Overviews of this phenomenon can be found in serious format or humorous and perhaps, at times, vulgar format (you get what you pay for with Cracked).
So take your pick:
Serious.
Humorous.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Living in the Monkeysphere
Has anyone heard of Dunbar's number? Or the more informal term, the "monkeysphere"? It's an incredibly interesting phenomenon and I would like to write about it sometime in relation to sustainability issues.
Essentially our cognitive abilities limit us to being capable of focusing on about 150 people at one time. Outside of that, we lose empathy and interest. It helps to explain why we are much more impacted by the death of one in our community rather than a city wiped out by a war or famine. Perhaps this can be used to understand and tailor sustainable movements to become more meaningful to those in need of a behavioral change. This relates to the research done by Meadows in Limits to Growth on the perspectives of households and Brown's comment on focusing on making sustainability issues relevant for this generation, rather than just future generations.
Overviews of this phenomenon can be found in serious format or humorous and perhaps, at times, vulgar format (you get what you pay for with Cracked).
So take your pick:
Serious.
Humorous.
Overviews of this phenomenon can be found in serious format or humorous and perhaps, at times, vulgar format (you get what you pay for with Cracked).
So take your pick:
Serious.
Humorous.
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You point about how people have stronger emotions for people within their community compared to society as a whole relates back to an earlier reading we had in the Wheeler book the article called "Perspectives, problems and models." On page 50 it has a graph showing where people's concerns lie. People are mainly concerned about the present well being of your family. To transcend people's personally concerns to national and global we need to show how these overarching issues directly relate to one personally or for their family.
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