The Donda Hive Switch

One year ago today, I shuffled into my seat at the Mercedes’ Benz stadium in Atlanta. I was to be among the first to hear the brand new album from the one and only, Kanye West. The stage design was strange; a minimalist all-white aesthetic consumed the floor of the arena. Still, the stadium slowly filled up as it was finally time to hear what new music was awaiting us. And so we waited…“The show was supposed to start 30 min ago!” I heard someone yell…we waited some more…”It’s been an hour and nothing”…the empty ice rink just stared at us…”Alright it’s been almost two hou..DEAR GOD MAKE IT ALRIGHT, NOTHING ELSE EVER FEELS RIGHT. “OH MY GOD!”

Sensation overload. Every light in the stadium is flipped off, while instantly the loudest chimes are blasted into my eardrums. Just Shear volume at the highest sensation. All the sound waves in the stadium hitting the stands at once, like tidal waves hitting the shores of Maui. Bass ripping through our bodies, passing every organ on its way out. 

In the middle of this chaos, I take a look to my left and right. Seeing the hundreds of faces around my seat, a strange sort of feeling overwhelms me: the sensation of unity. I almost start forgetting about myself as a person, my own feelings and intentions, and instead become concerned with the stadium as a whole. The feeling of being a small part in this super organism of people consumes me. We as the audience sort of became tribe, coming here on a ritual to worship the music. 

These first 6 minutes of the Donda Listening Party when the song “24” played, is my closest experience with what author Jonathan Haidt calls, the “Hive Switch.” This might come as a surprise, but everyone has a “Hive Switch” inside of them, unlocking it just requires certain conditions. 

In his book, The Righteous Mind, Haidt analyzes the moral psychology of how we form political and religious alliances. While I won’t get into the novel as a whole here, coming up on the one year anniversary of the Donda listening parties’ reminded me of this experience, and inspired me to write about this “Hive Mind” we all share. In this short summary, I will outline what the “Hive Switch'' is, while also listing the most common ways you can trigger it. 

The Hive Switch 🐝

“Human beings are conditional hive creatures. We have the ability, under special conditions, to transcend self interest and lose ourselves, temporarily and ecstatically, in something larger than ourselves.”

In The Righteous Mind, Haidt describes the human psyche as “homo duplex”, essentially containing two levels: “ninety percent chimp and ten percent bee.” We spend most of our lives operating on the chimp level, primarily thinking about ourselves and how others’ perceive us. This other ten percent of our brain is the “Hive Mind”. When the “switch'' is flipped, we become like bees, gaining the ability to work and cooperate extremely well with one another for the purpose of the entire group. The chimp brain becomes dissolved, and we forget about any individualistic agenda. Most people have experienced this switch many times in their lives; it's why almost two hundred thousand Americans enlisted in the ranks of the military after 9/11, it's why around seven million people in the United States practice hallucinogenic substance abuse, and it’s why so many of us enjoy going to concerts like the Donda Listening Parties. 

Here are what Haidt outlines are the three most common ways you can activate your “Hive Switch.”

Awe in Nature 🌲

Have you ever been somewhere so beautiful in your life that for a moment you might have forgotten about yourself or how you got there? It might have been overlooking a rolling countryside, grazing mountains, a waterfall or even a simple walk through the woods. I’m writing this from Hawaii, and have noticed many of the tourists here will hike the Kilauea Volcano for days to simply “escape themselves and transcend nature.” If you’ve ever stepped foot in nature its more likely than not you have experienced this “switch” at least once in your life. In fact, this form of “flipping the switch'' is so popular, that in the 1800s’ numerous art and social movements such as Transcendentalism and Romanticism, were founded around connecting with nature. Famous romantic poet William Wordsworth, described nature as “a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts… / And rolls through all things.” A majority of his poems explained his simple life of walking through the rolling countryside of England, claiming nature would nurture his purest thoughts and well being.

“People describe nature in spiritual terms, as both Emerson and Darwin did, precisely because nature can trigger the “Hive Switch” and shut down the self, making you feel that you are simply part of a whole.”

Dorcimagens 💊

Drugs such as LSD and Magic Mushrooms, became abundantly popular throughout the United States during the 50s’ and 60’s. Millions of Americans consumed these substances, because of the wild hallucinations and sensations they produce. The drugs were widely said to “open” your own consciousness, and find yourself “a part of something greater.”

The origin of these substances stem from indeginous tribes in Latin America. They would take these “Dorcimagens” for their coming of age rituals (boys becoming men/girls becoming women). In these rituals, the drugs would fully initiate the children into the religion or purpose of the tribe, by creating a space of heightened bonding, “[flipping] the Hive Switch, and [helping] the selfish child disappear.”

Thats nice and all for the natives, but what about the rest of us? In 1967, Humanistic Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, conducted a study on the effects of these drugs on westerners. Maslow wanted to understand how Americans, separated from religious and tribal expectations, would also react to these hallucinogens. In one of the only studies conducted before their illegalization, he had 20 participants brought into his lab to experience this “other world.” The overwhelming report is that they came out with a feeling of “unity, transcendence of time and space, deeply felt positive mood, and a sense of sacredness.” He even retouched with these students decades later to see if the drugs had made any long term impact, and many of the students responded that their experience had made a “uniquely valuable contribution to their spiritual lives”

Raves 🎸

This last one is the most common way you can activate your “Hive Switch”, as I assume most of you don’t take illegal narcotics or go to Hawaii everyday. 

Concerts and Raves are always described as special because of the environment. Of course the music matters, but not many people would ever attend a concert where they are the only attendees. In fact, a lot of the people I’ve met at concerts have only heard a couple of the songs being performed or barely know the artists playing. It really is that environment: the booming lights, ear piercing volume, and the hundreds of thousands of people all singing and dancing in unison, which activates our “Hive Switch.” With the rise of mosh pits and raves in the last 30 years, this “switch” has been further intensified by the synchronized dancing and larger concert standing spaces. Seriously, take notice of this next time you are at a show. It's fascinating how our brains forget about ourselves in these situations, and “I” becomes “we” at concerts. 

“In the 1980s, British youth invented a new kind of dancing which replaced the individualism and sexuality of Rock, with more communal feelings…when some or all of these ingredients were combined, the result was so deeply appealing that young people began converging by the thousands for all night dance parties.”

Biology of the Hive Switch 🧬

This is all cool right, wanna know how it works?

Because the “Hive Switch” is what Haidt describes a “group level adaptation”, made for the good of the group rather than the individual, it is not a piece of the brain. Rather, it's a functional group of working neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones. The two most important materials of this system being Oxytocin and Mirror Neurons.

Oxytocin 😇

A hormone dubbed “the love drug” which the brain releases when we have intimate relationships with other people. It gives us a pleasure sensation whenever we are bonding with others. What Oxytocin does not do is make us love everyone. Since it is a group level adaptation, it binds us closer with our own group, while making us more indifferent towards other groups. The numerous studies which Haidt cites reflect this. 

“The men who received Oxytocin made less selfish decisions. They cared more about helping their group, but they showed no concern at all for improving the outcomes of men in the other groups. In one of these studies, Oxytocin made men more willing to hurt other teams in a prisoner's dilemma game, because doing so was the best way to protect their own group.”

This is why soldiers don’t literally die for their country, rather they die for their fellow squad members. The same thing applies for sports, ever notice how passionate and loving fans are in a sports stadium for their team, while at the same time showing the greatest hatred towards the opposing team. It’s all good ole’ Oxytocin which binds us to our groups during the “Hive Switch.”

Mirror Neurons 🪞

First discovered in research monkeys during the 1980s’, these action and emotion neurons fire the same way they regularly would, even when the action or emotion is only observed. 

“Watching a video of a hand picking up a cup from a clean table, as if to bring it to the person's mouth, triggers a mirror neuron for eating. But, the exact same hand movement and the exact same cup picked up from a messy table, where a meal seems to be finished, triggers a different mirror neuron for picking things up in general.”

Mirror Neurons play the role of triggering actions in the “Hive Switch”. The most basic example of this is with a smile. When you see someone else smile because they're happy, it causes you to smile which in terms causes you to be happy. And when you smile to other people they all do the same, spreading smiles and happiness all around. The same thing goes for pain, have you ever flinched watching a movie when the lead protagonist is stabbed, almost feeling the same pain in your gut? Its all mirror neurons activating these reactions.

But what is even more interesting, is that we don't just blindly mirror other people. If we see someone we hate get hurt we don't feel hurt. Haidt cites a study where there were electric shocks delivered to two people who were strangers, and a person who both strangers had a reason to hate. When one of the strangers was shocked, the other stranger had the same pain mirror neurons fire in their brain. But, when both of the strangers’ “enemy” was shocked, there was no such reaction. In fact, some of the studies even reported feelings of pleasure. 

In summary, it is Oxytocin which binds us to our groups, and the Mirror Neurons which trigger our emotions and actions during the “Hive Switch.”

Side Notes 🗒

Just going back to that Donda story, I was not exaggerating the volume of the music. You see those speakers in that photo, yeah they were huge boombox speakers stacked on top of each other facing directly at us. I have been to many other concerts and shows, and nothing has ever reached this level of volume in my life. I guess Kanye just wanted to make us deaf that night. Here is the video if you want to get the full picture of the show.

Also again there is much more in The Righteous Mind, its actually pretty mind blowing that all of this information is from like half a chapter. If this article piques your interest, grab the book. It's fascinating. I might review it when I have more time, it's just a lot.