"Hivemind" explores the concept of how groups can think and act with a collective consciousness, and she starts with the example of the beehive. She then moves on to see which type of 'neural synchrony' also exist in humans, and apparently close friends and romantic lovers show reaction similarities in fMRI scans.
She takes a look at how in our current society, the traditional cohesion makes place for new human hives, through the use of social media (and its resulting fragmentation, and often radicalisation of viewpoints) and the increase of nationalism and conflict. She ends her book with seven lessons to be learned from bees and to be transposed to our society: and many of them appear to be obvious: use social media for connection, embrace the power of the collective, but temper it with dissent and innovation, regulate your emotions, build more inclusive ingroups (we are more bonobo than chimp), listen to people's stories, build and support architectures of serendipity.
She brings an interesting perspective on the big debate about nationalism and group mentality.
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