“Dunbar's” Number & Realistic Number of People
"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 number was first proposed in the 1990s by Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. There is some evidence that brain structure predicts the number of friends one has, though causality remains to be seen."
- Wikipedia
This always made sense to me since I don't even agree with members of my family-of-origin, let alone an entire neighborhood, city, county state, country, and earth.
How I understand this isn’t that we need 150 relationships, per se. It’s more about how many people we can feasibly deal with and be around, as well as feasibly come to general agreements about laws and morals, etc.—with the same, consistent people. Like in a village, but with separate family units, separate close relationships.
In the book, The Continuum Concept, Jean Leidloff described how a small village of people in the jungles of South America dealt with visitors. Read this and then imagine how many people we are forced to deal with on any given day and how it’s handled!
“The Yequana taught me far more refined ways of dealing with people than the ones I had known in civilization. Their way of greeting visitors struck me as particularly sound.
“I saw it first when I arrived in a Yequana village with two Yequana travellers from a distant village. I was not then expected to know how to behave, so Wenito, the old fellow who had been among Venezuelans in his youth and knew some Spanish came and greeted me with the customary Venezuelan pat on the shoulder and after some conversation showed me where to put my hammock.
“But my two companions received very different treatment. They seated themselves not far away from me under the great round roof without a word to or from anyone, and they did not look at, or speak to, one another. The residents came and went at various distances in the course of their normal business, but none gave so much as a glance at the visitors. For about an hour and a half the two men sat motionless and silent: then a woman came quietly and placed some food on the ground before them and walked away. The men did not reach immediately for the food but after a moment ate some in silence. Then the bowls were taken quietly away and more time elapsed.
Eventually, a man approached in a leisurely way and stood leaning against one of the roof poles behind the visitors. After several moments he spoke, very softly, a few syllables. Easily two minutes passed before the elder visitor answered, also briefly. Again the silence closed over them. When they spoke again it was as though each utterance was referred back to the reigning silence out of which it had come. The personal peace and dignity of each man suffered no imposition. As the exchange became more lively, others came, stood awhile, then joined in. They all seemed to have a sense of the serenity of each man, which had to be preserved, No one interrupted anyone else: emotional pressure was absent from any voice. Every man remained balanced on his own centre.”
- The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
Do you need support in dealing with the norms that don’t make sense? I’d love speak with you. Pro truth. Pro reality. Realist. Genuine. Sincere.