Home Features Paws for a Cause – Guyana: The Hive Mind & Challenging the...
Indira Mattai
Doctor’s Note: Paws for a Cause – Guyana (“Paws”) is a local Animal Welfare Group operating and registered in Guyana as a Non-Profit Inc. The Group works to prevent animal cruelty, to promote humane, ethical, and responsible pet ownership, to advocate for controlling the animal population via spay and neuter campaigns, to educate the public, and to assist in cases of reported animal neglect and abuse. The Group’s work extends beyond dog and cats and includes all wildlife in Guyana. Every month, they will contribute a “Paws Perspective” to Pet Corner, detailing their experiences in animal welfare.
When you think about bees, what comes to mind? Danger, death, Africanized bees? The importance of bees is not always emphasised locally, but they are critical to our ecosystem and critical to our very existence. Bee-related words have even embedded themselves into popular jargon without us even realising it. The Queen Bee in a group of friends is the leader of the pack. Guyana was once a colony – under the rule of the Queen (and Kings at various points). To swarm is to move somewhere in large numbers, “Honey” is a term of endearment meant to evoke how sweet someone is, and to drone on is to be embarrassingly monotonous. We have told many nosy people on multiple occasions “none of your beeswax.” It is not surprising that, yet another term has its origins in bees and apiculture – the “Hive mind.”
The concept of a hive mind is also known by different names, including “collective intelligence”, “group mind”, “group ego”, and “collective thought”. A hive mind has two general meanings: Merriam-Webster defines them as “a colony of social insects (such as bees or ants) regarded as comparable to a single mind controlling the behaviour of an individual organism” as well as “the collective thoughts, ideas, and opinions of a group of people (such as internet users) regarded as functioning together as a single mind.”
In the past, hive minds were mostly found in science fiction as a plot device or a way to neatly wrap up a story – cut the mind off from the followers that make up its “body” and you have won the battle! Considering that the first mention of the hive mind was in the 1930s, we perhaps are actually living in science fiction. Our “collective intelligence” has evolved to a point where we now all also have an “electronic hive mind.” We make up part of an online hive where we are susceptible to influences through marketing, manipulation, and basic exposure.
For example, there are some “truths” out there that we accept or agree with without question just because of collective opinion. Was Game of Thrones really that good? Was Friends really a funny show? If enough people believe something, then does not that make it true? Who are you to be divergent from the functioning single mind?
In some cases, a hive mind can be minimally threatening, positive and can be critical to survival. Bee colonies for example work in tandem in their own roles to produce outputs that benefit all mankind. The collapse of bee colonies globally can potentially lead to society’s collapse within a few years of that. Operating through a hive mind in this case produces a benefit to all.
In other cases, a hive mind is a potentially dangerous thing. Even talking about a hive mind or science fiction can earn you the title of a conspiracy theorist but apply the hive mind ideology to our political history, or to the global treatment of COVID-19 and you have a much more sinister outcome to collective thought. Think about the comments section on any social media post and the online fights that we can get lost in. Think about the articles that we share without stopping to verify the source or the facts. Has the hive mind made us feel that the threat of COVID-19 is more or less over, even though death rates are still skyrocketing, the virus is mutating, and the numbers keep increasing in Guyana?
Stepping back for a moment, consider the dynamics of a hive, or in the human case, a community. Why do you join an organisation or a group or a movement? Maybe you want to make a difference. Maybe you want to meet new people, or network, or develop yourself professionally. You may join for religious reasons or political reasons. You may just want to be part of a community, or part of something that is bigger than yourself. One thing that many of the groups have in common is having a common goal, interest, or mind-set. Being part of that organisation means that you are committing to work toward that common goal, or to retain that common mind-set. At the end of the day, you are part of a group that believes or acts a certain way.
Which brings us to
animal welfare.
Being part of the movement to improve animal welfare certainly requires collective thought. Neglect, starvation, and straight-up abuse of animals is often normalised in our society. Interestingly enough, bees are classified as livestock and can therefore be subject to cruelty as well. Friends have admitted that growing up, pelting a dog as you rode through the neighbourhood was a regular thing. It was not unheard of for the kids in the street to congregate and chase the strays as entertainment, but the same folks pointed out now that their children would be absolutely appalled to know about that, and that such acts of cruelty would never even cross the minds of their children.
So, think for a second – why would you keep a monkey in a small cage? Why are horse carts still used and horses pushed to the point of collapse? The answer is quite possibly frighteningly simple – as a society, a significant portion of people still do not see anything wrong with it because it has always been that way. Passing iguanas with their legs tied up on the side of the road does not register on the group mind’s radar, nor does clipping the wings of a bird, who is biologically born to fly.
For us, every report of cruelty is both an indication of change and a sharp reminder that we have not changed. It is a hugely positive thing to feel like the culture is changing for the better in Guyana and that animal cruelty registers and incites public outcry, but there is still a long way to go. Hit and runs involving animals are still constant, and disgustingly creative ways of animal cruelty can be found on social media. People comment their outrage on the offending post, and similar to all posts in our content heavy lives, it falls further and further down the newsfeed and then disappears from our sight and minds. The offenders are not punished, and our animal welfare laws are not strong enough to make a lasting difference.
At Paws, we work to challenge ourselves and to make our organisation better so that we can make a real and lasting difference. We challenge you to do the same – to step outside of what you think you are and know and consider what else you can do. Consider going beyond commenting on a post and signing up as a member or a volunteer. If you see a stray, do not think that it is only a job for us or the GSPCA or any other welfare group. Care for the animal, help rehome, work to save a life. That is OUR hive mind, our collective goal. The most we can ask you to do is to continuously challenge yourself, to continuously challenge us, and to continuously challenge the welfare norms. Make your contribution buzz-worthy!
If you would like to offer comments, support, or follow our work, find us on Facebook.com/Pawsforacause.gy, on Instagram @pawsforacause.guyana, subscribe to our YouTube Channel, drop us a line at [email protected], or visit our website at https://www.pawsforacausegy.com.
