How many people makes a society?

[goingtothedogs]

The below quote is taken from a current archeology thread.


"I like your theory of a worldview being necessary to bond >30-100 people together. Humans seem capable of having only so many personal contacts at any given time, and without a common worldview to bind society together most people would be strangers whom would be unsure whether they can trust each other or not. And you are good to add the caveat that by religion you are broadly refering to a 'world-view and a way-of-thinking-system' (and I might add a way-of-behaving-system). People around the world have very broad social identities that revolve around more than just theology, but of national identity, ethnic/racial identity, etc"

I've always been a "village person" and I've got a vague kind of feeling that the "right" size for a human group is somewhere around 200 to 500 people. I have always, by choice, lived in villages of around that size.

And yet, here I am on the internet, "talking" with people, many of whom I consider friends, although it is highly likely that I'll never meet most of you. Where is my 200-500 "comfort factor".

Wild horses would not get me to live in a city, or even a large town, but the internet covers a slice of humanity bigger than the largest of the megacities. Mexico City can't begin to compete. And, it is often said, cities are the loneliest places in the world.

I'm thinking out loud here. any comments?

[Forest_Dump]

While I don't think there are any necessary limits, 3-400 is a bit of a magic number in these kinds of things. I have (vaguely) heard of that number being used to reference the number of people you can know well including immediate face recognition. 400 is also about the effective limit of a group with a basically egalitarian structure. When that number gets exceeded generally you either get the impetus for the development of a more complex society or, most commonly, the groups splits due to internal tensions, etc. However, this is really more of a rule of thumb because of course you can get a lot of variation for many reasons.

[wolfhnd]

This is an interesting question.

The question I have been pondering lately is what effect population density has on personal freedom. I think that it is safe to say that if the world's population was a sixth of what it is there would not necessarily be any reason to regulate for example my auto emissions where I live. Another example might be that the mixing of storm water and sewage during heavy rains may not be a problem so I wouldn't need to pay additional taxes to upgrade the system. If I went to a national park maybe I could camp where ever I wanted.

Here is a hot topic, immigration, that is at least partly provoked by population density. Before someone starts a debate I'm not taking a position on immigration just pointing to a political argument that is being linked to crowding.

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/po ... ?docID=801

In town after town throughout the U.S., communities are finding that population growth is overcrowding schools, clogging roads, swallowing up open space, taxing the environment, and raising the cost of living for all.

[charles brough]

The below quote is taken from a current archeology thread.

"I like your theory of a worldview being necessary to bond >30-100 people together. Humans seem capable of having only so many personal contacts at any given time, and without a common worldview to bind society together most people would be strangers whom would be unsure whether they can trust each other or not. And you are good to add the caveat that by religion you are broadly refering to a 'world-view and a way-of-thinking-system' (and I might add a way-of-behaving-system). People around the world have very broad social identities that revolve around more than just theology, but of national identity, ethnic/racial identity, etc"

I've always been a "village person" and I've got a vague kind of feeling that the "right" size for a human group is somewhere around 200 to 500 people. I have always, by choice, lived in villages of around that size.

Good point. We evolved through millions of years of evolution in small groups. We have lived as hunting/gathering groups in size of from about 30 to 100 people, approximately. Groups that go too large, broke up into smaller groups because people felt lost in groups larger than we had evolved in.
So, there is a reason for what you noticed, and it is instinctly shared by all people.

In my work, I explain that our groups could only begin to get larger (as they did with the CroMagnon) about 40,000 year ago and when a hunting-technology system, world-view or "religion" was developed. It is associated with the fine cave paintings of animals they hunted. It lasted about 30,000 years until it was replaced by an agricultural-technology world-view system centered around the female-fertility concept.

In other words, about 40,000 years ago, we developed a new format for WV or "religious" systems that enable people to be bonded or melded into larger groupings without feeling "lost" in them. Ever since, the systems have become more pefected until they have been able to bond hundreds of millions or more people together (not without difficulty, however!).

charles

[mtbturtle]

I see Charles is still spamming his website around...

[charles brough]

The question I have been pondering lately is what effect population density has on personal freedom. I think that it is safe to say that if the world's population was a sixth of what it is there would not necessarily be any reason to regulate for example my auto emissions where I live. Another example might be that the mixing of storm water and sewage during heavy rains may not be a problem so I wouldn't need to pay additional taxes to upgrade the system. If I went to a national park maybe I could camp where ever I wanted.

Well, yes, that is another interesting subject. World population keeps climbing while the ideological systems that bind us together have been breaking down. Not only that, but we keep using up the easiest-to-reach mineral wealth of the Earth with the result that it is taking increasingly more energy to extract and refine it. This is what causes "peak oil."

So, with living standards doomed to ultimately decline and society breaking down as a bonding system, it is no wonder there is an irregular, cyclical up trend in people turning into religious militants or going barzerk and shooting others. It is characteristic of animals (research has shown) to suffer an increase in stress when over-crowding occurs. It is the stress that results in the population crash---not hunger or not having a home or nest room to live in.

charles

[charles brough]

While I don't think there are any necessary limits, 3-400 is a bit of a magic number in these kinds of things. I have (vaguely) heard of that number being used to reference the number of people you can know well including immediate face recognition. 400 is also about the effective limit of a group with a basically egalitarian structure. When that number gets exceeded generally you either get the impetus for the development of a more complex society or, most commonly, the groups splits due to internal tensions, etc. However, this is really more of a rule of thumb because of course you can get a lot of variation for many reasons.

The way I interpret that tendency is that we tend to feel comfortable in congregations, for example of from 40 to say 400 people who have much the same ideological beliefs. We also identify with "us" "ourselves," in larger groups with definite borders, that is, our nation. Finally, we have an affinity and feel an association with the civilization we each grow up in. We identify with its history, culture, faith, etc. We are more concerned with a disaster that kills a dozen people in it than one that kills three dozen in another such "society."

charles

[Forest_Dump]

A few small points. It can be debated about when religion began and what it's original function was. Neanderthals often get credit for having religion before anatomically modern Homo sapiens with the evidence of some kind of cave bear cult (I try not to confuse people making it sound like a Jean Auel novel). Of course hunting technologies go back much, much further. Some of Brough's ideas could be made to work here but as a very broad generalisation that ignores a lot of variation. Frankly, this kind of reconstruction is about 100 years out of date. Additionally, an interesting debate is whether even in big cities, the bigger numbers apply. You have to remember that even in cities of millions of people, individuals don't associate with that many others. In fact, in cities people can be highly selective about who they associate with and may not even know their neighbours. What is often different is the degree to which they, in fact, have more choices of who to associate with and exercise these, loosing interest in learning how to negotiate and compromise with people they don't get along with. Instead what is developed is depersonalised institutions like municipal governments and bureaucracies that enact codified laws backed up with coercive authority like police. So, I am not sure that individuals have evolved any mechanism at the personal level. In some ways, what has evolved is mechanisms to remove these decisions and responsibilities from the individual and make it depersonalised.

[mtbturtle]

Charles check your PMs.

[wolfhnd]

Nice post Forest. I found an article that describes some of the difficulties with crowding and how they are managed.

http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?scri ... en&nrm=iso

But in the sealed enclosure, flight was impossible. Violence quickly spiralled out of control. Cannibalism and infanticide followed. Males became hypersexual, pansexual and, an increasing proportion, homosexual. Calhoun called this vortex "a behavioural sink". Their numbers fell into terminal decline and the population tailed off to extinction. At the experiments' end, the only animals still alive had survived at an immense psychological cost: asexual and utterly withdrawn, they clustered in a vacant huddled mass. Even when reintroduced to normal rodent communities, these "socially autistic" animals remained isolated until death. In the words of one of Calhoun's collaborators, rodent "utopia" had descended into "hell".