Illuminatus! Trilogy

[Cain]

Apparently fortune favours those who write in bold.  Or something like that.

[Hit the Road Jack]

I'd say go for it - it makes you come across as really cool and important

Fuckin' right it does.

[Sir Perineal]

My humble 2 cents:

Cain hit it on the head when he mentioned population size as a predominant factor

Let me elaborate a bit.

From the little that I know on the subject, humans are naturally social animals.

Furthermore, social interaction seems to occur on a pendulum scale, with cooperation on one side and competition on the other.

That being said, our brains are only structured to live in a tribe of about 150 people.  In other words, as a neurological limitation, you can only really hold emotional relationships with a maximum of 150 people.  You cannot have much meaningful interaction with anyone else, lest you push someone else out of your 150.

It is said that when humans originally lived in tribes of such sizes of 150, they were very communistic.  Sure, there was some competition to be at the top, but it was never so much that the tribe would fall apart.  The tribe was too worried about survival.  To go back to the pendulum metaphor, the swings of the pendulum were never that extreme and so equilibrium could be recaptured much more easily.

Fast forward to contemporary times.

Enter the concept of The Stranger,Ñ¢ (No, not something written by Camus)

As soon as civilization started to develop, we thrust ourselves out of the simple tribal life, and introduced ourselves to the stranger.  That is, someone who we have no emotional connection with, and essentially is not completely human in our minds.

We now live in super-tribes of millions and millions of people.  You could theortically go through an entire day meeting only strangers, and never have to encounter anyone you actually know personally.

And it is a lot easier to do awful things to a stranger, than it is to do things to someone you know.

Back to the pendulum.

With small swings in the pendulum (a result of small social group sizes), nothing ever got too out of hand.  You might have some in-fighting here or there, but it could be managed on the whole and the tribe could go on living.

With EXTREMELY large swings in the pendulum (a result of astronomical social group sizes), anything and everything has the potential to get out of hand right quick.  This can be both good and bad.

What can an extreme swing to cooperation do?  Just look at the world wars.  Entire countries forget any and all internal strife and band together to fight the outside threat.

What can an extreme swing to copetition do?  Look at America's current income distribution.  An extremely small minority controls the most wealth.  And a large percentage of people are relegated to irreparable poverty and destitution.

Certainly a far cry from the naturally communistic lifestyle of our pre-historic ancestors.

[P3nT4gR4m]

 

Most straightforward expanation I've heard of this "too many rats in a cage" dynamic.

Is the 150 figure you quoted based on science or just a rough guestimate?

[Sir Perineal]

Most straightforward expanation I've heard of this "too many rats in a cage" dynamic.

Is the 150 figure you quoted based on science or just a rough guestimate?

It's called something like Dunbar's Number, so you could probably look it up under that name for more info ... I think they use it heavily in anthropology and sociology.

[Cain]

I've heard 200 or so....but it was pretty much the same premise.  It was linked in MGD's sig ages ago...nearly a year in fact, but it made a lot of sense.

[Cramulus]

Great post SP, very very interesting.

[Hit the Road Jack]

My humble 2 cents:

Cain hit it on the head when he mentioned population size as a predominant factor

Let me elaborate a bit.

From the little that I know on the subject, humans are naturally social animals.

Furthermore, social interaction seems to occur on a pendulum scale, with cooperation on one side and competition on the other.

That being said, our brains are only structured to live in a tribe of about 150 people.  In other words, as a neurological limitation, you can only really hold emotional relationships with a maximum of 150 people.  You cannot have much meaningful interaction with anyone else, lest you push someone else out of your 150.

It is said that when humans originally lived in tribes of such sizes of 150, they were very communistic.  Sure, there was some competition to be at the top, but it was never so much that the tribe would fall apart.  The tribe was too worried about survival.  To go back to the pendulum metaphor, the swings of the pendulum were never that extreme and so equilibrium could be recaptured much more easily.

Fast forward to contemporary times.

Enter the concept of The Stranger,Ñ¢ (No, not something written by Camus)

As soon as civilization started to develop, we thrust ourselves out of the simple tribal life, and introduced ourselves to the stranger.  That is, someone who we have no emotional connection with, and essentially is not completely human in our minds.

We now live in super-tribes of millions and millions of people.  You could theortically go through an entire day meeting only strangers, and never have to encounter anyone you actually know personally.

And it is a lot easier to do awful things to a stranger, than it is to do things to someone you know.

Back to the pendulum.

With small swings in the pendulum (a result of small social group sizes), nothing ever got too out of hand.  You might have some in-fighting here or there, but it could be managed on the whole and the tribe could go on living.

With EXTREMELY large swings in the pendulum (a result of astronomical social group sizes), anything and everything has the potential to get out of hand right quick.  This can be both good and bad.

What can an extreme swing to cooperation do?  Just look at the world wars.  Entire countries forget any and all internal strife and band together to fight the outside threat.

What can an extreme swing to copetition do?  Look at America's current income distribution.  An extremely small minority controls the most wealth.  And a large percentage of people are relegated to irreparable poverty and destitution.

Certainly a far cry from the naturally communistic lifestyle of our pre-historic ancestors.

Isn't that, then, a sort of admonishment for anarchy? Anarchy, as in, a world without nation states as we understand them now?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Yeah I guess. "sort of" in the "no it fucking isn't you idiot"- sense

[Hit the Road Jack]

Yeah I guess. "sort of" in the "no it fucking isn't you idiot"- sense

I don't know why to some here anarchy HAS TO mean absolute destructive chaos. You could call what the peacefull, succesfull native American tribes did for all those years anarchy. To me, it just means a world without standing armies, central banks, corporations, all the nasty shit of civilisation. If you want to say that humans will never or could never attain such freedoms, fine, but don't confuse the issue by claiming "anarchy=raping and pillaging". The reality is much more complex then that.

[Cain]

Indeed, it need not always be like that.  But the societies that have practiced it well seem to be either be quite primitive hunter-gatherers or under extreme situations of social collapse and high tension (the Commune and Spanish Civil War).  If you're ideologically committed to anarchism, you can likely make it work, but others wont, leading me to believe it will likely never be anything more than a temporary system, inevitably falling to outside powers who do what they do best (move in troops and "restore order"). 

The only time I can think of Anarchists managing to make a successful stand against professional militaries is in Spain, and even there they had to make important amendments to their ideals in order to gain the cooperation of the Communists.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Being the utopian Idealist that I am I can envisage a world where human psychology has evolved enough to operate under a system which, to our primitive eyes, could only be described as anarchy.

Maybe in a couple of thousand years or so. Who knows? Maybe sooner. Right now, however, if all forms of governments suddenly vanished in the poof of smoke we'd all like to see some vanish in, I'm pretty sure planet earth would very closely resemble an abattoir within a matter of hours.

[Hit the Road Jack]

Being the utopian Idealist that I am I can envisage a world where human psychology has evolved enough to operate under a system which, to our primitive eyes, could only be described as anarchy.

Maybe in a couple of thousand years or so. Who knows? Maybe sooner. Right now, however, if all forms of governments suddenly vanished in the poof of smoke we'd all like to see some vanish in, I'm pretty sure planet earth would very closely resemble an abattoir within a matter of hours.

Shit man, the way things are going, we may not have a choice!

[P3nT4gR4m]

Hell yeah! If the bullets don't kill ya the lulz sure as fuck will 

[Triple Zero]

i got the 150 number as well from this article about something called "Monkeysphere".

i think it makes a whole lot of sense for explaining a lot of things about why groups of large people are so stupid

not that individuals can't be terribly stupid as well, though. but i think that this might be caused to large groups being unable of giving the right example?