Li Jun
Ant Society: A Fascinating History, by Niels Weber, translated by Wang Lei, Guangdong People's Publishing House, July 2021, 400 pages, 78.00 yuan
Weber's Ant Society: A Fascinating History immediately appealed to me when it was placed in front of me, not because I liked history, studied history, not because I didn't understand biology and entomology, but because the cover was printed with political terms that I was very familiar with: omnipotentism, liberalism, anarchism, Leviathan... In an instant, I knew that the author was going to tell a big story, a big story about all the governance models that humans have ever had, and how can ants tell it? I have a vague sense of foreboding: ant society is human society. Sure enough, I turned to the back cover and wrote impressively: People, not like ants, people, are ants. Academic works bring a sense of horror, which is indeed rare. So, I couldn't wait to open the volume to find out.
The primary knowledge of ant society is already common knowledge of human beings, and probably all preschool children of civilization know "industrious little ants" or "industrious little bees". Ants and bees are always diligent and busy, and this has been observed in the antiquity of every civilization, such as the ancient Greek Fables of Aesop, which circulated in 600 BC. As long as human beings are civilized, they must praise the quality of hard work, and ants and bees have become the "spokesmen" for this quality. Humans have made many animals endorse many of their favorite qualities, such as lions represent bravery, dogs represent loyalty, sheep represent meekness, and so on. Similarly, humans also let many animals endorse qualities they don't like, such as foxes represent cunning, wolves represent cruelty, pigs represent delicious and lazy, and so on. If the individual has such good qualities, such as the diligence of ants, the group will be positive. But you soon find that this kind of truth is basically to stay in the "allegorical" stage, using a superficially clear but actually vague metaphor to establish simple social norms for children. But society is complex, and metaphors can hardly be called truth. If industrious little ants are not wrong with the education of preschoolers, they are not enough for adults.
Humanity's understanding of ants soon entered the second stage: political animals. Aristotle famously said that man is a natural political animal. He said bees and ants are also political animals. Man's nature is to seek goodness, and goodness is a collective cause, and its carrier is the city-state, so that man in the city-state, in the dedication to the city-state, not only obtains happiness, but also participates in the great cause of goodness. Leaving the city-state, it was either Gods or Beasts. Ants are also political animals, which in turn give people a good positioning: it does not matter what an ant is, it is important that an ant is born with an ant. Groups are more important than individuals. Aristotle classified humans and ants and bees as the same kind, raising human awareness of ants. Even if the metaphor of individual qualities is true, it is not the most important, and ants cannot be seen individually, but depending on what kind of group they form, and it must be the same for people. Man's qualities are all aimed at the city-state, and when he dedicates himself to the city-state, his latent qualities will continue to be realized, and eventually, his happiness and the goodness of the city-state will merge into one.
On this issue, it was Hobbes who sang against Aristotle. Hobbes is wrong to think of people as inherently political or social. Human nature weighs the pros and cons for its own survival. There is no community of goodness that prescribes man by nature. On the contrary, the goodness of the community is the choice of people after weighing the pros and cons. Because if everyone survives on their own, there is a relationship between wolves and wolves between people and people, and no one has a good life. In order for everyone to be better, everyone put down the butcher's knife and handed over the power to the state, which is called Leviathan. Leviathan is the product of everyone's contract, and its basis is everyone's consent, so it is responsible for making rules that are fair to everyone and ensuring that the rules are enforced. In this way, everyone does not need to be a wolf, and they can be easy to be a person. Goodness is determined by rules; rules are determined by Leviathan; leviathans are determined by people who have only existential nature and reason. Aristotle reversed the order completely.
At this time, we can let them have an over-the-air conversation: Aristotle can move out of the ant society to refute Hobbes, is it possible that the ant colony becomes an ant colony is agreed by each ant? Hobbes smiled and said, Are people the same as ants? Ants seek survival, so do people, but people have reason, do ants have? The foundation of modern politics is thus clearly exposed: modern politics believes in man, the individual, free, and equal man, and the basis on which such a man can stand in the world is that he is rational. At this point, you probably think that although Aristotle is smart, he is actually not far from Aesop, and the ants are just stealing, which is really not enough to train. However, the good drama of ant society has only just begun.
The third stage of human understanding of ants is the birth of a new world, ancient fables and modern naturalism are surpassed, entomology becomes social entomology, and then into insect sociology, connected with the sociology of man, this knowledge is completely expanded into a small universe. In this small universe, Darwin's theory of evolution is the underlying logic. A lot of the knowledge you're familiar with has been reassembled, a lot of problems you're familiar with have been redefined, and a lot of new questions and new knowledge are constantly emerging, and it looks almost sci-fi. So let's look at the showdown between the two sci-fi giants of the 1930s. One is Huxley's Brave New World, and the other is Yungel's The Worker.
Brave New World you may be more familiar with it. Brave New World is the world country, where there are no crises, wars and disasters, where everyone lives and works in peace, happiness and sweetness, and the motto of this country is "unity, duty, stability". The people inside are divided into five classes, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Deta and Epsilon. Alphas are the ruling class, and then their status diminishes sequentially. The last class is the pure laborer, who just has to work and then feel the pleasure of sex, and they don't need to pass it on. The five classes are strictly divided, starting from the cultivation of fertilized eggs, education, work, and life are all clearly distinguished, and each must be strictly placed. The alpha seedlings will be produced, but they will also be fiercely fought, and it is your life and death, and it is guaranteed that the last surviving strong person will become a qualified ruler. The working population copied in large quantities, producing ninety-six identical brothers at a time to ensure that the labor force was sufficient. The ability of each class is strictly controlled, not less, less becomes waste, useless to the world countries, but not more, more will have the idea of upward mobility, destabilizing. Instigating hemp is a mental drug that makes everyone flutter, and since they are satisfied, what else to pursue? Huxley finally arranges for the protagonist John to commit suicide after a fierce confrontation with the world-states, and a person with a personality and a self cannot stand such a beautiful new world.
The country in Workers is similar to Brave New World. But Yungel created a steel team. The diligent workers realize the unity of the body and the spirit, strength and agility, composure and self-discipline, bravery and perseverance, dedication and wisdom. Their image is wearing a steel helmet, a shaved beard, expressionless, calm and resolute, as if there is a sense of metal, like electroplating, and the bones seem to be steel bars. Only them, no Him, because they are all the same.
Huxley's lower classes were worker ants, and so were Yungel's workers. They have no name, no name, no desire, no offspring, but they are extremely efficient and loyal. Huxley valued the division of labor in society, which should be strict and stable, and Yungel, in addition to depicting the social attributes of workers like ants, even physiological attributes are very similar to ants. However, the two authors have the same judgment about the core of the ant society they depict, but their attitudes are opposite. The same judgment is that as members of the ant society, like ants, they serve, dedicate, and sacrifice to the group, and without this service, dedication, and sacrifice for the group, they have no meaning, or even the need to exist. Apart from the clarity of purpose, their format is uniform, and unity creates not only efficiency, but also stability and beauty, so that they have no personality, and individuality is destroyed. The difference in attitude is that Huxley believes that personality should not be eliminated, and he chooses to let the protagonist rebel or even commit suicide. Yungel, on the other hand, saw this worker as a self-centered, hypocritical, wasteful, shameless overcoming and substitution of the bourgeoisie.
It's just a struggle between different versions of the ant society universe in the 1930s. With the rapid progress of human society in the twentieth century, and of course, the deepening of entomology, almost all of humanity's big problems can be antized. Let me tell you a little bit about this book around a core question: how to guarantee altruism.
It is very uncomfortable for a society if everyone is self-centered. Many theorists have thought of many ways to ensure that people are acting in altruistic ways. Hobbes's Leviathan solution was unsuccessful because Leviathan could not destroy everyone's survival instinct and reason, and as long as everyone was calculating for themselves, Leviathan would collapse sooner or later. Soon, Mandeville wrote The Fable of the Bee, in which he reassured everyone that private evil would accomplish public good. However, this plan only says that the subjectivity is for oneself and the objectivity for others, or there is no guarantee that altruism will not be crushed by self-interest. Ants, especially worker ants, are inherently altruistic. How did this mechanism come about? Who's in control, is it the queen? If not, it is impossible for queens to directly command and control hundreds of millions of worker ants, how can they be like this for a lifetime? Researchers in ant societies have broken down these problems into many layers.
First of all, the god-like leader is not the solution, but the "superorganism" is the solution. It would be unscientific if entomologists say that all the good qualities of ant society are attributed to the wise leadership of queens, almost as catholic priests say that all good things go to God. Religion says this, not against its own position, methods and logic, science to say this, all that it insists on violates. So their consensus is "superorganism." Billions of ants make up a superorganism, which is completely different from the visible units that make it up. An ant is nothing, an ant society has everything. The meaning, value, role, and behavior of the individual are all drawn by a "blueprint", and the queen is only one of the characters. This system has its own operating mechanism, and each part of the system has its own division of labor and responsibilities, and jointly completes the "miracle". Man, on the other hand, has begun to use algorithms to create all kinds of mechanisms that no one has worked perfectly, but he does not know whether to put himself in the position of God or to commit genocide against himself.
Second, emergence, rather than superposition, is how superorganisms are produced. One place where we are greatly influenced by Hobbes but not obvious is called the mechanistic worldview, thinking that the world is a huge clock, and if you just dismantle it and put it back one by one, you can understand what it looks like. But this set does not apply to organisms at all. The most direct example is people, which cannot be put back when taken apart. Organisms are like this, and super-organisms are even more so: the component system is not simply superimposed, like building Lego bricks, but emerging, and once they are combined, many functions that were not originally there, thousands of times more powerful, will appear. For example, a kidney, if it is placed on a barbecue stall, is a loin that is about to be eaten, but if it works in a human body, it can complete a lot of complex biochemical mechanisms. We humans are supported by such advanced mechanisms that have emerged, and then the mechanisms that emerge in a society that are more complex than our human life forms are more complex. So, when these mechanisms emerge, society begins to function, and the self-interested individuals in them are already in a new structure, and altruism does not need to be voluntary, it has become a necessity.
Finally, the power of evolution guarantees altruism. Worker ants who are systematically stipulated not to breed offspring cannot even pass on their own genes, and what self-interest is there to speak of? Isn't absolute altruism in conflict with the meaning of life? No conflicts. Entomologists have gone through several major iterations, and the latest argument is whether altruism conforms to the evolutionary law of "natural selection, survival of the fittest", not measured in individual units, but in groups. That is to say, the class of worker ants sacrificed for the colony, in exchange for the colony is more adaptable and competitive, and the ant society will evolve in this way. An ant's genes are destroyed, it doesn't matter, the whole ant system is optimized, and it will evolve in this way. Therefore, altruism has nothing to do with morality, but rather the arrangement of the system's self-optimization.
It doesn't matter if you agree with the various theories of ant societies in this book. It doesn't matter if I doubt that the theory of ant society is still a replica of some ancient fable or theology. What matters is that the ants are not really stealing, they have infiltrated into sociology through entomology, and then absorbed and infected literature, anthropology, political science, philosophy, and have become a fierce intellectual frenzy, and have the ambition to build an ant sociological empire. This is a great sight that really should not be missed.
Editor-in-Charge: Shanshan Peng
Proofreader: Liu Wei