Dunbar's Number

The other day,while I was browsing the internet, I stumbled upon this article by The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/deaths-of-20000-japanese-afford-planet-solid-15-mi,19785/

As cynical as this article is, it does illustrate a particular aspect of human psychology. Specifically how the farther removed a person is from another person in terms of personal relationships, the less they each have the ability to feel empathy for each other. This phenomenon is known as Dunbar's number,  which states that the maximum amount of personal relationships a human being can maintain is around 150. The concept is named for Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who first theorized the concept. A humorous explanation of the concept can be found here:

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p2.html

As David Wong in the Cracked article points out, Dunbar's number causes us to see other humans removed from our social groups in a "us vs them" perspective. It causes us to view different nationalities and subcultures as as identical masses of people with no individual personalities. It's almost psychologically impossible to view that one asshole who cuts us off as a human being with the same feeling as us.

Keeping Dunbar's number in mind can help us avoid grouping people into a bland category. Humans are unimaginably complex and we should remember that each individual human has gone through countless life experience which have shaped their way of thinking and have resulted in each human having a vastly different perspective than another person. Even if two people seem to have a lot in common, they may have very different opinions under the surface.

With all this in mind, it becomes easier to resist simplistic "us vs them" or "good vs evil" arguments. Countless people have been able to manipulate other people because they realize this particular facet of human psychology. Remember, the world is an unimaginably complex place and no problem is ever mono-causal.