A strange thing happens when we try to relate to too many people at once.
Instead of becoming more loving, we become less capable of love.
That sounds harsh, but I think it is one of the most important clues to understanding our current social crisis. We're surrounded by more people, more opinions, more tragedies, more outrage, more causes, more identities, more enemies, more “communities,” and more abstract groups than any human psyche can meaningfully metabolize.
And then we wonder why everyone is so tense, reactive, lonely, judgmental, and weird.
Enter Dunbar’s Number.
In the 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied primates and found a strong relationship between neocortex size and social group size. We call this "Dunbar's number:" the bigger the neocortex, the larger the social group that species can sustain.
When Dunbar extrapolated this pattern to humans, he arrived at about 150 stable relationships. So the Dunbar's number for humans is 150.
But that does not mean you personally have room for 150 relationships.
150 is the super-deluxe theoretical package for a perfect human. Perfect conditions. Fully charged nervous system. No inbox. No family drama. No territorial conflicts. No belonging conflicts. No one asking, “Can I just pick your brain?” before you’ve even had coffee.
Your actual relational capacity depends on your state.
From a Germanic New Medicine perspective, "relationship problems" are not merely interpersonal annoyances. They are temporal lobe conflicts: territorial conflicts, belonging conflicts, and the many ways we experience our place, safety, connection, and identity in relation to others.
When we try to relate beyond our capacity, we don't become more connected. We overload, and our capacity to relate actually shrinks. That's the Dunbar Trap.
Once we overload and get into the Dunbar Trap, we start reducing living beings into categories. This reduces our ability to relate even further, which makes us overload even more (which is what makes it a trap).
Jason Pargin, writing as David Wong, popularized this idea as the “monkeysphere”: the circle of beings your primate brain can actually hold as real individuals. Inside your monkeysphere, someone is a person. Outside it, they become a category.
Those people.
Those voters.
Those elites.
Those poor people.
Those coyotes.
Those mosquitoes.
Those weeds.
That crappy weather.
Once someone becomes a category, it's way easier to justify almost anything: mockery, neglect, exclusion, control, punishment, poverty, brutality, and war.
That's why the Dunbar Trap isn't just a personal development problem. It's also the root of every social problem.
When we relate to “humanity” in the abstract, we become less humane toward the actual human being in front of us. The collective has no eyes, no kitchen table, no tears in a parking lot, and no need for someone to finally stop explaining and listen.
The individual does.
This is also why crowds make evolution difficult.
A real relationship gives precise feedback. Your child shows you your impatience. Your spouse shows you your need to be adored, obeyed, rescued, or left alone for five blessed minutes. Your client shows you where you over-function. Your mother shows you the exact button you were sure got removed in 1998.
That is usable.
A crowd gives noise.
Belonging. Territory. Status. Shame. Approval. Rejection. Outrage. Comparison.
Suddenly, you are not evolving. You are performing for a stadium full of imaginary judges, most of whom did not buy tickets and are not even paying attention.
While the theoretical perfectly perfect maximum number of beings we can relate with is 150 (Dunbar's number), temporal lobe conflicts - and particularly temporal lobe constellations - shrink our "monkeysphere" and reduce our capacity to relate (the Dunbar Trap)...and this can go all the way down to zero. We can have such a low capacity to relate that we completely lose theory of mind, completely lose the ability to see anything or anyone outside ourselves as having consciousness.
That is the ultimate existential isolation that is at the heart of not just temporal lobe conflicts, but every biological conflict and survival emergency.
The way out isn't avoidance. It's not rejecting people.
The way out is to begin relating as you are right now. Stretch that monkeysphere just the tiniest little bit.
And you do this by contacting something or someone in reality. Open your eyes or ears or your sense of touch and contact something or someone real. And then ask:
What kind of person am I being in relation to this?
And what would I like to be different about that?
That's the real work of relating, and it's the way out of the Dunbar Trap.
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