23 February 2026
If we understand evolution as the natural selection of those most adapted to survival, the human being indeed appears as the result of a series of “evolutionary failures.” Humans are not the fastest, not the most agile, and far from the strongest. Predators possess fangs and claws; most mammals are protected by fur or thick skin. Even among our closest evolutionary relatives, other primates, the gorilla surpasses humans many times over in muscular strength.
The large human brain requires enormous energy expenditure, consuming roughly one-fifth of the body’s total energy. This makes hunger a particularly severe challenge and compels constant concern with securing food. Human childhood is extraordinarily long, and the newborn is helpless to a degree almost unmatched in nature. Upright posture altered the structure of the pelvis, making childbirth more difficult, more risky, and more painful, limiting reproductive capacity compared to many other species.
And yet it is precisely the human being who has reached the top of the biological pyramid. Language granted the capacity for abstract thought, discussion of the future, and transmission of complex meaning. Difficult childbirth and prolonged childhood made care for the child not a private matter, but a shared one, strengthening emotional bonds within the group and reinforcing the dependence of survival on cooperation.
Human collectivity transcended instinct. Not blind submission to a dominant male, but conscious discussion and collective problem-solving became the evolutionary advantage. The ability to negotiate, distribute roles, and make decisions based on shared understanding enabled humans to act deliberately rather than merely react to changing circumstances.
It was the collective — more precisely, the thinking collective — that compensated for humanity’s physical “deficiency” and made it the dominant species.
The primitive group provided not only protection and food gathering, but also functioned as a mechanism of memory. Knowledge about hunting grounds, plant properties, and seasonal change did not disappear with the individual but accumulated within the collective. This made the group not merely capable of surviving in nature, but resilient to shifts in climate and landscape. Accumulated experience enabled adaptation to new conditions, migration across vast distances, and ultimately expansion across the entire Earth.
The tribe distributed roles, forming the beginnings of specialization. The community закрепляла norms, transforming accidental decisions into rules, and rules into traditions. A prohibition on hunting during breeding season may have begun as a practical conservation measure. A ban on marriage within the clan may have emerged from observation of unhealthy offspring. But in order not to justify these restrictions repeatedly, they gradually took the form of taboos. What once proved useful for survival became sacred.
With the rise of religions, the collective ceased to be merely an instrument of survival. Social norms became spiritual laws, and belonging to the group became a condition of salvation. As the founder of Christianity proclaimed, “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them.” Participation in the life of the church or belonging to the ummah meant not only inclusion in a divine order, but above all social solidarity, a form of spiritual and communal protection. The collective became a system of mutual responsibility and support in which faith strengthened not only the bond between human and God, but the bond among humans themselves.
Aristotle called the human being a political animal, thereby emphasizing humanity’s fundamental dependence on the polis as the space of shared life, where a person realizes themselves through participation in common activity, decision-making, and the formation of norms and rules. To be part of a collective meant to be a full participant in the human world.
The bond between the individual and the collective was so profound that even the greatest minds did not conceive of themselves outside it. Socrates, condemned by the Athenian court, could choose either death by poison or exile. He could have preserved his life but refused. He did not imagine his existence apart from the polis, since that would have meant the loss of his identity. He chose death over life outside the community with which he identified.
The political era altered the form of collectivity but not its essence. Parties, movements, nations, and states were built upon the mobilization of collective reason and collective will, enabling the formulation and realization of goals different in scale from those of the religious era. The aim was no longer salvation of the soul, but state-building, independence, territorial expansion, industrialization, scientific progress, the creation of education systems and social protection. The collective became an instrument of historical action directed toward transforming the world.
If earlier the integrating force was the religious community, in the industrial era integration was assumed by the factory, the university, the trade union, the party, the corporation. The army existed in antiquity, but now it became part of the national state and an instrument of mass mobilization. Within these structures individuals were integrated into vast projects of modernization, production, war, science, and governance. They became instruments of economic growth, technological development, political mobilization, and national identity formation.
Modernity did not begin with spiritual revelation or revolutionary slogans, but with new forms of organizing people. It was new forms of collectivity that altered the architecture of society. First in trade, where the English and Dutch East India Companies became early examples of large-scale collective organization of capital. Then in production, where joint-stock companies enabled pooling of resources, distribution of risk, and concentration of investment beyond the reach of any single merchant or artisan. Limited liability freed entrepreneurs from total personal ruin and enabled systematic expansion. Failure no longer meant loss of freedom, family ruin, or imprisonment, as in earlier eras.
These new forms enabled the transition from the private workshop to the manufactory, and then to the factory. Production ceased to be a matter of individual craftsmanship and became a coordinated system based on division of labor, capital management, and technological discipline. A new social stratum emerged whose power derived not from birth, but from the ability to organize labor and investment. Economic collectivity became a durable reality.
New economic forms were followed by new spaces of public self-organization. In eighteenth-century Europe, political clubs, Masonic lodges, discussion societies, and salons emerged where ideas of representation, freedom, and sovereignty were debated. The French Revolution did not begin with the storming of the Bastille; it was preceded by the creation of clubs, committees, and the National Assembly capable of coordinating mass energy and transforming it into political action.
The Continental Congress became the platform where the North American colonies first acted as a coordinated whole. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence; Franklin and Adams revised it; the document was debated and edited in Congress. The Declaration, adopted on July 4, 1776, became a collective manifesto legitimized through joint work and voting.
Political parties gradually emerged as stable mechanisms for mobilizing collective will. The party translated economic and social collectivity into political form. The Russian Revolution demonstrated this vividly: a centralized party structure enabled not only the seizure of power but its retention under civil war and external pressure.
The same occurred in science. An alchemist might work alone, propose hypotheses, conduct experiments, but discoveries often remained speculative or even fraudulent. Knowledge became power, as Francis Bacon declared, only when it passed collective verification. This required new institutional forms: the Royal Society in London and the Paris Academy of Sciences. These institutions transformed isolated discoveries into science by demanding reproducibility, verifiability, and openness to criticism. Truth was recognized only if it withstood collective reason.
Thus the history of revolutionary victories, scientific breakthroughs, and business empires is above all the history of increasingly complex forms of collectivity. Progress was not the result of more geniuses, but of the inclusion of individual energy into stable organizational structures. Institutional forms — parties, academies, corporations, joint-stock companies — transformed isolated ideas into lasting power. Modernity became the age in which collective reason was the engine of development.
The digital age — the Third Turn — altered this logic. If the history of civilization was the history of refining forms of interaction among people, the digital era began to weaken the bond between individuals and physically present, territorially organized collectives. The polis, parish, factory, university, party assumed shared presence and common space. The collective had an address, a building, a square, a hall, a workshop.
Social networks broke geographic enclosure. On one hand they expanded collectives, allowing communities to exist across distance. A person could participate in collective life without physical presence. Yet the collective lost its spatial foundation, becoming more fluid, dependent on attention and algorithms.
Leaving a physical collective is difficult; one still encounters others. Physical presence creates obligation. Virtual communities can be exited with a click. They demand less discipline, less responsibility.
Yet the principle of association persisted. People still group around interests, ideas, leaders. The space became the screen rather than the square; discussion became a stream rather than an assembly.
Throughout civilization, humans existed within collectives as elements of decision-making mechanisms. Truth was formed in collectives — in science through verification, in parliament through debate, in corporations through coordination.
With artificial intelligence, this begins to change. What once required committees and departments can now be modeled by algorithms. Marketing strategies, financial forecasts, logistics, even aesthetic taste are increasingly shaped by algorithmic recommendation. Even this text is created in interaction with artificial intelligence, whereas earlier texts emerged from discussion with authoritative figures.
At this moment, the human being is released from prior cognitive dependence on the group. The collective ceases to be necessary for analysis, planning, orientation.
If the digital age made the collective fluid, the age of AI questions its functional necessity. The collective ceases to be a required condition for producing truth and effectiveness. Humans are moved beyond it, because the collective ceases to be essential for survival, business, science, and thinking itself.
The collective ceases to be the bearer of reason.
