As global citizens, we sometimes feel like an ant on an aircraft carrier, right? We know the ship is headed for the rocks. But we are too small to do anything about it. So, what to do? Go about our lives, in our little colonies, on our respective decks? Trust in our leaders? The problem with that approach is that each colony has a queen ant that looks after them, sure. But at the end of the day, nobody is steering the ship. So how do we turn it around? Now, we could say that because we are too small to do anything about it, there is no point worrying. So on we go. Copulating and populating, scrolling while the boat is lolling. Chins down. No point looking up at the horizon. We can't do anything about it. That is this the 'ant on the aircraft carrier' way of thinking. But to many ants, something about giving up just doesn't feel right. Maybe it doesn’t feel right because we also know, deep down, intuitively perhaps, that no matter how small we are, we really can make a difference. We can turn this ship around. Picture a neuron, a single brain cell. A single neuron is just one of billions of nerve cells that make up the brain. Each neuron is connected to other neurons by cells called ganglia. Just like us, neurons are born, they consume energy, they do stuff, and then they die. The stuff that they do – that they are programmed by their DNA to do – is they receive information through electrical pulses, and pass information on. Clock on in the morning, shoot off pulses of information to one another all day long, clock off for a while, then do it again. The information neurons pass on to one another via the ganglia - the cells that connect the neurons - may be either a sensory information from outside, or just a piece of information that they have received from another neuron inside the brain. Input, output. Input information, output information. That is what they do. When enough neurons output information in a coordinated way, the brain as a whole makes a decision. That decision will be, in the end, what the weight of relevant neurons figured out was in the best interest of the whole lot of them. That is how we survive. Now: Move the index finger on your left hand, ever so slightly. It moved! This was the work of a bunch of neurons smaller than a pinhead. Each neuron a billionth the size of your finger. But a small group of them just caused a decision that triggered nerve cells equally tiny in your left arm – as if they were a conveyor belt – to send information to the muscles in your hand in such a way as to engage them, like a massive pulley system, to move something more than a billion times the size of any one of them, your finger. The neurons were able to do this because they worked as a team. Now, if neurons can work together to move a finger, then it follows that they can do a lot more. They can even steer a ship! In fact, when you think about it, it was small groups of tiny neurons working together that caused to be built all the ships in the world in the first place! So, maybe it is time for us, the people of the world, to stop behaving as if we are ants on an aircraft carrier, and to start acting more like neurons in a brain. Our ship might have no captain, but let us not forget the brain has no king or queen, either. But wait! The people of the world don't have ganglia, right? Well, we didn’t have ganglia. But in the last 30 years – and especially in the last 10 years – humanity has developed a kind of ganglia. It is called ‘the internet’. Through the internet, we too can shoot pulses to one another other as to what is the best thing to do for all of us. Not only that, with the internet each of us has all the information in the world at our fingertips to help us to make good decisions! Alas, we have not achieved much in the way of improved global decision making since the advent of our ganglia, the internet, so far. This is true. Most of use the internet for entertainment, for our jobs, for booking flights to get away from our jobs, for idle gossip, scrolling. But forgive us. Ganglia is new to us, after all. Maybe we are a bit like a kid with a new toy. We are just breaking it in. Maybe we are, in the big scheme of things, temporarily using it to check out the world around us and our relationship with it, before we bunker down and start using to make good decisions that are in all our interests. Who knows? The only way to find out what we are really capable of doing with our new ganglia is start using it to communicate with each other about things that matter. Because, make no mistake, nobody is driving this ship. As the old saying goes: "If it is to be, it is up to me." This idea was first posted one year ago as ; 'the ant and the aircraft carrier'. Reworked, re-titled and re-posted for your vote or comment.