What Happens to One Who is Detached From a Hive Mind?

[Bram Silbert]

I'm currently considering working on a story about a human who is part of a hive mind which has its central intelligence destroyed, and I was wondering what kind of physical/mental effects might this have on one who has been assimilated for an extended period of time? BTW I'm thinking this hive mind will be more of a biological one, not so much a cyborg/robotic one.

 

[CupofJoe]

You are going to have to establish what type of hive mind you are thinking of.
Is it a shared knowledge base, a collective conciousness [shared feelings and emotions] or an over-mind that guides all?
Each will have different effects.
Would the feeling of connection occur if they met another of the Hive mind?
At the least I would imagine PTSD and Amnesia all rolled in to one.
Everything you knew and relied on is gone, you are going to feel alone, betrayed and scared.
You suddenly don't know or have access to as much as you thought you did.
How much of what you knew was yours or the hive minds? Could you forget how to talk, drive a car and the like? Do you dis/like cheese or Heavy Metal? Does the smell of Oranges remind you of anything?
Are you allergic to Shellfish and don't know it?
Your usual mechanisms for dealing with and understanding the world don't work. You are going to feel terrible, out of control, alone and vulnerable. And probably for a long while.
Dealing with that alone could be one helluva journey.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Like CupofJoe said, you are really going to have to flesh out what your hive mind provides for its members before you can answer your questions. For example does it provide a sense of security and companionship? If so then wouldn't your ex-members suddenly feel unsafe and alone? How bad can those two things be? Agrophobia springs to mind as one possible result.

Likewise, did the hive mind provide some form of education shared knowledge? If so then don't exmembers lose that knowledge? Have their brains developed to the point - assuming they were raised from childhood in the hive - where they can even function?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[FifthView]

The good news is that such a thing doesn't exist, so there is no absolutely "correct" answer for what would happen.

I'll second what CupofJoe and psychotick have said. What the hivemind provided would make a huge difference in how the person would react to being removed.

I'll just note that since this is not something that has ever happened, you have an open selection of possibilities. You probably ought to reverse engineer the scenario: Decide what will work best for your story, what you want for this character, and decide on the "right" hivemind.

For instance, I personally might be extremely tempted to have a character that falls quickly into nihilism, maybe even as a sociopath or psychopath. So I might create the hivemind scenario such that all those joined to the hivemind have a shared value system and are intimately and completely tied into that value system. When he's removed, one consequence is that all "values" are erased–nothing seems to have value anymore, including (but not limited to) how other individuals are valued. But this idea arises because of my interest in Nietzsche's philosophy and because I find the issue of nihilism interesting. You could go a very different route, depending on what you want for the story.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Fifth,

Interesting. If you were going for nihilism, I'd be tempted to make the hive mind as you suggest plus inclusive so that all members feel valued to be a part of it. Thus when removed, they become depressed and feel insignificant. From there it's a short step to nihilism.

If instead you wanted your ex-member to become sociopathic, I would suggest that the hive mind should also control feeling of attachments among members so that every member not only feels valued but also accepts the value of others in their work to support the hive. Ex-members having lost that, and presumably being adults with no easy way to reassign these values / emotions, would find themselves with no reason to value others even though they are no longer members of the hive themselves.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Tandrel]

Wonderful idea!

You can probably find some inspiration from the separation between mother and child. Both the instant phase of birth as well as the gradual separation when the child grows up and finds its own sense of self, values, direction and agency.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Wow...these are some really cool ideas.

I'd imagine you'd experience some sort of dissociation from your identity. Like, you shared a collective identity before, and now that you're separated...you feel like you are without identity. Idk. My ideas are not as cool as everyone else's.

This is a really intriguing thing to think about.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

There are so many places you could go with this.

What if the central intelligence provided feelings of hatred towards those not belonging to the hive mind? Does this mean the members would suddenly like outsiders? I wouldn't think that would necessarily be the case. They might be allowed now to develop positive feelings towards outsiders, but losing their governor wouldn't necessarily mean they'd automatically do the opposite of what the governor had them doing before. They might continue on in that same vein as though on auto-pilot, so to speak. Movement in one direction continues in that direction unless exerted upon by an outside force....

Do the members of the hive mind actually know what the central intelligence provides them before it is destroyed? It may be that what was provided by the central intelligence can only be known by comparing how the members acted before and how they act after. It might even be the case that what each member received from the central intelligence was (slightly) different from what others received, so they might each have a different reaction to its destruction.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

My first thought was the literal notion of "hive" and of bees. Bees collectively have few main concerns- find flowers to get nectar, protect their honey, their young and the queen. Their basic communications all involve one of these. All their personal concerns are irrelevant compared to those. A bee will willingly give its life to protect the hive. They optimise "The needs of the many out way the needs of the few or the one."
You would need to establish the main concerns/goals of your hive is and what they accomplished. A person coming from that state of mind would still be concerned with the needs of others far more than their own. They would probably have difficulty making personal decisions that could impact others in some way.