#collectisim

The Beauty of Anarchy: Murmurations as a Collective Response to Uncertainty

Katya Krylova, Anarchist Studies Volume 33 Number 2 (2025), pp. 50‑81

This article is written within what can loosely be called the anarchist cybernetic paradigm, i.e. the idea of anarchy as a self-organising system. The author, Katya Krylova, has also written a loosely animal-liberationist (but state-regulationist) piece on companion animals and about half-a-dozen other pieces mainly on representations of animals. Their work evidently comes from a place of compassion for animals, although it seems more rooted in ethical ideology than anarchy.

This article examines starling murmurations as a metaphor for how collective systems respond to uncertainty without centralized control. What appears to be chaotic movement is actually the result of simple, local interactions, each bird adjusting its behaviour in response to nearby neighbors. From these decentralized rules emerges coherence, adaptability, and collective intelligence.

A starling murmuration, from Yorkshire WIldlife Trust.

Krylova uses this natural phenomenon to challenge traditional ideas that order requires hierarchy, authority, or rigid structure. Instead, she presents anarchy not as disorder, but as a form of self-organization rooted in responsiveness, trust, and constant feedback. Murmurations demonstrate how groups can remain resilient by staying fluid and relational rather than fixed and controlled.

This article is written within what can loosely be called the anarchist cybernetic paradigm, i.e. the idea of anarchy as a self-organising system. Katya Krylova examines starling murmurations as a metaphor for how collective systems respond to uncertainty without centralized control. What appears to be chaotic movement is actually the result of simple, local interactions, each bird adjusting its behaviour in response to nearby neighbors. From these decentralized rules emerges coherence, adaptability, and collective intelligence.

Krylova uses this natural phenomenon to challenge traditional ideas that order requires hierarchy, authority, or rigid structure. Instead, she presents anarchy not as disorder, but as a form of self-organization rooted in responsiveness, trust, and constant feedback. Murmurations demonstrate how groups can remain resilient by staying fluid and relational rather than fixed and controlled.

The essay ultimately suggests that in moments of instability—social, political, or environmental—distributed coordination may offer a more effective and humane way forward. Beauty arises not from control, but from shared awareness and collective adaptability in the face of uncertainty.

What it means for radicals: This is a reformulation of ideas of swarm intelligence and self-organising systems which have been around for awhile, given a novel twist by the focus on beauty and resilience. We need to be cautious with cybernetic metaphors because of their deindividuating potential and because they are adjacent to today’s dominant social models. This said, swarm intelligence clearly happens in crowd situations and some kinds of social movements.

Analogies with animals are interesting in breaking out of the humanist deadlock resulting from linguistic, cultural, normative, political, and economic models. Starling murmurations are beautiful to see, and it’s also beautiful to see how such birds ignore human-imposed restrictions like lockdowns and national borders. Animals are natural anarchists – but at the same time, we need to remember they are natural egoists, even in the social species. They do what feels right or brings pleasure in the moment, in accordance with their feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. Since different species and even different individuals have different instincts, sensuous perceptions, etc., it’s tricky to draw analogies from one species to another. And while the animal world includes egoist communists like ants and bees, it also includes solitary, predatory, and highly conflictual species.

In my view, Darwinism is limited in its usefulness for anarchism, because animals seek pleasure, not simply survival. I’m drawn to Graeber’s idea of play in nature and Hakim Bey’s use of Erasmus Darwin’s and Fourier’s ideas of “survival of the happiest”. The authoritarian imperative “we need to work together to survive” is all too easily tagged onto Kropotkin’s mutual-aid revision of Darwin, but it’s often also the case that animals survive and flourish by doing their own thing. And, at least with humans, it seems to me that collective intelligence is often inferior to individual intelligence – at least, it is very easily nudged and manipulated, and reduced to the lowest common denominator. Herds fall for authoritarianism easier than individuals.