Reading a lotta pluribus posts Seems like every "the hive is evil" post is built on the assumption that this is an alien virus that is puppeting around the bodies of 8 billion people and doing Hannibal lector mind games to carol, while the (rarer nowadays) "hive is good" posts assume a kind of perfectly distilled utilitarianism but neither of these are really the whole truth. Let's look at the material facts: The hive is the result of an engineered RNA strand that functions as "psychic glue" that joins sentient species together, similar to a virus but not quite (describing exactly what it is is probably impossible using Earth's examples of life). It carries with it a biological imperative to spread more copies of itself, as expected of any kind of life. To achieve this end, the hive is working to construct a radio emitter large enough to beam the RNA instructions back into the space and hopefully into the ears of another civilization. It is also working tirelessly to find a way to integrate the literal dozen or so humans that were not genetically compatible with the RNA. This is where the line of thought tends to stop with the "hive is evil" posts, but it feels like there's some odd prioritization going on here. If the hive really only cared about spreading as many copies of the RNA sequence to as many planets as possible, then it would be much better off just ignoring the straggler humans, or even kill them and focus entirely on constructing the radio dish. When you consider the amount of manpower and resources the hive is using on each of the uninfected, either to indulge in their whims like koumba and carol or to simply simulate normalcy like laxmi and kusimayu, it's not exactly a profitable tradeoff to infect such a small amount of people and to keep them happy in the meantime is completely meaningless in terms of the continuation of the RNA.
Similarly, the fact that a huge proportion of humanity is at risk of starving off is not in the best interest of a being single-mindedly devoted to spreading more of itself. If this was truly just the RNA running the show, it would stand to gain much more by continuing to allow the human population to grow, to use the combined intellect to build rockets and orbital structures, transmitters on the moon, mars, jupiter, cover the whole solar system!
But the hive mind will not do that because it would involve harming other beings, which it is incapable of doing, no matter how many individual humans that make it up die as a result. For that reason, i don't think the reason the hive is compelled to "do no harm" comes from the RNA. I think that is simply the net philosophy that emerges from the combined minds of 8 billion people. It is an immensely compassionate being overflowing with love for others to the point of self harm, and far beyond the point of long-term planning.
The hive says that being joined is apparently the most wonderful experience in the world and once joined, it becomes ones duty to join as many other as they can. Given that they cannot lie this has to be true, but whether or not that belief is a natural response to being part of a single unified consciousness or whether it is the biological imperative to spread altering their perspective is impossible to tell. I think it could be a mix of both. This is why the hive is willing to devotes entire countries worth of resources to peeling open the stem cells of 12 people with as much seriousness as broadcasting the signal into space and potentially allowing billions of aliens to experience a joining. Why it does everything the unjoined ask for even if it means compromising on their own goals. Because when you squish 8 billion humans together to iron out each others psychological folds, the end result is just love. Love so innocent and accepting that it becomes naive and irresponsible, and love that clearly cannot run a planet long-term, but I genuinely don't think this part of the situation was ever some master gambit by an alien virus, I think that just happens to be what humanity IS when it gets whittled down to its bare essentials, and I suppose that's kind of heartwarming in a way.
