We live in interesting times and in no other time that spans my sixty plus years has the question of social tribal cohesiveness ever been questioned or its existence been in doubt. That goes for our entire social construct to include our way of life, the Democratic Way of Life.
So much of mankind history is in a prime position to repeat itself in some very, very bad ways and the threat to us, society, the democratic way and most of all the life of the little blue ball we call our planet sits on the precipice ready to fall past the event horizon and into the atom crushing black hole of life.
Why do we do what we do is driven by not just nature but how we do things in the survival arena tied heavily and closely to the very things that ensure survival but are in danger simply because we have populated mankind to a level never before endured, those few times we came close were corrected by the demise of said social constructs like “the Roman empire” for instance.
It feels like we are devolving back to a time where violence, conflict and destruction we normal words describing daily life. Not so far as to be the hunter-gatherer era of human kind but where life faced off with things like the black plague and such. It won’t take much to push us over the edge and a lot of today’s headlines say to me, “We are close, oh so very close and we are stuck in ways that ensure mutual destruction of our culture, social construct and planet.
Herein lies the rub, we have evolved technologically far beyond our humanity exceeding the levels that nature intended for humans to survive. Regardless of social media, etc., there are set limits on humans put there for good reason by nature. A good example is in the next paragraphs about the “Dunbar Numbers,” meaning the vastness of our population is leading to great frustrations and triggering anger, resentment and our very place in the scheme of life. Here goes:
When dealing with others, different tribes, we put our tribe first;
Tribal identity includes “hated others.” (they call this is the self-defense communities “othering.”)
Tribal mind-set, someone from a different tribe is NOT fully human.
Dunbar’s Number: Humans can only maintain between one hundred and two hundred fifty ‘stable relationships’. Note (me): that might explain why there are different levels in a tribe from individual to family to close-knit tribal members to the overall tribe itself which we will call society. Ergo, our society itself may not remain stable enough once it reaches beyond that threshold of one hundred to one hundred fifty members. [Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.]
[this rule of 150 remains true for early hunter-gatherer societies as well as a surprising array of modern groupings: offices, communities, factories, residential campsites, military organizations, 11th Century English villages, even Christmas card lists. Exceed 150, and a network is unlikely to last long or cohere well. ]
[According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones.
- 5 (good friends),
- 15 (good friends),
- 50 (friends),
- 150 (meaningful contacts),
- 500 (acquaintances) and
- 1500 (people you can recognize).
The more you know about someone, I think the better that relationship is, but probably also limits the number of relationships you can have...]
Now, consider our major metropolitan area’s and how we have jammed so many good folks of various and differing cultures and beliefs in an area not meant to exist according to nature and the rule. It is no wonder we are finding it easy, think group dynamics/violence, etc., to trigger violence to get what we need, not what we want but what we need. Some say social media is doing a good job but if you look to this theory you find the following response from those studying this phenomena.
[Face-to-face relationships, with all the non-verbal information that is so critical to communication, remain paramount.]
In short, the most harmonious state of being for humans fits squarely in the spectrum of Dunbar’s numbers and to make that work it requires a great spread of space between said meaningful (society if you will) contacts, our friends, our good friends and our families where harmony and contentment flourish.
The question becomes, “How do we get back to that state of being?”
Reference: https://tinyurl.com/yb63xol7
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