Hm...
I see it as emergent behavior with feedback.
I'm just playing here, but lets say... there is individual drive and motivation, based on need and desire. And there is the drive of a society, which can be seen as a Gestalt created by the cumulative effects of the needs of the individual upon the large in a complex system. And then right back, this Gestalt creates a pressure upon the individual that acts like the super-ego upon the collective consciousness. Cooperation to fulfill a shared need, a common desire. Sometimes those desires become so widespread that a torrent is created that pulls everything else with it.
In World War 2 a very primal need for security was triggered not in the nation, but in individuals within the nation. Individuals reading or hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. You had shock, and fear, and that was reflected in everyone they saw. There was no security. People needed security. Emerging from that widespread need social pressures were created not by any one organization but organically it grew from the whole outward, within the big as a reflection of the small. A torrent, the super ego of society demanded fiercely that "the right thing" be done. Which led to teenagers singing up by the millions, and thousands of them feeling so worthless after being rejected that they killed themselves.
I think World War 2 is a great place to study cooperation. I have not seen in history a greater coming together than within the United States at that time. Everything, Everywhere, Everyone was united in one cause.
And then there are the poets, as defined by James P. Carse, which use words that move to plant seeds within the individual that grow up and out into the Gestalt, moving and directing and changing nations and minds.
For example:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed