What Would Society Look Like if Humans Were the Size of Ants?
While society appears to be functioning, it is functioning in a dysfunctional way
“One fish says to the other fish, how’s the water today? To which the other fish replies, what water?” The fish does not know there is any water because water makes up its entire reality. Like the fish, the world we are born into is how we’ve always known it to be. In that respect, the social structure creates a truth about the world.
Behaviour goes unquestioned because it’s normal to behave how we do. It can be hard then to see our behaviour. A way to do so, and leap out of the water, as it were, is by placing our society into that of another life form. Doing so and breaking down the structure of society reveals that the rules of the social system are counter-intuitive. While society appears to be functioning, through a different lens, it is functioning in a dysfunctional way.
An ant colony is a highly functioning society, and ants are a social species. So they offer a useful system to compare human societies with.
In an ant colony, every ant has a specific role. The queen has one job — to lay eggs. The other female ants are worker ants, each contributing to the colony in different ways. The workers forage for food and supplies…
