Glenn Geher Ph.D.
Darwin's Subterranean World
The Root Cause of the Pandemic's Awesomeness
Pandemic notwithstanding, 2020 has been a mess.
Posted May 02, 2021
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Reviewed by Lybi Ma
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Source: geralt / Pixabay
By Heather Ramment and J. Nicholas Milla
In late November last year, I began blogging about the experience of living through the darkest winter months. Within days, I had already been gunning for “The Hive” on my favorite social media platform, where a constant drumbeat of doom would punctuate my posts.
I had planned to write two posts about the Hive and Meta-Analysis, a statistical method that forecast each post’s chances to achieve a critical mass of opinion and impact a desired result based on a series of actions (yikes) and hidden behind.
Thus, my second post ("The Hive and Meta-Analysis"!) expected.
Without fanfare or pandering, this was a sub-optimal time to approach the subject. My first experience with the subject was on May 21, 2020, when life was proceeding as usual.
And from the vantage point of the Harvard Business Review press, I weighed the pros and cons of doing an interview with J. Nicholas Mattes, a celebrated behavioral analyst and evolutionary behavioral ecologist. I also looked for sources that might corroborate my assumptions and theories, and relished any interesting observations or analyses that I could forward to the layperson.
Thus, precisely one day after the publication of his widely-acclaimed book, The Hive: How Relationships Driven Hopelessness, I received a visit from this accomplished behavioral analyst.
Madsen visited to give a lecture on the new book, The Hive: How Relationships Drive Hopelessness, published by Harvard Business Review Press. Ever since I had heard about this book, I had hoped he would advocate for it. He had written previously for the New York Times New York City Bureau, on Nov. 5, 2020, “If you want to be optimistic, you must be hopeful.”
When I heard the lecture, I thought, "Yes! How many people have said they want to be hopeful?”
Not everyone at the table agreed.
And that was fine. Hope is a messenger. Hope seems especially worthwhile during times of adversity. Look at your own life, and see what you have been trying to fix, or create, or encourage. Now, have you a crystal ball?
The conclusion is that hope is the achievement of something.
The Hive and Mattes both insist that their approaches are neither exact nor perfect. And they both have something to offer people who look to them for hope.