Comment by makeitdouble
5 hours ago
As I understand it, the individual vs the group situation is complicated by their shared genetic pool.
I'd imagine it as having dozens of clones of myself, and one of them is tasked with reproducing for the rest of us. It sounds like a total lack of individualism, but if the offspring has my genes and is raised like me (potentially by me), how far is it from being my own ?
eusocial animals are really cool you can kinda treat the entire colony as a single organism. weirdly enough this isn't restricted to insects there are actually some eusocial mammals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
the book coalescent by Stephen Baxter is an interesting take on what that might look like in humans as well if you're interested in the topic.