Let me start off by saying that I'm a big fan of John Carpenter's "They Live" - it's a great commentary on corporate manipulation of the public, and there's a fantastic 3 minutes of 2 guys hitting each other in the nuts repeatedly. The trope of a select few who unmask a massive conspiracy to control the public is a hollywood cliche, for the simple reason that it provides an awesomely dramatic narrative - everything is not what it seems, vast and powerful forces are arrayed against the heroes, who must do everything they can to stop the sinister conspiracy.
If you drop a piece of meat near an ant-hill and watch for awhile, a few individuals will eventually stumble into it, and gradually others will join them, until there's a large enough group to scavenge the meat, either cutting off pieces or dragging the whole thing back to the nest. It would be possible to imagine that this is a directed activity, that there's some kind of central decision-making process that determines that X number of ants will be required, and they're assigned the task. But in reality, it's an aggregate of decisions and actions by individuals that solves the problem. There is some communication, but it's very basic. The individuals follow a simple set of rules (eg: 1.Wander. 2. Find food. 3. Bring back to nest.) that accumulate into a correct solution, all without any kind of central decision-making. This is called swarm theory.