He states “we know that systems like ant colonies don’t have real leaders.But the desire to find pacemakers.has always been powerful” (195), but with this he creates a sense that the need and/or appointment of a pacemaker is a social construct made to facilitate the understanding of the creation of such complex systems by crediting an individual person or group, regardless of the true level of impact they had. Johnson’s use of pacemaker becomes synonymous with figurehead. Manchester serves as a prime example for the idealized world Johnson creates, a world without pacemakers. Friedrich Engels comments, “I have never come across so systematic a seclusion of the working class from the main streets” (as noted by Johnson 197). Johnson relates the history of Manchester, England to the audience focuses largely on its lack of governmental intervention during its period of rapid expansion that resulted in an almost too perfect separation of classes.
The lack of intervention from the ant queen exemplifies Johnson’s opinion on the futility of a pacemaker in society, and goes on to strengthen his point with human examples. In this case, the ant queen is the expected pacemaker, but despite the common misconception, the ant queen does is tucked away from a majority of the ants, and gives no orders on how to do things. Gordon points out to Johnson, and in turn the reader, how the ants had formed a unique and organized system, which even dictated spots for the deceased and trash away from the main areas of the colony. In The Myth of the Ant Queen, Johnson recounts his time with Deborah Gordon and her studies with the ant colony in her laboratory. Similar to the device which monitors and regulates, he describes a pacemaker as the overseer of the beings under itself control, telling them what and how to do things, and then spends the rest of his essay arguing how a pacemaker is unnecessary. The term “pacemaker” is usually used in reference to the medical device used to help with certain heart issues, but in his The Myth of the Ant Queen, Johnson uses the term to describe formal decision makers in societies (heads of companies, government officials, and of course the titular ant queen).
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