Thinking Outside the Monkeysphere

1. If you could change one thing about humans, what would it be?
2. Would the world be a better or worse place without religion, government, etc?
3. You get to choose the next President of the United States. It can be anybody in the whole world, no restrictions. Who do you choose and why?

Let's try prompt 1.

In anthropology there is a concept referred to in the field as the "monkeysphere." Anthropologist John David Ward describes it as "[the] upper bound on how many other people we can interact with, keep track of, and generally 'grok.'" This exists because, as it turns out, empathy is an extremely difficult task, and our brains can only handle so much of the stuff. The monkeysphere is thus usually capped out at around 150 individuals, though it's entirely possible for the number to be double or triple that.

Another related phenomenon is that of "othering." By othering, we group people into two categories: us and them. We are the good guys. We are driven by high morals, we are civilized, we are often the peak of civilization. They are the bad guys, or at least the neutrals. They are the NPCs of our world, the programmed bits of dialogue whose only motivations are to respond to inputs. They have no real free will, no real thought. We all do this to some degree. Other nations are othered. Other creeds are othered. Republicans and Democrats other each other. Most people end up othering animals. Lots of men other women, and yes, many women do the same to men.

The Monkeysphere and othering were both mechanics of the human mind that worked out just fine for us at one point in time. Humans have always been a community-oriented species (hence bothering to dedicate even so much energy as to "grok" 150 other humans). But for most of our past, the Evolutionary Period if you will, humans lived in small tribes, composed of perhaps 50 or 100 people and generally only consisting of a few distinct families. Some cultures have operated on this basis for much longer, but a large portion of humanity began to move away from that pattern several thousand years ago with the Neolithic Revolution in agriculture. Agriculture allowed people to stay in one place, and to produce more food than they themselves needed to eat. Surpluses soon became a plausible reality, and as such some humans could quit looking for food altogether and start on other pursuits - organizing governments and religion, taking up a craft like carpentry or stone-working, or keeping records. It was through this specialization, as a result of agriculture, that the first cities began to form, as people organized their lives around central institutions and settled down in the same area.

The problem with cities, though, is that most of them contain more than 150 people. So "othering", which before allowed us to know family from foe, soon became a source of conflict within settled groups. The stratification of society, as certain individuals inevitably used the new system to gather more wealth for themselves, sure didn't help. By about 3-4000 years ago, humanity has by-and-large outgrown the limits of its own mind. The whole pattern of human life changed drastically, and has continued to change, and our brains have struggled to catch up ever since.

And here we are at the very peak of it all. We live in a world that is more like one humongous tribe than ever before. Economically, we are all pretty much dependent on each other. We now have international political institutions which are successful only so long as they can command widespread support and cooperation. Our media and to a degree our culture is increasingly homogenous among the entire world. The internet potentially connects all humans from all across the world and all walks of life, so long as they have a computer and internet access.

So here's what I propose as the one thing I would change about humans: break down the monkeysphere. Make it so that there is no physical bound on our ability to empathize. And along those same lines, make it so that we no longer have to view people in an outdated "us vs. them" framework. The greatest challenge that will ever face humanity is overcoming its own nature to achieve its own ideals. Were the two limitations that I just described removed completely, I do hesitate to claim that most of humankind's ills would be largely solved. If we could empathize with everyone else, see things the way they seem them, understand their viewpoint, and view them as our own brothers and sisters who are worth listening to, the grand majority of human conflict will be eased. Would conflict disappear completely? Of course not! But tell me this: if every member of Congress were raised together in the same small town, understood each other intimately, and generally liked each other, how much faster do you think they would get things done? I'd reckon the unemployment rate would be at least half of what it is now.

The sad thing is that I can't just wish these two things away. They are limitation that will plague humanity for probably the rest of our days, or at least until we can figure out cheap, large-scale genetic manipulation. Until then, the next best thing is to remain aware of our limits, and to always try our best to compensate for them in our actions.