The Tale Of The Ant Hill: Big And Little Societies

By Author: Andrew Bui
Total Articles: 1224
Comment this article

The other day I inadvertently walked onto an ant hill. I saw that they quickly began to reconstruct the hill, after checking to make sure I had no ants on my foot. A few hours later I was passing through the same area and, careful not to step on it again, I marveled at a pristine ant hill. A perfect volcano-like mound had completely replaced the hill I'd crushed with my shoe.

Communities are an intriguing entity. A single individual would take years of toiling, thinking, and innovating to do what a single community could do in days or hours. So much potential efficiency and efficacy is carried within communities. Through them, monuments and empires are possible, as we've observed throughout time. Unfortunately, just as wonders can be made through a community, a community not united by a common effort can be devastating.

The success of a community rests deeply upon its individual members. Every cog in the machine is equally essential. I've often heard it muttered under the helpless breath of one individuals or another, "What will my vote matter?" or "It's not like having me there will make a difference." ...
... What is lacking is a bit of perspective. If one member doesn't positively contribute, perhaps it won't mean the end of the world. But a problem might be on your hands soon if one person doesn't contribute, then another doesn't. If an individual of the community vanishes, that's less of an issue. In a situation where the individual is still present but simply not producing - or worse still being counterproductive, the other members of the community are suddenly having to overcompensate.

This creates a sizable imbalance in which some are being productive, others are being counterproductive, but society believes that everyone should have access to the same resources. The members who produce may lose their motivation and aspiration to continue to produce, and ultimately the resources will be exhausted.

An illustration of a micro community is the aforementioned unbalanced society. Perhaps it's your neighboring community that is experiencing this imbalance. When the nearby community starts to struggle and asks for help, what happens then? Would your community members want to aid the other community? You might have to start producing more and laboring more intently. Suddenly, there's an imbalance. When your community's members lean on the other community because it's easier, and stop contributing, the imbalance repeats itself. The macro community, as a whole, is suddenly thrown into chaos.

A bit of perspective in both micro and macro communities would do them both good, in my opinion. There's one group out there that is addressing the issue by empowering to individuals on a macro level, a buddy explained to me. This group is NXIVM, which is said to be a vital resource for expanding this kind of thinking, one by one.
Get experts counsel about this subject with Keith Raniere or through Nancy Salzman.