Beyond Capacity: Cities, the Dunbar Limit, and Social Media

     The city feels alienating to us because it exceeds the threshold of our Dunbar limit- 150 in everyone's social group.  Beyond that, humans feel more detached from communities, and probably more aggressive, less empathic as a result  That is why crime is more common in cities.  We pack millions of people into areas that should only have 10-20 villages at best, each having a population of around 150, as our evolution required.  All the stresses that accompany living in the city got compounded.  The noise we filter.  The strangers we walk by every day, desensitizing us.  The pollution we feel is required to adjust to the unmovable bastions of commerce.  As I write this, the worst wildfire smoke season on record just ended here in Seattle, where nobody will protest because it is the new normal.  And few would reject natural causes, as most of those fires were started by people (we get very few lightning strikes).  Summer droughts are getting longer here, lending evidence to human-caused climate change that some deniers are finally coming to terms with.  We are going to see climate suffering on a scale like never seen before, even factoring for population rates.

    What the city did to us, social media did to the internet.  We can't handle more than 150 followers and friends, yet millions are connected beyond their capacity.  It has resulted in chaotic social movements where facts are brushed aside for comfort.  We latch onto anything that makes us feel secure in our worldview because there is no community anymore, only a jumble of reactionary cattle triggered by algorithms that dismiss togetherness, assign blame, or present another social group as the enemy.  Metaphysically the internet is one community, yet we have pushed its boundaries by being able to engage with anyone in the world; in return, we push the boundaries of what made us feel most secure through our long history through evolution: the community, where everyone felt involved, a cog in the wheel, more in touch with the environment, senses open to what is actually happening around us.