I’m not sure I can defend that as bad.
But what about the loss of all the beautiful things in human culture? The Peruvian village, new books, falling in love? I agree these are all sad losses. But I’d offer that “loss” or “sad” are not necessarily “bad,” in the sense that the greater good may be served by sustaining some loss and sadness.
Let’s take, for example, the end of Winnie the Pooh; I mean the second of the original books. Christopher Robin has to say goodbye to his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood because he is getting older and is going to off to school. And somehow he knows that even when he comes back, he won’t be able to slip back into that early childhood imagination where stuffed toys can be like real people. He will see those toys again, but they will never be his friends again, not in the same way. It’s heartrending. I cry every time I read it. The loss is real. But we wouldn’t say the correct response is for Christopher Robin to strive to never grow up, or for his parents to say, “Okay, you don’t have to go to school.” In addition to its being in evitable, there is value to being an adult too: to having that greater understanding, great capacity for empathy, greater self-sufficiency, and so on. Growing up is good, and it is also sad and involves irrevocable loss. It seems to me possible that the same is true of joining the hive mind, even involuntarily.
Here's another analogy—and I’m on shakier ground with this one as a total non-expert, so please take it with a grain of salt. In some ways, the world of the hive mind reminds me of a Buddhist pure land. Pure lands are realms of Buddhas, at a higher cosmological level than heavens. To hear them described, it sounds like not much is going on. The image I get in my mind is a sort of white blankness with a few pale sketchings of lines. It doesn’t sound all that awesome, but that’s presumably because we are not awakened, as the Buddhas are. We’re still in a zone where having stuff to do and experience matters. We have not yet comprehended that “matter is emptiness, and emptiness is matter.”
To us, as outside observers, the hive mind looks like a lot of people with bland expressions doing daily tasks in silence. Very disturbing. But we don’t know what they’re experiencing. We haven’t experienced it. They say it’s immense happiness; they say this consistently and without variation, so I wouldn’t leap to disagree. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s not “bad”; maybe it just seems bad from our vantage point.
Of course, in Buddhism, no one is forced to pursue enlightenment. Not interested in practicing the Dharma? Okay, it’ll be there if you change your mind. Then again, in Buddhism, as I understand it, this is fundamentally so because no one can be forced to pursue enlightenment. Buddhas can teach; they can’t open your mind and drop enlightenment in like a software update. If they could... would it be a bad thing? I don’t have an answer for that. Maybe it would be. Maybe it’s wouldn’t.
I have to stay agnostic about that for the same reason I’m an agnostic, in general. I can’t judge something I can’t conceive of. I can’t conceive of the type of entity we label “God,” so I can’t possibly begin to analyze whether that entity exists. I can’t know that means. I can’t conceive of the hive mind either, so I don’t see how I could pass judgement on its ultimate good or badness, until and unless its claims to this higher level of happiness are put in doubt. (If it’s not happier than individualized humanity, then, yes, I’d agree it’s not good in and of itself.)
Those are some of my thoughts in response to Jessie’s review. I am really grateful for the time, energy, and thought she has put in to unpacking this show for us.
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Date: 2026-01-05 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-07 03:06 pm (UTC)Well, if you ever watch the 1970s one with Leonard Nimoy, it's kind of like a continuation of that. :)