Swarm Creativity Blog

Cryptocurrencies bring out the worst in digital greed: John Woeltz, 37, and an accomplice were charged with holding a man captive for three weeks in a Manhattan townhouse— torturing him in an attempt to steal his Bitcoin password . The horror of it is hard to overstate. But even more unsettling is what it reveals about a growing subculture: a ruthless obsession with crypto wealth, removed from any sense of ethics, community, or shared future. These are the crypto leeches—people who see money not as a lubricant for life, but as the point of life. Their behavior mirrors what I described in a recent post about how money, when disconnected from meaning, begins to take over the host like a parasite—hijacking the human mind, turning imagination into speculation, community into competition, and security into surveillance. If parasitic control is one metaphor, then nature offers us a better one: In that earlier post, I proposed a different vision: mycorrhizal finance, modeled after the underg...

In our quest for self-improvement—whether seeking better health, increased attractiveness, or greater wellbeing—we often reach for the quickest and easiest solutions. From miracle diets to surgical procedures, we tend to favor visible results and instant gratification. But what if the most effective approaches are the ones requiring the greatest effort—and the most self-awareness? That’s the idea behind the Social Compass app , a tool designed to help individuals navigate the deeper levels of transformation by identifying their personality traits, values, and behavioral tendencies. Using proven psychological assessments—like the Five-Factor Personality Inventory (FFI), the DOSPERT Risk-Taking Scale, and the Schwartz Values Survey—it maps out your unique profile, offering a personalized foundation for meaningful, lasting change. The Five Levels of Transformation Most self-improvement methods fall into a pyramid with five distinct levels. Each level offers a different approach to transfo...

In human societies, money, the conversion of social capital into financial capital, be it mussel shells, gold coins, paper money, or crypto currencies, can have an infectious effect, taking over mind and actions of money-obsessed people.  The effect of money on the mind and parasitic mind control have shocking similarities. Parasitic mind control is one of the most fascinating and disturbing phenomena in nature. Some parasites have evolved remarkable strategies to manipulate their hosts' behavior for their own reproductive success. These parasites are spectacularly successful in taking over host animals for their own profit, manipulating their hosts’ minds to become a vehicle for the parasite to multiply and spread.   Nature's most successful parasitic mind controller is the zombie ant fungus ( ophiocordyceps unilateralis ). The zombie ant fungus infects carpenter ants and completely alters their behavior.  It starts when a spore of the fungus lands on a carpenter ant, us...

“ Why is it that Nobel prize winners are always nice, and the people right below them on the professional ladder are complete assholes?”  This question was asked to me about ten years ago by one of my hosts, a senior professor in economics, when I was giving a talk at a university in Florida.   My host was perfectly right – fully confirmed by my own experience of the last 22 years at MIT. A fair share of Nobel prize winners reside at MIT and Harvard, and many others come to visit – usually they are a pleasure to talk to, and amazingly approachable. The same universities are full of people with huge egos, right below the Nobel prize winners, who are convinced that they deserve the Nobel prize and just didn’t get it because some assholes were against them. These people pull the levers at the most respected academic institutions, as editors in chief of prestigious scientific journals, making tenure decisions for junior faculty, and deciding on funding and promotions. Usually, the...