PLUR1BUS - You are being lied to…

I have had my fill of evil aliens and sci fi dystopias to be honest. Those stories are done to death and don’t feel realistic or needed. Jules Vernes, iRobot, Star Trek and the Culture series are the kinds of sci fi we need now more than ever. Optimistic Sci fi that presents a future that make people want to be engineers, explore the stars and shows us that a better tomorrow is possible, one that we should work towards actualizing for our kids and grandkids.

11/25/25 Update:

So… I wrote the theory below after watching episode 4, feeling very intelligent for figuring out where Vince was headed, somewhere that ran counter to all the theories posted in social media.

I was convinced that I understood how this hive mind thing worked. Then episode 5 aired. And apparently the entire human collective has decided that all of humanity’s culinary achievements are meaningless, even my aunt’s chakka pakodi!!

I feel like a clown! 🤡 No person who suddenly learned how amazing veg biryani and cheese pizza tasted is voluntarily switching to an all liquid diet. Not even the vegans. ESPECIALLY not the vegans, they’d get together to ferment the perfect vegan cheese and it would taste divine.

So yeah… whatever the hive absorbed, it may have retained humanity’s empathy and it’s memories but it definitely didn’t retain the most integral elements of humanity (its imagination, and its search for adventure).

Only read on if you want to visit an alternate universe where PLUR1BUS wasnt just yet another “evil, deceptive alien” story. Below, we explore what could have been; what we missed out on. The media is chockfull of evil aliens, but no species advances in science and mathematics without learning to explore, empathize and embrace people with an entirely different worldview than their own.

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You are being lied to….

Not by the hivemind… but by your own Amygdala’s fears, and Vince’s film making tricks (ambient sounds, vocal frequencies, the way specific scenes and characters are lit etc) all chosen by the show’s creators to trigger fear cues prewired into all of our reptilian brains (essentially to creep you out).

The below is just a theory. But it is a very testable one. We'll know if it’s correct when the show jumps forward by a year. Whenever that occurs, if this theory is correct, we will see the artistic aspects of humanity’s collective mind building impossible dream projects. Cities that will take your breath away. Engineers building starships. Ecologists designing Biophillic Skyskrapers. We will see the version of humanity that finally reached post-scarcity.

For now, in week one, we’re only seeing the slice of the hive most interested in comforting one grieving woman. And many are jumping to conclusions based on this one skewed perspective, allowing the emotional fear based reactions (feeling creeped out) triggered by how the hives scenes are framed, lit and scored. If we ignore these subliminal cues and engage our neocortex, we can take a more objective view of the hive. Zosia's scenes have not included these subliminal fear priming cues, except for her very first few scenes. This reflects how we are wired, we automatically fear anything and anyone foreign but the more time we spend with them, the more rational our assessment of them becomes. This is why we like Zosia, but fear the others. We're mirroring Carol.

The hive is treating Carol the way a good therapist treats someone who’s been hurt, slowly, gently, without pushing. They can see her paranoia and her wounds, so they don’t overwhelm her with information or proof.

Even if they showed her every good intention upfront, she wouldn’t trust it. At Freedom Falls, she likely saw kindness used as a strategy, reassurance as manipulation, and clarity as a trap.

So instead, they wait and let her initiate connection. Every answer they give her is only because she asked, and even then, they tread carefully, making sure she feels safe enough to keep questioning. Her fear and distrust make sense, she’s traumatized. That lens filters everything, and Vince is employing every film making technique he can (subliminal sounds, vocal frequencies that automatically activate your fear centers) to have us see the hive the way Carol sees them.

There are several key aspects of the hive that Carol should be curious about. Are people still writing literature and creating art? What are the engineers of the world building? What are the adventurous thrillseeking elements of humanity up to? Most characters would be asking these questions, unless the writers intentionally want to avoid sharing with us what the most human elements of humanity are up to until the eventual one year time skip occurs. The other characters Carol met in Episode 2 did ask and we likely won’t hear from them again this season. But those characters all concluded that the hive is telling the truth. No one is enslaved by the hive. The people are free, connected and pursuing their own passions in their own way. To keep the mystery alive, the show will go to great lengths to avoid showing this side of the hive. We will likely be spending the rest of the season with the two most suspicious humans alive and the therapists of the world trying to slowly win them over.

People assume the hive has no agency of its own because its happy to have sex with Mr. Diabetes. But the hive that is spending time with Mr Diabetes has repeatedly said they do it because they want to, they welcome it. Humanity is diverse. In a world of billions, of course there are minds that find Mr. Diabetes attractive and want pleasure, intimacy, novelty from having sex with him. And those are the parts of humanity that spend time with him. We see this in Zosia. When Zosia is with him, she seemed fun and enthused, in a beautiful dress, excited to travel the world.

When Carol asks Zosia to come with her, the empathetic parts of humanity, that want to care for and help Carol take over, and Zosias facial expression changes clearly show this. Humanity still has agency. Some parts of humanity wanted to go travel on air force one, and they are, just not in Zosias body. Some parts wanted to help Carol and they are.

And yes, we are not seeing everything that humans are doing. The parts of humanity that wants to have sex are likely having lots of sex, not just with Mr. Diabetes, but also with each other. We do not see intimacy shown around Carol because it would break Carol emotionally to see what she had with Helen just a few days ago. The hive protects her from triggers because it knows what loneliness is doing to her.

The collective isn’t monolithic. One fragment wanted dresses, jets, sex, and spectacle, so it went with Mr. Diabetes. When Carol asked for Zosia back, that part went in one of Mr. Diabetes other companions. And another aspect of humanity, the empathetic compassionate caretaker (as well as all that is left of Helen) took over. While Helens body is gone, she joined the hive and her love for Carol is in the Hive as well.

But the aspect of the hive that most creeps people out is that they converted people to the hive without consent. But this actually is a reflection of the hive’s humanity! Assimilation disguised as “helping” is one of humanity’s most persistent traits. We reassure ourselves that we’re uplifting others, but historically that instinct has fueled entire systems: organized religion, the Crusades, colonial expansion, missionary movements, and the spread-democracy-at-all-costs mindset.

The Crusades weren’t fringe; in the Middle Ages they were wildly popular among European Christians. And today, many Americans and Europeans still see exporting democracy and Western values as a moral duty. The discomfort isn’t usually with the idea itself, it’s with the cost. Iraq and Afghanistan became controversial not because the mission suddenly seemed philosophically wrong, but because the price in money and human life became impossible to ignore.

During the Cold War, spreading democracy at any cost was easier for the public to embrace because it came packaged as necessary for survival. And many people (myself included) feel conflicted: if avoiding nuclear war required morally gray actions, can those actions be justified by the outcome? The Soviet Union collapsed without nuclear exchange. That result sits in the back of our collective moral calculus whether we acknowledge it or not.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if a virus existed that could spread Democracy instantly to the world (no soldiers, no wars, no headlines) many people would release the virus. If democracy could be aerosolized and dispersed the way the hivemind spread its collaboration virus, it’s hard to deny that not only would someone try it, but a surprising portion of the population would quietly approve.

Thus the hive wanting to spread their “better” way of living, after experiencing how wonderful the psychic glue felt, in response to the military's plans to nuke them, is a by product of a very human impulse. It may actually be a reflection of the hivemind’s agency, and it’s humanity.

What Carol sees, and what we, as the audience, experience through her, is only a tiny sliver of humanity. It’s the sliver of the collective that wants her to feel... happy. Not alone, not drowning in grief and contemplating ODing on Heroin. If this theory is true, there is a vast machinery of humanity that is not interested in Carol and is instead working in the background. We did see a glimmer of them, and could hear the anger they felt at Carol at very end of Episode 4, when she intentionally drugged and ripped a person away from the hive against her wishes, and at the possible cost of her life. But for the most part, the only elements of humnaity that interact with Carol are the elements that empathize with her.

Carol has not asked what the rest of humanity is building now that its minds are linked. But something clearly is being built, and not just a satellite dish. The hive is redesigning civilization, redistributing food and resources, rerouting the energy grid. They are likely making a world that can actually sustain life. Not for a few hundred more years, but potentially for millions of years.

We currently live on a planet drowning in our trash. U.S. landfills grow by 8,000,000 lbs every sincle DAY! Anyone who has walked through one knows that without something changing, a few hundred years from now our planet will end up like the one in Wall-E, unable to sustain life. The great pacific ocean garbage patch (just one of five major oceanic garbage patches) is twice the size of Texas. The hive didn’t wait for technology to get us out of this mess. It took proactive steps.

My optimist brain tells me: the hive hasn’t lied yet. Over and over they’ve said that nothing of humanity was lost, just merged. They say all human minds are psychically linked into one massive shared awareness. Every aspect of every person is still here, just no longer isolated. A “large humanity model.” If they’re telling the truth, then humanity didn’t die. It just finally all has for the most part all of its Maslows Hierachy of Needs met.

We naturally want Carol to be right. She’s the protagonist and the shows anchor. She’s grieving, furious, traumatized, suspicious as we would be if we lost the only person we ever loved. Viewers mirror the emotional state of the protagonist. Our mirror neurons activate when we empathize with anyone, even a character on a tv show. Her suspicions becomes ours. But her assumptions require the hive to be deceiving her, and so far, there’s lots of evidence that they avoid deception because they see, due to the psychic glue, the value of transparency and communication. If the hive has malicious intent, it has no reason to inform Carol about the other uninfected, much less bring them all together. It could have refused to answer or refused to help.

The hive only refused one question, whether the process could be reversed. We take this as sinister. But maybe it reflects somethin else. Maybe the hive absolutely doesn't want to go back to the profound loneliness, scarcity, and misery it remembers. Zosia’s collapse when cut off from the hive made this painfully clear. Disconnection wasn’t freedom. It was profound grief and loneliness. Her subconscious literally stopped her own heart.

People in the hive look so happy because, for the first time, they don’t feel alone. They feel actualized, content, part of a community, with a purpose, and a shared consciousness.

Carol believes the hive is no longer human because humans arent supposed to feel happy all the time. But what if the hive didn't erase sadness or anger (both of which we saw from the hive at the end of Episode 4)? It simply erased isolation. Humanity finally stopped feeling alone, and happiness and contentment is a second order effect of everyones love and belonging needs finally being met. Seven billion self-actualized beings collaborating could absolutely feel like sheer bliss. That's what the top of Maslow's pyramid bring...

Self actualization is when people do things not out of necessity, but for fun or because it makes them feel like they are making a positive contribution to the world at large. They create art because it brings them joy. They adventure because they enjoy doing so. Whether atleast a few people in the hive mind continue to do this (that the other minds could all experience through them) will determine if humanity is still mostly the same as it has always been, just now binded together by psychic glue.

Few people are currently self actualized. Most modern humans live somewhere in the middle of this pyramid, craving belonging or esteem or just a sense of safety. Most of modern society is stuck here. Loneliness is so prevalent and fear so normalized, that when someone is secure, generous, optimistic and enthusiastic about human potential, they are labeled naive, delusional, or "living in a bubble."

Social media gives us a temporary sense of belonging, with superficial upvotes and likes, then punishes us with comparison and isolation so we seek out more validation. The hive is what belonging and esteem would feel like if it were constant. For most of us, the below pyramid pertaining to our unfulfilled needs is what typically preoccupies a large chunk of our cognitive bandwidth.

These automated maladaptive algorithmic loops are exploited to great effect by social media platforms. Therapy can break these loops (cognitive therapy targeting automatic negative thoughts, behavioral therapy targeting harmful behaviors, and dialetical therapy targeting maladaptive feelings), but social media often exacerbates them.

The algorithms quickly learn whether you have unfulfilled safety needs, belonging needs, or esteem needs, and exploit that information. News stories that make us scared (safety), tribal and part of a good group (belonging), or a warrior for a cause (esteem) temporarily meet these needs without asking us to do anything more than reading, engaging with, or spreading the story.

Even if individuality shifted. Even if the part of us that fights, competes, rallies, and insists that my vision of a better world is the correct one, even if that dissolves because we finally see things from our rival’s perspective. Is that inherently a loss? We divide/tribalize ourselves into good groups and others as part of the evil group, be it a political party, a foreign culture or poorly understood idea. We rarely see from opposing perspectives. Its easier, and esteem enhancing to dismiss the other group as stupid, or evil. If suddenly, we all link up and see everything from all perspectives, yes we will stop fighting with each other. But is that fight essential to drive humanity?

This debate drove much of the past century, communism vs capitalism. Capitalists argue that competition is what drives humanity to create. And if the hive fail to create anything beautiful and awe inspiring by season 2, then this means that Vince Gilligan feels the same. Humans only build in order to compete.

Socialists and humanists believe that self actualization also drives people to build. They argue that communism fails when the communist society fails to get people Maslows needs met so that atleast a portion of them become actualized. They argue that european socialism, designed to meet everyones basic maslowian needs help people become actualized, and is a successful model to adopt more widely. When automation replaces peoples jobs, we can either fight each other over scraps. Or we can use our vote to mandate that the automation be implemented, and its benefits distributed widely to meet everyone’s basic needs. We could demand policies and technologies be implemented to help meet more peoples love and belonging needs, and then let these self actualized people spend their time doing what brings them esteem, fulfillment and happiness. The efforts of these actualized individuals, combined with wise public policies, will seed the roots of a post-scarcity utopia.

As an aside, I dont think we're doomed. But I also don't believe that we are capable of curbing our own consumption. Instead, I believe in human ingenuity when fueled by necessity or fear. I believe robots (far more advanced and capable than Wall-E) will some day this century start to compost or recycle much of whats in our landfills. Hopefully they can do so on a scale and at a pace to pull us back from the brink. Likewise, I think even using just existing technology, we have a feasible path through which asteroids can be mined, space mirrors can be built, and 0.4% of the sunlight that hits Earth can be redirected as a way to temporarily counteract global warming until we find a more sustainable approach. And we have ample evidence from history that when we work together, or when we are forced to out of necessity, or fear, there is little that human ingenuity cannot achieve.

When we pursued it, when we felt it was a neccesity to best Russia to the moon, within a decade, we went from not even having a space program to playing golf on the moon. We closed the hole in our ozone layer within a decade through collective action. If we similarly felt compelled, if it was seen as necessary, we could have played golf on Mars at least a decade ago, but there was no pressing need and we simply didn’t pursue it.

Gilligan knows what we expect. We expect an ant colony, a bee hive, a Universe 25, not a post scarcity utopia. And he’s letting us hold those expectations long enough for them to calcify. That way, when the story turns, it hits harder.

Honestly, Mr. Diabetes might become one of the most tragic arcs of the season. Right now he’s tasting the psychic equivalent of pure, uncut Walter White produced meth. Eventually his baseline will catch up. Then he’ll crash. He’ll start chasing more extreme stimulation, reaching for darker appetites. The hive will indulge him with the most sexually inclined aspects of humanity but for Mr. Diabetes even the infinite could become boring. Then what? Will he detox and rebuild a life? Or spiral? Humans break when pleasure becomes unlimited. Carol broke because the only person that met her love and belonging needs, Helen, was taken away.

Both are extremes.

People also assume the hive is reckless because they handed Carol a grenade. But millions of humans have access to grenades and do not mishandle them. Carol did not seem suicidal or murderous, she felt awful about the hive minds that died due to her emotions. As a successful fiction writer, she should have been smart enough to not pull the pin on a grenade before confirming with Zosia if it is a fake. If she learned from that mistake, whe wouldn’t launch a nuke without confirming if the nuke was real. Thousands of people have had nuclear access for 80 years and did not accidentally launch any nukes. The hive hesitated on whether they would give her access to a nuke because they know the difference between intent and impulse. Ultimately they decided that she is not suicidal or muderou, she likely learned from the greande incident, and even if she didnt, its much harder to accidentally launch a nuke than it is to accidentally pull a grenade pin.

Again, this is a theory. A very testable one. If correct, we will soon start seeing the artist aspects of humanity’s collective mind building impossible dream projects. We will soon see the engineers building starships. We will see ecologists building vast regenerative cities. We will see the version of humanity that finally reached post-scarcity. For now, in the first week, we’re only seeing the piece dedicated to comforting one grieving woman. And many are jumping to conclusions based on this one skewed perspective.

And, honestly, the hive’s biggest ethical test so far came before Carol ever appeared. For weeks, they spread without even a single death. But when the military leadership started the protocols to trigger a nuclear strike on Texas. The hive faced a trolley problem at scale: infect humanity now immediately and ensure many accidental deaths, or let fear ignite a nuclear war that could end everything.

They chose the option that preserved the most life. Even if it meant becoming the villain. This was a very human choice they made showing that humanitys fears and survival instincts also do still reside inside the hive.

If this theory is right, then everything Carol and many of us assume about the hive is going to get turned upside down Season two. Season two might not reveal a monster. It might reveal the first version of humanity that finally stopped being largely controlled by its Amygdala.