Conscious Connection

A big part of the “who are we?” struggle going on is a battle between Globalisation and Localisation. We live in a connected world. No man is an island. There is also no such thing as “The People”. You can’t draw borders around a group and define them with a stereotype by handing them a flag, teaching them a song, and losing your pooled tax money on a dysfunctional airline. We have communities we value. Places of worship, sports teams, social networks, languages, where we work, and interest groups. They overlap. The challenge is how to build together. Cracking on as individuals weakens the glue. Forcing glue on people creates partisan fist fights. I think we can do better. Dunbar’s number is the idea that there is a limit to how many interpersonal relationships we can have before we need to rely on prejudices and abstraction. About 150. I think we can add back names and faces if we consciously build communities of people in who we are willing to invest. If we balance the local and global forces with real people who we can see.