What if a paradigm for mind were the emergence of a hive mind in an ant colony? In this there are two layers, the rudimentary mental world of the individual ant, an unfocused contingent will driven by incomprehensible urges and the collective mind evolved to respond purposefully to a range of effective conditions or pragmatic realities on an entirely different level. These two layers of mind are each generalised responders to to immediate conditions and hence proto-conscious but their worlds are not and cannot be in direct communication, even though indirect communication is essential to them. It is the nature of this indirect communication, both the top-down and the bottom-up that is interesting, representing a kind of noumenality or action of the unconscious. The individual seeks to fulfill its wayward desire without understanding the logic of its motives. For the hive the individual is both essential and indiscernible, without identity, its 'I' merely instrumental.