In my book, Group Dynamics, I make frequent references to the local group and emphasize the importance of group activity and group identity. The aptitude and skills required for affiliations and bonding originated with interactions in small groups. Human tendencies developed in small hunter-gather groups with humans who knew each other and depended on each other to find food, protect the young and defend the group from predators.
Rather than viewing society and culture as real things, an observer can recognize that humans live in groups that repeat and modify innate behaviors to produce prolific variations on a few underlying themes that are common to all societies. The smart observer will consider the grouping characteristics of humans and discern basic patterns and problems underlying the apparent complexity of modern civilization.
The organization of society begins with small local clusters that link family groups into clans that are more or less cooperative units. Clans associate forming bands that tend to affiliate with other bands forming tribes, looser affiliations that occupy larger geographic areas. The band-tribal structure emerges from ancient animal groupings. Patterns of organization, rules, and institutions that regulate human behavior are in flux and will continue to be unstable.
As human populations expand and interactions become increasingly complex, innate abilities are stretched and distorted. The ability of individuals to relate to other humans remains limited and limits the effective management of enlarging groups. Managers and leaders do not become smarter as the organizations they lead become larger. It is axiomatic that organizations that exceed a threshold number become dysfunctional. It is matter of empirical study to recognize group size thresholds, and too little is known about the cognitive limitations of leaders.
At the level of the largest organizations, small groups decide on policy and procedures that effect many nations, even the fate the entire species. International negotiations often involve numbers of people in crowded assembles such as the United Nations. When crises arise and critical issues need resolution, the best results are often achieved by single individuals or small groups who intervene above and beyond the complexities of rules and the rituals of large assemblies and work out a deal. Individuals can make deals and settle disputes when other more complex and impersonal negotiations fail.
The tendency to impose rules and policies from the top down is, however, risky because individuals and small groups cannot understand the needs, values and beliefs of large numbers of local groups.
World-wide policies will tend to fail since they emerge from limited understanding and ignore the tendency for humans to relate most strongly to a small local group. At the deepest level, humans discriminate and select only a few humans out of many to trust and share time and space.
In modern urban communities, humans of many descriptions come together to learn, work, and play. They pass through a common space every day. Strangers are ignored or actively avoided. A ride on an elevator reveals a remarkable innate resistance to interaction with strangers. Most humans feel tense and awkward in an elevator and avoid eye contact with other riders. If you override this strong tendency and say something to your fellow riders, the tension builds, and everyone is focused on getting out of the elevator as soon as possible.
The human brain can scan a thousand faces every day, ignoring most; reliably identifying an occasional attractive face or the face of a friend in the crowd. This remarkable facial identification is essential to social adaptation.
Modern humans belong to many groups of different size and importance and will create a hierarchy of allegiance characterized by shifting loyalties and even reversals of allegiance. Blacks will suspend conflict with other blacks to fight white oppression. Black and white will unite to fight a common external aggressor. Women will stand together to fight a common male enemy; if the patriarchic oppressors leave them alone, they will resume fighting among themselves and split into sub groups. Lesbian women will stick together when faced with hostile heterosexual women or male discrimination, but if left alone, will fight among themselves over other issues that divide the group.
Group loyalty is like a plastic set function – an expanding-contracting series of inclusion/exclusion boundaries; the boundaries solidify when there is an external threat and become fluid again when the threat is withdrawn.
The basic inter-group rules are:
1. Groups have inclusion /exclusion rules.
2. Groups have boundaries
3. Group identifiers tend to be hierarchical and nested
4. Groups can be nested with nested intensities of affiliation.
5. Intragroup conflict is suspended by intergroup conflict.
6. The suspension rule is nested.
Adapted from Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason
Rather than viewing society and culture as real things, an observer can recognize that humans live in groups that repeat and modify innate behaviors to produce prolific variations on a few underlying themes that are common to all societies. The smart observer will consider the grouping characteristics of humans and discern basic patterns and problems underlying the apparent complexity of modern civilization.
The organization of society begins with small local clusters that link family groups into clans that are more or less cooperative units. Clans associate forming bands that tend to affiliate with other bands forming tribes, looser affiliations that occupy larger geographic areas. The band-tribal structure emerges from ancient animal groupings. Patterns of organization, rules, and institutions that regulate human behavior are in flux and will continue to be unstable.
As human populations expand and interactions become increasingly complex, innate abilities are stretched and distorted. The ability of individuals to relate to other humans remains limited and limits the effective management of enlarging groups. Managers and leaders do not become smarter as the organizations they lead become larger. It is axiomatic that organizations that exceed a threshold number become dysfunctional. It is matter of empirical study to recognize group size thresholds, and too little is known about the cognitive limitations of leaders.
At the level of the largest organizations, small groups decide on policy and procedures that effect many nations, even the fate the entire species. International negotiations often involve numbers of people in crowded assembles such as the United Nations. When crises arise and critical issues need resolution, the best results are often achieved by single individuals or small groups who intervene above and beyond the complexities of rules and the rituals of large assemblies and work out a deal. Individuals can make deals and settle disputes when other more complex and impersonal negotiations fail.
The tendency to impose rules and policies from the top down is, however, risky because individuals and small groups cannot understand the needs, values and beliefs of large numbers of local groups.
World-wide policies will tend to fail since they emerge from limited understanding and ignore the tendency for humans to relate most strongly to a small local group. At the deepest level, humans discriminate and select only a few humans out of many to trust and share time and space.
In modern urban communities, humans of many descriptions come together to learn, work, and play. They pass through a common space every day. Strangers are ignored or actively avoided. A ride on an elevator reveals a remarkable innate resistance to interaction with strangers. Most humans feel tense and awkward in an elevator and avoid eye contact with other riders. If you override this strong tendency and say something to your fellow riders, the tension builds, and everyone is focused on getting out of the elevator as soon as possible.
The human brain can scan a thousand faces every day, ignoring most; reliably identifying an occasional attractive face or the face of a friend in the crowd. This remarkable facial identification is essential to social adaptation.
Modern humans belong to many groups of different size and importance and will create a hierarchy of allegiance characterized by shifting loyalties and even reversals of allegiance. Blacks will suspend conflict with other blacks to fight white oppression. Black and white will unite to fight a common external aggressor. Women will stand together to fight a common male enemy; if the patriarchic oppressors leave them alone, they will resume fighting among themselves and split into sub groups. Lesbian women will stick together when faced with hostile heterosexual women or male discrimination, but if left alone, will fight among themselves over other issues that divide the group.
Group loyalty is like a plastic set function – an expanding-contracting series of inclusion/exclusion boundaries; the boundaries solidify when there is an external threat and become fluid again when the threat is withdrawn.
The basic inter-group rules are:
1. Groups have inclusion /exclusion rules.
2. Groups have boundaries
3. Group identifiers tend to be hierarchical and nested
4. Groups can be nested with nested intensities of affiliation.
5. Intragroup conflict is suspended by intergroup conflict.
6. The suspension rule is nested.
Adapted from Group Dynamics by Stephen Gislason