What Keeps Small-Group Social Animal Groups From Growing Larger?

[Essay]

I use the otherwise vague word "condition" to label the influence what the ideologically bonded community considers as the right way each instinct is to be expressed/satisfied. Much of the conditioning comes from the common moral and legal codes. Our secular ideological system operates a money economy in our society, for example, by idealizing the capitalistic system and establishing habits, norms, etc. so we think in terms of "purchases" instead of bartering and we write contracts instead of relying upon our instinctive expectation of a favor being return for favors given. All our social instincts are guided in their expression, but the only one that is activally suppressed is the polygamous nature of the small-primate group. We had to impose monogomy on society for a number of significant reasons which is a big and seperate subject.

 

 

 

You've got down into the heart of the matter. This is a difficult subject for people to understand and accept. To me, there is no absolute truth in this world. All we "know" is the level of understanding we have about everything and it changes (advances) only by becoming more accurate. Of course, in our daily lives, it is practical to refeWr to "truth" and I do. It is essential that we always try to say "the truth" and be as accurate as we can.

 

As for as understanding the world, it is always wrapped up in our ideology. We in the West function with two main ideologies, Christianity and in addition, our secular ideals which for the most part include science. In other words, most people in the West are influenced by Christian ideals and standards as well as by scientific understanding and secular ideals. So, what is left? Nothing. Our ideology is dual-based and encompasses the whole way we think. It is important to interpret the data in this particular way because it is the way that shows how we manage to function in huge groups even though we are the same small-group primates we evolved into less than 200,000 years ago. This common way of thinking is what bonds us into this large group. As that common world-view and way of thinking divides and weakens, the stress and hostility level rises as it does in all small-group animals whose group grosly exceeded the norm for that species. Thus, one can explain the reason for the rise in stress and hostility. Also, we have clues from all this as to what can be expected in the future.

 

 

 

There seems to be no agreement on how large or small was typical to our hunting/gathering groups. Wikkapedia shows a low of ten up to thirty. Other sources say thirty five up to over a hundred. I don't think it necessary to set a rigid number. We are flexible that way and it can even change. We saw that with us. The US population largely developed from people who had selected themselves out to live more or less by themselves. The settling of the West was largely a fleeing from crowding. The result is we in the US feel more of the stress and hostility than do those living in Japan and Java.

 

I have not studied Dunbar's numbers extensively and you can enlighten me, but I believe they set a limit of some 200 relationships as a mazimum. All else would depend upon the common ideology for our ability to function as nations and societies.

 

 

 

The data that far back is of course minimal and open to interpretion. I interpret it this way: the European cave are of that era indicates a hunting based society larger than that of the typical hunting gathering groups---perhaps they lived in something like 200 people settlements. The hunting communties must have incorporated a lot of hunting lore into their ideology and used migrations, etc. to trap whole herds. We could call them "tribes" or "clans." There were many of them in Europe but they all had the same general ideology as indicated by the similarity of their art from cave to cave.

 

 

 

What I see is that groups do no evolve. Their world-view, way of thinking or ideology evolves enabling the group to grow in size or have to decline. A group that moved into a uniquely better environment would grow and divide but still keep the same ideology. When one groups was able to develop a new technology, such as a better spear, it would become part of the ideological lore and its use would spread to the rest of the tribes with the same ideology and their ideology would change to accommodate it. The accommodation might well have been that their gods ordered them to use this better spear and in a certain (the best) way.

 

 

 

I have not completely thought out the subject of domestication but I suspect we are not quite as fierce as we were 200,000 years ago---even a few centuries a

ago, but we could actually exterminate ourselves now---something we could never do before.

 

Domestication isn't just about becoming more docile or less fierce, but it changes the expression of many genes affecting the digestive and immune systems, physiognomy, metabolic ratios, and with some species it activates hotspots for mutational variety. These are not random mutations, but changes in the regulation or expression of existing genes--both in timing and/or placement--which generates new capabilities or traits. And many changes may just be epigenetic, though these may become fairly stable across many generations if they are not reversed by changing circumstances within a few generations.

 

Weird social rituals/norms can often (usually unintentionally) shift genetic drift by selecting for certain traits in essentially random ways... it would seem to me.

 

Think of the behavioural traits that lead a certain percentage of any population to emmigrate--being adventurous enough and strong enough and intent enough--and succeeding to pass on those traits.

 

Then think of the successive waves of emmigrees, each settling the next frontier as populations spread West (or whichever direction in history). But each newly settled population carries a higher proportion of that more adventurous genetic leaning.

 

So it shouldn't be surprising that more recently settled regions would be influenced by ideologies that support that more "independent spirit" and self-reliant or tight-knit type of lifestyle.... ...if you get the idea....

===

 

But y'know about group size and our various "societies," I think there are different ways of defining the term, "group," in this more modern world.

 

Once you introduce language and symbolic thought into the mixture, the rules governing primate groups need to be re-evaluated ...imho.

 

I'd suggest we still operate under the rules of "small group" mentality and practice, but that we extrapolate that into identification with socially defined "large groups" such as towns, cities, nations, corporations, religions, or social class, or whatever... and of course also including nuclear families, extended families and/or friends networks [NOT a phone ad!] of either real or virtual nature....

 

Sure I belong to a nation of over 300 million (at least that is what i've been told), but I really only know a "small group" of folks... across various real and virtual networks. What is the biggest group of folks that you maintain an actual relationship with?

 

AND my point is that... as our brains seem to uniquely hold several networks of Dunbar-type networks, and to juggle these networks of information along differing vectors to thus attain many different perspectives....

 

We are also capable of operating within many socially defined "large groups" by interfacing with a small (representative) group, in ways we have always done; and as our Dunbar-limited networks allow us to still do. We don't really operate with these "defined" large groups, but we convince ourselves, for various practical purposes, that we "belong" to these conceptually described groups and act accordingly.

 

But it is just a symbolic relationship with the larger group. Money is an example of this. We don't necessarily have a relationship with the people that we buy a product from, but the money symbolizes that we've contributed to the "big group" somewhere; and enough to be worth the given product being purchased, so a symbolic relationship is established for the exchange.

 

But gosh, any comparisons of today's people --in this warped, unsustainable, slice-of-time that our "Western" civilization has wrought-- with people from older, more stable, agrarian societies might be frought with anomolies or unique, non-comparable circumstances.

 

I heard Chris Mann talking about his new book, 1493. He mentioned how "in a way" Columbus reinstituted the Pangea paradigm, where all the continents were more-or-less connected. It only took about 500 years for all of them to slam back into each other, once he established the linkages... y'know in an inter-genetic, cross cultural, invasive species, global village type-of-way. But I digress....

 

"Carrying capacity" was a limit on our group numbers as you noted, and after agriculture especially (but after any technological advance such as the atl atl or a new bone or stone shaping technique) the limits of the land were modified by human behaviour; the "capacity" limits no longer constrained group size, but preferences or behaviours or other practicalities begin to shape group size it would seem. Our brains allowed us to rise above the "capacity" limitation of the landscape.

===

 

...but to address you last point on the first page....

 

I don't think we "became" herd animals. Our neocortex multiplied (via a genetic change) and that allowed us to develop a network of networks, rather than just one primary network like most mammals have. This allowed for symbolic representation and the ability to extrapolate our small-group traits and capabilities into a large-group structure. But it is just a symbolic representation; we don't actually belong to these socially defined groups in any but a metaphorical or legal or ideological way, do we?

 

I'd say we are still basically oriented by the small group, hunt/gath. type of paradigm; but that we are in the early stages of finding ways to accomodate a more settled, organized, regular, and agrarian diet/lifestyle.

 

This recent industrial/technological tangent may seem like a brief divergence, in several hundred or thousand more years. Or it may seem like the beginning of a transition point, where the global civilization peaked and then settled; in a manner similar to how most civilizations extend and then dissipate, leaving behind only the shards that settle sustainably. We find the descendents of these long-ago great civilizations, and we think they are primitives who have always lived that way; but we don't see why they choose to live that way, after living their long histories and listening to echos of long-ago ancestors.

 

...or words along those lines....

 

~ ;)

[charles brough]

It is exciting to be having an intelligent discussion like this going on with someone who knows the subject well.

Domestication isn't just about becoming more docile or less fierce, but it changes the expression of many genes affecting the digestive and immune systems, physiognomy, metabolic ratios, and with some species it activates hotspots for mutational variety. These are not random mutations, but changes in the regulation or expression of existing genes--both in timing and/or placement--which generates new capabilities or traits. And many changes may just be epigenetic, though these may become fairly stable across many generations if they are not reversed by changing circumstances within a few generations.

 

Weird social rituals/norms can often (usually unintentionally) shift genetic drift by selecting for certain traits in essentially random ways... it would seem to me.

 

Think of the behavioural traits that lead a certain percentage of any population to emmigrate--being adventurous enough and strong enough and intent enough--and succeeding to pass on those traits.

 

Then think of the successive waves of emmigrees, each settling the next frontier as populations spread West (or whichever direction in history). But each newly settled population carries a higher proportion of that more adventurous genetic leaning.

 

So it shouldn't be surprising that more recently settled regions would be influenced by ideologies that support that more "independent spirit" and self-reliant or tight-knit type of lifestyle.... ...if you get the idea...

Yes, I've also stumbled on to the concept that we especially in the US have experienced a selective out of Europe people who wanted to escape and spread out. As you say, it has promoted an entreprenural spirit but also an ambigious response to living together packed into crowded cities. It it is at the same time both exciting and also stressful. I think it is part of the reason health care costs in the US are the highest in the world, perhaps more than that spent in the whole world. I lived three years in crowded Java and did not see such tension and stress between people. But I imagine this same phenomenon has happened before in the cycle of civilizations, perhaps more than a few times. As economic conditions fall, there is a tendency for people shift reliance on the governmet back to being again on the family and a different sort of selective process occurs. I think what we are discussing may be a form of epigenetic and hence tentattive traits.

But y'know about group size and our various "societies," I think there are different ways of defining the term, "group," in this more modern world. Once you introduce language and symbolic thought into the mixture, the rules governing primate groups need to be re-evaluated ...imho.I'd suggest we still operate under the rules of "small group" mentality and practice, but that we extrapolate that into identification with socially defined "large groups" such as towns, cities, nations, corporations, religions, or social class, or whatever... and of course also including nuclear families, extended families and/or friends networks [NOT a phone ad!] of either real or virtual nature.... Sure I belong to a nation of over 300 million (at least that is what i've been told), but I really only know a "small group" of folks... across various real and virtual networks. What is the biggest group of folks that you maintain an actual relationship with?

I see the largest "groups" being the societies that are comprised of people bonded together by one of the world's major "religions" or world-view and way-of-thinking ideological systems---including East Asian (and Cuban) Marxism. I define "society" in these terms because otherwise, it is used in social theory to represent and make vague any size grouping of people of more than one. And in addition, the societies (Islam, the Christian West, the Hindu world and the Marxist one) are all very loosly bonded into a sort of commenwealth, civilization or empire by our Western secular humanist ideological system in the same way that Greek Hellenism bonded the Roman world ideologically.

 

In dealing with clubs, cities, states, nations, and societies, it is the common ideological way of thinking that largely enables people to feel a sense of community and allegence with their society. This enables people to serve their nation as being for their common good as also in serving their city and then their clubs (Rotary, Shriner, Lions, etc.) or team, or orchestra, or (in the military) their squad and chain of command. I believe our ideological systems develop and evolve to fill this role. It is not accidental. Because they do function and serve this purpose, they always exist with us.

AND my point is that... as our brains seem to uniquely hold several networks of Dunbar-type networks, and to juggle these networks of information along differing vectors to thus attain many different perspectives....

 

We are also capable of operating within many socially defined "large groups" by interfacing with a small (representative) group, in ways we have always done; and as our Dunbar-limited networks allow us to still do. We don't really operate with these "defined" large groups, but we convince ourselves, for various practical purposes, that we "belong" to these conceptually described groups and act accordingly.

 

But it is just a symbolic relationship with the larger group. Money is an example of this. We don't necessarily have a relationship with the people that we buy a product from, but the money symbolizes that we've contributed to the "big group" somewhere; and enough to be worth the given product being purchased, so a symbolic relationship is established for the exchange.

 

But gosh, any comparisons of today's people --in this warped, unsustainable, slice-of-time that our "Western" civilization has wrought-- with people from older, more stable, agrarian societies might be frought with anomolies or unique, non-comparable circumstances.

Having studied Ancient history and reseached pre-history, I note that the length of time societies have lasted has shrunk from some thirty thousand years down to at present about two thousand. They cycle of each has speeded up and compounds.

I heard Chris Mann talking about his new book, 1493. He mentioned how "in a way" Columbus reinstituted the Pangea paradigm, where all the continents were more-or-less connected. It only took about 500 years for all of them to slam back into each other, once he established the linkages... y'know in an inter-genetic, cross cultural, invasive species, global village type-of-way. But I digress....

 

"Carrying capacity" was a limit on our group numbers as you noted, and after agriculture especially (but after any technological advance such as the atl atl or a new bone or stone shaping technique) the limits of the land were modified by human behaviour; the "capacity" limits no longer constrained group size, but preferences or behaviours or other practicalities begin to shape group size it would seem. Our brains allowed us to rise above the "capacity" limitation of the landscape.

I agree, circumstances or environment shape how we use our ideologically-based way of thinking deal with our small group nature to survive and even prosper. Our ideological systems change to fit that need. In pre-history, I see reason to believe all the old religions were technology based, erg. such as in agriculture, "the mother goddess decreeing how deep to plant the seeds."

Our whole secular belief system arose out of a need to replace religion-based nationalism with a seperate but common ideology in order to reduce the many religious motivated wars that were tearing Europe up after the Reformation.

...but to address you last point on the first page....

I don't think we "became" herd animals. Our neocortex multiplied (via a genetic change) and that allowed us to develop a network of networks, rather than just one primary network like most mammals have. This allowed for symbolic representation and the ability to extrapolate our small-group traits and capabilities into a large-group structure. But it is just a symbolic representation; we don't actually belong to these socially defined groups in any but a metaphorical or legal or ideological way, do we?

 

I'd say we are still basically oriented by the small group, hunt/gath. type of paradigm; but that we are in the early stages of finding ways to accomodate a more settled, organized, regular, and agrarian diet/lifestyle.

 

This recent industrial/technological tangent may seem like a brief divergence, in several hundred or thousand more years. Or it may seem like the beginning of a transition point, where the global civilization peaked and then settled; in a manner similar to how most civilizations extend and then dissipate, leaving behind only the shards that settle sustainably. We find the descendents of these long-ago great civilizations, and we think they are primitives who have always lived that way; but we don't see why they choose to live that way, after living their long histories and listening to echos of long-ago ancestors....or words along those lines....~ ;)

Myself, I believe we are experiencing what all small groups animals experience when their groups are packed to tightly into a rigidly confined territory. They reach a crisis and then experience a population crash. Also, I believe that the population crash comes from the growth of tension and stress due to becoming more compact more than from shortage of food (and rescources in our case). In other group animals, some die of pure shock/stress, others experience a breakdown in group behavior (rats and mice).

 

Finally, you mentioned herd animals as I had. Actually, even herd animals consist of smaller polygyness groups. While our human groups are innately polygamous.