keep track? Are we concerned, here, with limits on the information processing capabilities of the human brain?
“Homo sapiens,”
wrote a British anthropologist, Anthony Forge, “can only handle a certain maximum number of intense face to face relationships, successfully distinguishing between each.” 30
Of course we are not speaking here of limits on the capacity to store and recognize faces. This capacity goes into the thousands, far outstripping the size of small villages. But there is almost certainly a problem with personal familiarity, of knowing what others have done, are doing, and may be planning to do next. How many of these ambiguous beings can one stand to live with?
In his own field work in New Guinea, Forge noted that there were usually about 150 people in the average settlement. Groups of this size normally included about thirty-five men. This number, he reasoned, should certainly be able to cooperate without too much rivalry. If the group swelled to double this size, however, or climbed even higher, the fighting over resources would surely escalate. Little would be known about other people’s reliability and intentions, so it would be difficult to predict their future actions under various circumstances or the likelihood that they would offer help in time of need.
Now this is interesting. If people become suspicious of each other when there are too many faces to keep track of, and fractious when they don’t know who they can depend on, how would we expect them to act if key members of their group periodically disappeared from view and, for fairly long periods, remained out of sight?
CHAPTER FOUR
Reluctant Domestication
For working and talking, people sit on mats under spreading trees … To stay alone in the house is considered a sure sign of evil intent. Gillian Feeley-Harnik
G ERMAN biologist Paul Leyhausen once recited a parable about some porcupines that on a winter night decided to huddle together for warmth. They quickly discovered that their spines made proximity uncomfortable, so they moved apart again and got cold. After a bit of shuffling in and out, the porcupines eventually found a distance at which they could be warm without getting pricked. 1
Our human ancestors also experienced environmental threats of one sort or another, and discovered that they had collective action on their side if they maintained close contact with other members of their group. But if their associates drew too close, and remained so for too long, they began to rub each other the wrong way. The challenge for them, no less than for the porcupines, lay in finding the right distance.
Authorities from various disciplines have commented on the need for a proper distance. Most species, according to ethologistsPeter Klopfer and Daniel Rubenstein, have “an equilibrium level” where even a small increase in privacy or exposure threatens rather than enhances reproductive success. Sociologist Barry Schwartz suggested that for humans there is “a threshold beyond which social contact becomes irritating for all parties.” Thomas Gregor, the anthropologist who studied the Mehinacu, referred to “a narrow optimum range between what constitutes too little and too much interaction and exposure.” Philosopher Thomas Nagel has written that “social life would be impossible if we expressed all our lustful, aggressive, greedy, anxious, or self-obsessed feelings in ordinary public encounters,” but “so would inner life be impossible if we tried to become wholly persons whose thoughts, feelings, and private behaviour could be safely exposed to public view.” 2
In this chapter we take a look at the initial reactions of humans to their own domestication, and especially their search for an optimal social distance—one that would enable the benefits of a proximal life without danger of over-exposure or friction, and periods of solitude without loss of social connection and support. We will
“Homo sapiens,”
wrote a British anthropologist, Anthony Forge, “can only handle a certain maximum number of intense face to face relationships, successfully distinguishing between each.” 30
Of course we are not speaking here of limits on the capacity to store and recognize faces. This capacity goes into the thousands, far outstripping the size of small villages. But there is almost certainly a problem with personal familiarity, of knowing what others have done, are doing, and may be planning to do next. How many of these ambiguous beings can one stand to live with?
In his own field work in New Guinea, Forge noted that there were usually about 150 people in the average settlement. Groups of this size normally included about thirty-five men. This number, he reasoned, should certainly be able to cooperate without too much rivalry. If the group swelled to double this size, however, or climbed even higher, the fighting over resources would surely escalate. Little would be known about other people’s reliability and intentions, so it would be difficult to predict their future actions under various circumstances or the likelihood that they would offer help in time of need.
Now this is interesting. If people become suspicious of each other when there are too many faces to keep track of, and fractious when they don’t know who they can depend on, how would we expect them to act if key members of their group periodically disappeared from view and, for fairly long periods, remained out of sight?
CHAPTER FOUR
Reluctant Domestication
For working and talking, people sit on mats under spreading trees … To stay alone in the house is considered a sure sign of evil intent. Gillian Feeley-Harnik
G ERMAN biologist Paul Leyhausen once recited a parable about some porcupines that on a winter night decided to huddle together for warmth. They quickly discovered that their spines made proximity uncomfortable, so they moved apart again and got cold. After a bit of shuffling in and out, the porcupines eventually found a distance at which they could be warm without getting pricked. 1
Our human ancestors also experienced environmental threats of one sort or another, and discovered that they had collective action on their side if they maintained close contact with other members of their group. But if their associates drew too close, and remained so for too long, they began to rub each other the wrong way. The challenge for them, no less than for the porcupines, lay in finding the right distance.
Authorities from various disciplines have commented on the need for a proper distance. Most species, according to ethologistsPeter Klopfer and Daniel Rubenstein, have “an equilibrium level” where even a small increase in privacy or exposure threatens rather than enhances reproductive success. Sociologist Barry Schwartz suggested that for humans there is “a threshold beyond which social contact becomes irritating for all parties.” Thomas Gregor, the anthropologist who studied the Mehinacu, referred to “a narrow optimum range between what constitutes too little and too much interaction and exposure.” Philosopher Thomas Nagel has written that “social life would be impossible if we expressed all our lustful, aggressive, greedy, anxious, or self-obsessed feelings in ordinary public encounters,” but “so would inner life be impossible if we tried to become wholly persons whose thoughts, feelings, and private behaviour could be safely exposed to public view.” 2
In this chapter we take a look at the initial reactions of humans to their own domestication, and especially their search for an optimal social distance—one that would enable the benefits of a proximal life without danger of over-exposure or friction, and periods of solitude without loss of social connection and support. We will
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