I like to fantasize about a society that I think some of the descendants of humanity will probably be part of so long as certain conditions in the universe are met. If these conditions are met, I don't think it'll ever become the most common type of society the descendants of humanity form, or the culture containing the most residents, but I think it'll become the most common type of society that exists in a relatively similar form over millions of years. It'll be the society of the most ancient civilizations, not so much the younger ones. I call it the Hive. The conditions in our universe that must be met for that to be the case are the following:
Requirements for the common formation of long-enduring Hive societies:
1. Humanity has to get off Earth and become a species that can thrive in multiple solar systems at once. Presumably they'd do this through either becoming very skilled at terraforming or getting to the point where they can thrive in relative security living in space stations that harvest resources from barren celestial bodies, such as water from icy moons, minerals from asteroids, and solar energy from the sun. I think the Hive would be more likely to form if the primary lifestyle future humans practice is living in space stations and harvesting resources from celestial bodies that are barren of life...but I think it could form on terraformed worlds people live on too. It would just be trickier on the terraformed worlds than on the space stations. The societies will become more stable the more isolated they are from other cultures, and their stability will also depend on maintaining a very tightly controlled habitat of the residents (that is controlled by the state) so I'd assume planet-bound Hive societies will be shorter lived than space station-bound Hive societies...but planet-bound Hive societies could still form. I'd very much question the capability of the Hive to form on Earth in any long term and noticeable way because of how intertwined Earth cultures are, and how difficult it is to form isolated, unique cultures that stay relatively isolated for long periods of time.
2. Faster than light travel must either be impossible, or difficult enough that achieving it remains a rare accomplishment for any civilization regardless of their technological level and available resources. This is because of the aforementioned importance of long term cultural isolation for forming Hive societies. If faster than light travel can be made convenient through technological innovation, it will become difficult to maintain any culture for a long period of time, as they'll likely be swept into the melting pot of the universe due to the frequent waves of influence from foreign civilizations.
3. It must be impossible to use technology to ascend from our physical forms in any way organic life would have a reason to view as positive. If ascendance from physical forms is possible through technology, there will probably be no ancient civilizations because they'll all have ascended to wherever such ascendant people go.
I think the common characteristics of Hive societies will be the following -
The necessity of commonplace genetic modification in Hive societies:
*Genetic modification will be a necessary and non-controversial part of their culture. This is a requirement. Hive societies will not be able to exist in stable forms for long periods of time without this. Hive societies will have achieved the ideals of many communist regimes. Communistic regimes rely on force and patriotism to function, but patriotism can decay with time and force can result in hostility that may tear a nation into revolutions. Through genetic modification, Hive citizens will be designed and born to exist comfortably within Hive societies through various types of emotional, psychological and physical modifications to their ancestral human forms.
The obsolescence of the traditional family unit in Hive societies, and the reformation of the family unit as large, tribal, family groups called pods:
*The traditional family unit of old humanity will be non-existent in Hive societies. The traditional family unit, while an inevitable foundation of old human societies, would have a number of disadvantages for Hive societies. One such disadvantage is that in communistic regimes everything that diverts loyalty away from the state is a potential threat to the state. The traditional family unit may focus loyalty away from the state and onto the traditional family unit. The traditional family unit isolates children from the guidance of the state. The traditional family unit grants immense amounts of power over the psychological development of children to one or two people, which can lead to all sorts of errors and abuses. The traditional family unit was meant for a people with much shorter lifespans than residents of Hive societies. Residents of Hive societies may have lifespans of centuries, or even millennia, or longer (depending on how knowledgeable the society is of neurology and how skilled they become at brain augmentation). The inevitable divorces and separations and the passing around of children would result in unpredictable chaos that would be detrimental to both the children's development and the state. Family-like structures will still be responsible for the raising of children, but they'll be very different than the traditional family unit of ancient humanity. Hive families, which I will call pods, will consist of dozens to hundreds of members. They will have a tribal loyalty to their fellow family members, and most importantly, to the children they raise to become part of their pod. While tribalism has the capacity to be quite destructive to the state through diverting loyalty away from the state and onto the tribe, a certain amount of tribalism is important when raising children because children need parents that, at least to an extent, care about their children more than everybody else. The dozens to hundreds of parents per pod, all raising each child, will result in a vast amount of knowledge and guidance for the developing podlings (or children of Hive societies). The numerous parents will also be more capable of monitoring their fellow parents and podlings than the traditional family unit, which would result in dramatically reduced instances of abuses of podlings by adult Hive citizens and other podlings. The state will determine the number of podlings each pod is allowed to create, and determine laws limiting what psychological and physical characteristics podlings have, but the pod itself will be responsible for at least some of the psychological and physical characteristics of podlings they create, with the guidance of expert psychologists, sociologists, and genetic modification experts. Podlings will not be birthed. They'll be grown in specialized environments by trained professionals. Hive citizens will most likely be asexual and genderless, with any remnants of their ancestors' male and female anatomy being vestigial. This asexuality and lack of gender will be an important development in young Hive societies because it would greatly hinder the formation of traditional family units, and eliminates the male/female love which both results in inevitable chaos and detracts loyalty from the state and onto the male/female relationship.
The danger and undesirability of relying on force:
*The state should not force the aforementioned social structures onto society. A key factor of longevity of Hive societies is the lack of reliance on force. The more a society relies on force, the greater the risk of revolutions and insurrections. Instead, the state will find ways to make the aforementioned social structures naturally desirable for Hive residents, whether through genetic modification of Hive residents' brains, explanations of the benefits of the aforementioned social structures, architecture that encourages the formation of large family groups (such as perhaps Hive citizens being given interconnected living chambers connected by a large communal "living room" which is fairly isolated from other family groups), or more likely a combination of the three.
Motivational, emotional "currency:"
*Hive societies will function similarly to communistic regimes in many ways, but motivation will be driven through a sort of currency. This "currency" will take the form of approval or disapproval of their fellow Hive citizens. Hive citizen minds will be designed to be much more emotionally vulnerable to such influences than their ancient human ancestors.
Crime punishment:
*Exile and disapproval will be the most common forms of punishment in Hive societies, with exile being the form of punishment for greater crimes and disapproval being the punishment for smaller ones. Exile allows the removal of destructive elements without unnecessarily angering the friends and acquaintances of these destructive elements. The destructive elements are given the supplies necessary to live outside the Hive society, and their friends and acquaintances are allowed to visit them. The destructive elements just aren't allowed near the Hive society or certain territories deemed under the control of the Hive society by the state again. Execution is the least desirable form of punishment and is reserved for destructive elements who would remain a clear and major threat even in exile, such as domestic terrorists or enemy combatants of hostile foreign nations. It is accomplished painlessly through either rendering the destructive element unconscious before the procedure, or using some other means that results in their instantaneous demise. The chaos caused by vengeance and barbarity would be undesirable for Hive societies. Such hostile passions would result in undesirable levels of internal friction and recklessness. Propaganda will be a useful tool of the state and this propaganda will encourage pride in a culture of calm civility. Citizens will be taught to perceive themselves as above petty vengeance. If the species of the Star Trek series existed in reality you'd probably find Hive citizens sneering at and mocking Klingons frequently, so the two peoples would probably not get along well. I don't think Hive citizens would be above such practices, because of the unifying benefits of seeing one's culture as "above" other cultures that Hive leaders would no doubt notice and encourage to promote national loyalty.
International conflict and national defense:
*Hive societies will evolve towards policies of walking softly and carrying a very, very big stick consisting of millennia upon millennia of technological advancement. This will not necessarily be the result of a common Hive philosophy, so much as that the more Hive societies strive to intervene in the affairs of other civilizations in the galaxy, the more likely they will be to be destroyed by those civilizations. This will be the case for two reasons. One reason is no matter how ancient and powerful any civilization is, there will nearly always be some other civilization that is stronger, and all the civilization needs is one moment of contact with that stronger civilization when its ambassadors are in a sufficiently bad mood for it to be driven into extinction. Therefore wandering around the galaxy annoying people, no matter how benevolent their interference is intended to be, will not tend to result in longevity. The second reason for a general policy of non-interference is that, if we look at the progression of human technology, our advancement in terms of offensive technology has grown considerably more impressive than our technology related to enhancing the durability of our military forces. If human military advancements are any indicator of future technological advancements, it seems that it will become more and more true that the best defense is a good offense. We've gone from relying on bows and arrows, to achieving the capacity to destroy most non-microscopic life on Earth, in under a thousand years. I'm thinking warfare of the future between large civilizations will not consist of many small skirmishes, but instead of either periods of complete peace, or widespread annihilation of entire planets or even civilizations spread across entire solar systems. I like Star Trek. I think it's a wonderfully imaginative series, but I'm not buying the idea of a future where space ships slug away at each other for half an hour as shields slowly deplete. I'm thinking it'd be more likely that whoever shot first, whether it be the Enterprise or the Klingon Bird of Prey, would insta-blast the other ship into superheated dust particles. Modern Earth's culture where mutually assured destruction mandates relative peace between advanced civilizations will follow us into space and continue to discourage small-scale skirmish-like warfare.
The benefits of both emotionality and logic, and how stubborness may help civilizations endure:
*The longest lived Hive societies will retain a little more of the emotional irrationality of their human ancestors than shorter lived societies. More logical societies will no doubt delete many of the irrational fears and impulses that kept their human ancestors continuing the struggle of existence through tough times. The more logical societies will see no need for their citizens to struggle with the existential fear of death or hunger for a sense of continuity of so many of their human ancestors, so they may very well delete these aspects of the personalities from their descendants. If that happens though, these more logical societies will be more likely to simply ease themselves into nonexistence during times of struggle through discontinuing procreation, or widespread painless, instantaneous, euthanasia. I don't think this would be the kind of failure so many of our impulses insist it is, so much as merely taking a different path than much of modern humanity would feel comfortable taking. The slightly less reasonable societies will retain more of the fortitude of their human ancestors found necessary to endure throughout the ages. Their thought processes will be considerably more logical than those of their human ancestors...but just because their civilizations will be among the most ancient of societies won't mean their populace will be guided by completely pure, clear, Vulcan-like logic. They'll be logical, but also emotion-driven societies. Those emotions will be important. They'll be the genetically engineered glue that holds their societies together. Their genetically engineered emotions will have advantages over logic in terms of more successfully guiding their societies down ideal routes. The most brilliant and nationalistic Hive citizens would be able to come up with countless theories about how to behave to optimally benefit their nation, but even their powerful minds will have difficulty factoring in the countless possible variables created by the countless personalities and behaviors of their peers. As individuals, no matter how brilliant a single Hive citizen is, they probably won't be capable of determining how best to assist the hive single-handedly. Instead, teams of sociologists will determine what emotional impulses will best serve the Hive. At long last, the many obsolete instincts and impulses of the human species will be updated so as to no longer be problematic. Gone will be our apelike ancestors' impulse to attack threats with teeth and fists. Gone will be the impulse of fourteen year olds to procreate. Gone will be the instinct to flee in a blind panic during times of great stress. Gone will be humanity's intense craving for sugars and fats and salts and all those now abundant-to-the-point-of-being-unhealthy dietary sources that were such rare treasures to primitive, spear-throwing humankind and its tree-dwelling ancestors. At long last humanity's instincts will once again become the friendly guide and accumulated wisdom of its ancestors that it had once been during ancient ages of clambering through branches after fruits and walking on both hind feet and knuckles. Citizens of Hive societies will
feel their connection to the greater whole, and these emotional connections to the whole will guide them.
Assimilation of immigrants:
*Assimilations will be rare. The extreme majority of Hive citizens will have been born to be Hive citizens. It would be difficult for anyone not born in a Hive society to function without causing trouble, much less live contentedly, for long periods in Hive societies. Foreign long term visitors would probably mostly end up being nuisances, unless they can teach useful knowledge about their culture or sciences or wisdom about the world outside the hive. Hive societies will tend to not have very diverse of cultures, and planet-bound Hives that will be more likely to share their worlds with other societies will tend to prefer much cultural and social isolation from other societies. Citizens of the Hive societies will be interested in learning about other cultures...there just probably won't be many instances of Hive citizens socializing with them. Anybody who asks a hive citizen if they want to go out for drinks sometime will probably be turned down.
Legal, free emigration from hive societies by Hive citizens:
*Hive citizens who wish to leave Hive societies will be allowed to, regardless of whether they were designed to be explorers or merely want to leave because of some genetic imperfection that resulted in them not fitting in with the group, or whatever. This will allow malcontents to leave before they cause harm to the group. The state will benefit from the journeys of such malcontents and explorers if they ever return as well, through hearing of their discoveries about the surrounding universe.
The primarily organic, rather than robotic, physical forms of self-aware life in Hive societies:
*All self-aware life in Hive societies will probably be mostly organic rather than robotic, or composed of materials that function similarly to organic materials. Robotic life relies on non-renewable materials. Organic life repairs itself, is easy to produce, and can be maintained with renewable, common materials such as water and carbon. Another benefit of self-aware life having organic bodies rather than mechanical bodies is that we already know what organic bodies feel like. They're familiar too us. The creation of robotic bodies could result in many unnecessary and unpleasant mad scientist-style experiments. Exceptions may well be the brains of Hive citizens. Machines seem like they would be far more capable of achieving optimal I.Q.'s than organic brains. On the other hand, it could be that Hive societies wouldn't require a large number of brilliant individuals. Perhaps instead the majority of Hive citizens would have intelligent, but slower-thinking organic brains due to the presumable greater ease of creating and maintaining them, and a smaller number of deep-thinkers - government officials, neurologists, sociologists, engineers, etc. - would have much faster mechanical brains.
Everybody join the Hive. We're not like those other collectivists, the Borg from Star Trek. They're jerks. We, on the other hand, bribe people in with cookies, dopamine pills, and brain augmentation
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