We as a human community are trying to figure out these days what it means to live together. The ancient ones, honeybees also known as apis mellifera, figured that out many, many moons ago. To go into a beehive is to learn a lesson about taking care of the common good. The 80,000 workers living together, often on top of one another in a hive community, aren’t trying to figure out how they can individually reap the most for their money. “Hive mind”means that everyone is trying to think as one for the best of the whole. Out of this amazing collaboration comes the prized elixir of honey.

Recently Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) had a townhall meeting at a local  gymnasium. When asked about some of the guts of the new plan particularly in regards to Maternity care, “Blum said he’d voted in favor of legislation that repeals and replaces major parts of the Affordable Care Act to “get rid of some of these crazy regulations that Obamacare puts on […] such as a 62-year-old male having to have pregnancy insurance”

In a response resounding across the country, a 63 year old woman named Barbara Rank, a retired special education teacher sitting in the audience fired off a reply to his dismissive comment, picked up by the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.

“Why should I pay for a flower I won’t smell, a park I don’t visit, or art I can’t appreciate? Why should I pay for a bridge I don’t cross, a sidewalk I don’t walk on, a library book I don’t read? Why should I pay the salaries of politicians I didn’t vote for, a tax cut that doesn’t affect me, or a loophole I can’t take advantage of?”

Rank ended her missive explaining why she did actually believe in people paying for all of those things ― by saying how it was all about “democracy,” “a civil society” and “the greater good.”

Someone posted a photograph of her letter to Reddit over the weekend, and it’s now gone viral, sparking positive reactions across the internet:

Rank said she’d laughed at the response to her letter because it’s “such a silly little piece.” The conclusion to the note, however, was something she “always” ends up saying, she added.

“Every argument I’ve ever had with somebody, friends or relative: Don’t you want to live in a civil society?” she told The Washington Post. “Government is the structure of the country we live in. It’s not as bad as people make it out to be.” (HuffPost, May 16, 2017, Lee Morgan)

Thank you Barbara. You show us how to think like a bee. And a human being.

#hivemind