I think about ants as having a collective soul, as opposed to individual souls. Maybe they don't have any soul at all, but I think they do. It distressed me to swallow a bunch of ants that had crawled into my coffee cup a few nights ago. I thought the milk had gotten scum, but really there must have been a bunch of those "little guys" who drown in there when they decided to dive into my coffee. Anyway, do I feel guilt; that western thing? Yes. I do not go out of my way to kill creatures, but you have to take that sort of thing in stride literally, or you couldn't take a step.
At the time, I considered the ants as individualized pieces of a whole, and unless the entire colony is wiped out along with the queen, I don't think of it as a true death. So their soul is made up of thousands of components, thousands of eyes and antenea and legs to form one consciousness. This sure looks like the case if you have ever seen an ant colony on the move, carrying their eggs to a new location. It is one machine.
I don't see it the same way for a duck or a mouse. They live in communities, but have personalities of their own. Which is why I would rather swallow ants by mistake than a mouse. Of course, many people think of the animal kingdom as souless droids altogether.
People are not ants. Collectivity is good until it stamps out individuality, freedom of thought and action, and creativity. Conformity is okay to a point, but after that people suffer. This can led tyrany of the majority. Unless there is great tolerance for a wide variation of ideas and behavior, I am wary of an extreem collective approach. What I see of a collective approach in churches is not really that happy- new ideas are not encouraged and people are stifled. But the selfishness of individualism is irksome too. It is a trick to get it right.