Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism.
I grew up in an environment where the onus of raising a child was not on the parents alone but of the entire community. The logic is in that a child who becomes a burden or an armed robber becomes a threat not only to the parents but to a whole society!
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I grew up in an environment where the onus of raising a child was not on the parents alone but of the entire community. The logic is in that a child who becomes a burden or an armed robber becomes a threat not only to the parents but to a whole society!
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