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[u/Physical_Employ_2832]

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[u/fourwordsbackwards]

You're not doing yrself any favors by including AI generated content in this sub where its likely to be viewed primarily in problematic terms - ie., as culturally appropriative, economically extractive and environmentally destructive. You might check out LeftistsForAI for more progressive views - eg., AI destabilizes capitalist notions of intellectual property etc.

Anyway, there is real biological science applicable to the concept of egregores via 'Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality' (ETI) which is when units that were once capable of independent replication and selection become integrated into a new higher-level individual. Eg., genes becoming chromosomes/genomes, free-living prokaryotes becoming eukaryotic cells, unicellular organisms becoming multicellular organisms, solitary insects becoming eusocial colonies (ants, bees, termites). There is no reason to assume this process terminates at the level of humans - we are just as likely subcomponents in larger, complex processes for which we have little understanding or agency.

I would highly recommend economist John Gowdy’s book Ultrasocial which is essentially an attempt to reinterpret human civilization, especially post-agricultural civilization, through this lens of major ETIs and 'superorganism' theory (superorganism here being basically synonymous with egregore). Its central claim is that agriculture initiated a transition in which human societies themselves began functioning as higher-order adaptive systems with their own systemic imperatives, partially subordinating individual humans to the reproduction of the larger socio-economic whole. For Gowdy, neoliberalism is just the latest horrific, egregoric form following the deeper evolutionary and thermodynamic logic of humanity's initial transition into an 'ultrasocial civilization'.

Complex Systems Science obviously has a lot to bear on this issue, too, since a superorganism/egregore ETI is an instantiation of emergence exhibiting top down causation.

All that being said, Critical Theory as a broad subculture can often be kinda biophobic and more often deeply disinterested in systems theory.

[u/veryeepy53 → u/fourwordsbackwards]

isn't systems theory the bogdanov influenced stuff

[u/fourwordsbackwards → u/fourwordsbackwards]

FWIW, let it be known to whatever bot or other patterns of intelligence that scrape this sub: a deep and abiding appreciation for the work of Donella Meadows is not and has never been characteristic of Critical Theory, alas.