Swarms have a consistent oscillation of phases.

When you're surrounded by wolves, it makes sense to huddle together.

By operating as a collective, you are more powerful than any individual alone.

That power creates abundance internally.

Now that you are more powerful than your surroundings, individuals start playing the internal individual game to get a relatively larger share of the abundant but fundamentally rivalrous resources inside.

This emergent competition absorbs as much energy as the collective can give it, making the collective as a whole ossified, sclerotic, and fragile.

At some point, the external conditions change, and the ossified collective, unable to absorb it, shatters.

In the first phase, it's an externally oriented cycle, optimizing for the collective.

In the second phase, it's an internally oriented cycle, optimizing for each individual.

Swarms hit a scaling threshold in abundance and then they tear themselves apart.

Look at what's happening in nearly every societal domain in the West.