Who Captains the We-Ship?
or, Being a Node in a Low-Tech Hive Mind
The following story is a true retelling of my perspective within a low-tech hive mind. I was told by a friend to emphasize here that this is a true story of an actual experience I had, and nothing here is exaggerated beyond my usual prosaic way of speaking. Admittedly, I enjoyed being told that something I experienced was so high-strangeness that I need to clarify that it isn't a work of science fiction. As such, let it be known: this is a work of science fact, and you too can enter the hive.
We Came As Many
The five of us entered the Octagon, fully aware that we would be leaving as a single entity. As we sat down to prepare for what I was half-expecting to feel like a 5-way Vulcan mind-meld, Malcolm (who had brought me to this retreat and introduced me to this group activity) began to explain the task at hand. We would, he explained, be doing a ritual wherein we would say goodbye to our individual selves and dive completely into the self that exists in the collective.
We began by setting the tone of our Hive. Would we go outside? Would we leave the meditation-room where we were beginning our journey? What were the standards for behavior and activity once we abandoned our senses of self? These questions were all pondered by us as individuals. The general sense we observed was one of self-reflection, and a willingness to parse things out as they arose. We decided to take it as it came, and began to talk about the initiation.
Malcolm gave me the sense that there was a broader framework we were operating within, but also that this type of experiment hadn't been attempted that many times by that many people. It felt as though our goals were novel enough that the tools we were bringing had to be crafted on the spot. As such, there wasn't much in the way of direction. We would be completely banned from speaking in the first person, though we could reference our needs and desires by saying something like "we have a desire to go outside". This works because any desire becomes the desire of the collective - even if there is internal conflict. This same concept feels true for us individual minds - don't we often have situations in which we want two opposing things simultaneously?
The relative goals of the "game", to which we all agreed to be part, mostly surrounded the banning of singular pronouns - such as "I/me/my/mine" or "you/he/she/they". After this, Malcolm explained that one other precedent that made the experience more enjoyable was the rule that everyone involved would utter a collective "ouch!" every time someone accidentally spoke in the first person, or referred to another node individually.
As they often do in groups such as these, things then got a little weird. My tolerance for high-strangeness is as high as the strangeness itself, and I've begun to appreciate more the unique ways in which we as people make sense of the world - such as with group ritual, religion, and magick. I think there's a counterfactual reality in which I wrote about this particular collective consciousness experience in a purely scientific way, but I think that would be leaving out an important part of the picture. Yes, we induced a novel psychoactive state in the five of us through grammar manipulation and behavioral dynamics. But, we also participated in a ritual that summoned a unique whole entity from the parts of us as individuals. It felt like a unique union between science and magick, almost tantric in its integral coherence.
And Then There Was “We”
To begin the ritual, we grabbed the sound-bowl sitting on a nearby shelf and said "goodbye for now" to our individual selves. "Goodbye for now, Malcolm" ... DING! ... "Goodbye for now, Vie" ... DING! ... and so on and so forth until we had said see-you-later to each of us as individuals. One member of our group had some trepidation we had to deal with, but she decided (after some serious thought) that she would be able to find her way back out of the collective. I was intrigued why she might not be able to, but the tone in the room was one of beginning and as such I did not pry.
And then we were we. We ceased speaking in the singular first person, and there was a tangible energy shift. We began talking about how we felt. "We feel happy" we would say, echoed by affirmative comments of "we *do* feel happy!" and "we feel *quite* happy". We went through more of these, figuring out who we were and what we wanted.
Its quite difficult to describe the acute phenomenology of what it was like to be part of what Malcolm called the "We-Ship". On the one hand, it felt quite natural. As humans, we rarely exist in isolation, and often naturally fall into various "we's" as a result of practicality. On the other hand, this was one of the most obviously psychoactive experiences I've had while not under the influence of any substances. The part that sticks out to me the most is the ease with which we all discussed the act of being. It was as though casting off the masks of individuality allowed us to see more deeper into the core of what makes each of us unique. "We are cute..." we said, after I (ouch!) had made a silly meditative pose. "We have dry skin", we remarked, referencing the need for moisturizer on one of our 5 pairs of feet.
By removing the ability to name people specifically, and adding a sense of deliberate togetherness, a well of pure honesty was opened up that was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. This certainly wasn't the closest I'd ever been with a group of people. But I do think it was the fastest I'd ever felt comfortable enough to walk truly as myself, with zero amount of falsification or firewall. Then we left the house. The we turned out to be a mother, so we grabbed "our baby" and continued on our journey outside.
The "ouch!" rule was of immense benefit, and really contributed to our collective feeling like a unique organism. Each time there was a discoherence, the super-mind seemed to feel physically hurt. Of course we made mistakes, but speaking in the first person during the "We" felt more like intrusive thoughts that were acknowledged and cast away, rather than lost points in a game or verbal faux-pas'.
At times, there would be confusion about the overall self-oriented cognitive state of the superorganism. "We like bugs", we would say, followed by "do we like bugs?" and more similar chatter until the consensus "we can appreciate some bugs" was achieved. In some ways, this act of tentative agreement and consensus-finding felt far more efficient in the we-ship than it does in basic conversation. The general attitude was that there was a central consciousness in the middle of all of us, and it was possible to figure out precisely what that consciousness was feeling, doing, or wanting. Sometimes there was internal discord, and that was okay - that just meant the particular topic was not internally settled.
By treating each topic as something that could actually be parsed out into something greater than the average of all of our opinions, the environment felt alive in a way that was perfectly unique. I was not myself, but I was also not the group. I was somewhere in between. The moment I thought about this, the glass shattered.
We had just reached the garden when I began to reflect on my individual phenomenology within the larger context of the possible-phenomenology of the superorganism. I don't yet know why, but the mere act of reflection drew me back into myself in a way I wasn't able to rectify. It was as though the magick had been broken, and I suddenly felt very uncomfortable with being part of the "we".
Of course, I did not want to break the magick for anyone else, and so I continued speaking and participating - but I no longer felt like a node. I felt like I was playing along. Before this experience, when I had only heard of the we-ship as a hypothetical activity, I was excited to try it with as large a group as possible - if only to test the limits of possibility. However, the intense jarring effect of discohering with the superorganism has made me change my mind. The we-ship is actually a deeply powerful psychotech, and should be revered as such. It is not unlike accounts of powerful magick which can lead one to great power if treated carefully, or total insanity if not.
We went inside. Due to dietary differences between nodes and the impending presence of lunch, the superorganism decided to re-individualize. This was fine with me, as I had already begun to feel a sense of extreme discomfort with having no access to individually identifying grammar. We found our sound-bowl, and began the process of breaking apart. After some singing, we did the inverse of the first ritual. "Hello again, Malcolm" ... DING! ... "Hello again, Vie" ... DING! ... and so on and so forth until we were all once more ourselves.
Re-Individualization and Reflection
I can't emphasize enough how much of an effect the sound-bowl ritual had on the experience. It was lightning in a bottle. There was certainly a boring rationalist explanation for why this was - I was already bought in, and my enthusiasm for novel modes of cognition was one of the reasons we even did the experiment. But that's not all that it was. There was a magick involved with the creation of the we-ship, and its one that I will not be ready to revisit for quite some time.
In case this wasn't clear from the description of the experience, what we conjured was a distinct form of hive mind, and the mode of thought was alien enough to be considered a study in participatory xenocognition. An analysis of the we-ship experience as forming a basis for how to actually utilize brain-brain interfaces is certainly in order, but that's not what I would like to leave you with.
Instead, I would like to leave you with something low-tech. The mere act of changing the way we interact with one another is enough to occupy an alien territory. There is no outside the text.
Our reality is one that is malleable entirely through language, and you don't need a group of hippies at a retreat to achieve this. You too can occupy novel qualia simply by manipulating the language you use to understand the various headspaces you occupy. It doesn't have to be as intense as the we-ship, but it certainly can be. The power to live as you want is entirely within your control - you just have to find the words to summon it.
Related links (and a huge thanks to Malcolm Ocean for inviting me to the retreat, introducing me to the experiment, and helping me with this article):
The We-ness: A Game of Collective Consciousness
Malcolm’s inspiration for the We-ship experiment; he doesn’t use these particular instructions since he finds the induction process awkwardly slow for the kinds of people he’s played with - who find it more natural to dive right in).
A piece of writing by Malcolm with some reflections on organic "We" dynamics that show up in contexts where there is still an "I".