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:Analogies for Sustainable Development/Human society as beehive

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Overview

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Analogy Map

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Discussion

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Quote Bank

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Haidt (2012)[2]:

“Since ancient times, people have likened human societies to beehives. But is this just a loose analogy? If you map the queen of the hive onto the queen or king of a city-state, then yes, it’s loose. A hive or colony has no ruler, no boss. The queen is just the ovary. But if we simply ask whether humans went through the same evolutionary process as bees—a major transition from selfish individualism to groupish hives that prosper when they find a way to suppress free riding—then the analogy gets much tighter. ….Like bees, our ancestors were (1) territorial creatures with a fondness for defensible nests (such as caves) who (2) gave birth to needy offspring that required enormous amounts of care, which had to be given while (3) the group was under threat from neighboring groups…. The human lineage may have started off acting very much like chimps, but by the time our ancestors started walking out of Africa, they had become at least a little bit like bees…. Like bees, humans began building ever more elaborate nests, and in just a few thousand years, a new kind of vehicle appeared on Earth—the city-state... As the colonial insects did to the other insects, we have pushed all other mammals to the margins, to extinction, or to servitude. The analogy to bees is not shallow or loose. Despite their many differences, human civilizations and beehives are both products of major transitions in evolutionary history.”


Wilson (2015)[3]:

“Just as eusocial insects constitute over half of the insect biomass on earth, we and our domesticated animals represent a large fraction of the vertebrate biomass on earth, for better or for worse.”


References

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  1. ↑ Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. Delacorte Press.
  2. ↑ Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York, NY, USA: Pantheon Books.
  3. ↑ Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.

Further Resources

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Wikipedia: Beehive - Symbolism

Wilson, D. S. (2002). Darwin’s Cathedral. Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press.


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