indy on dunbar ness
indy johar on dunbar\ish ness
via michel bauwens tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/2030278913512103957?s=20]:
* Beyond Dunbar: Civilization Was Right to Move Beyond the Village. Indy Johar.
https://indyjohar.substack.com/p/beyond-dunbar-civilization-was-right
“Civilization did not emerge by remaining within the Dunbar limit. It emerged by *constructing mechanisms that allow coordination beyond it. The defining move of large-scale human organization was the **invention of systems that make cooperation possible among individuals who do not know one another directly. ***Writing, law, contracts, bureaucracies, currencies, institutions, religious frameworks, and eventually digital infrastructures all serve this function. They extend the capacity for coordination beyond the limits of direct social recognition.
*but need coord of legit free people.. not whales.. otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..
**rather.. need systems that make the dance possible for everyone
***rather.. they are cancerous distractions to the dance
In this sense, civilization can be understood as the progressive development of coordination technologies that operate beyond Dunbar’s number.
yeah.. civilization ness as sea world ness.. but not what we could be.. we have the means to coord/facil the dance for 8b people..
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
Seen from this perspective, exceeding the Dunbar threshold was not a mistake. *It was a structural breakthrough. Large-scale societies depend on the ability to coordinate strangers. **Cities, universities, scientific networks, public health systems, and global trade infrastructures all rely on mechanisms that allow individuals to cooperate without personal familiarity. ***Without these mechanisms, complex societies simply cannot exist.“
*for sea world.. perhaps for seeming chaos.. but again.. not for legit free people..
***complex societies of dead/zombie people.. aka: whales
nothing to date has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
again.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake
notes/quotes from indy’s substack link:
Beyond Dunbar: Civilization Was Right to Move Beyond the Village (march 2026) by indy
The Dunbar number is quietly recast as a natural boundary that societies should not have crossed.
But this interpretation introduces a conceptual error.
[quotes from above]
Seen from this perspective, exceeding the Dunbar threshold was not a mistake. It was a structural breakthrough. Large-scale societies depend on the ability to coordinate strangers. Cities, universities, scientific networks, public health systems, and global trade infrastructures all rely on mechanisms that allow individuals to cooperate without personal familiarity. Without these mechanisms, complex societies simply cannot exist.
again.. as noted above
The difficulty therefore lies elsewhere.
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
As coordination systems expanded, the reach of human action expanded with them. Modern economic and technological infrastructures allow decisions made in one location to influence ecological systems, labor conditions, and political dynamics across the planet. The scale of consequence embedded in contemporary systems now extends far beyond the scale of direct perception.
cancerous distraction.. mufleh humanity law et al.. ooof
This produces a structural asymmetry. *Our capacity for coordination has expanded dramatically, while the conceptual and institutional frameworks guiding that coordination have not expanded at the same pace. Human systems now operate across planetary fields of consequence, **yet the models through which those systems are organized often remain anchored in narrower temporal and relational horizons.
*rather… our capacity to detox back/to the dance has expanded .. via tech as it could be.. as nonjudgmental expo labeling
**aka: in sea world
This mismatch is frequently interpreted as evidence that societies should return to smaller scales. Yet that conclusion confuses a structural challenge with a scale preference. The issue is not that human societies exceeded Dunbar’s number. The issue is that the systems governing large-scale coordination remain underdeveloped relative to the scale at which those systems now operate.
rather.. again (mufleh humanity law et al).. nothing to date has gotten to the root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
At the center of this mismatch lies a deeper conceptual problem: the theory of the self embedded in modern economic reasoning.
aka: whalespeak
One way to understand the civilizational challenge we face is therefore as a problem of expanding the theory of the self required to operate within these larger fields.
aka: hari rat park law et al
The first step is moving beyond the momentary individual self, the decision-maker defined primarily within the present economic cycle.
the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
Beyond that lies the generational self, which recognizes that individuals participate in the continuity of their own lineage and social inheritance. This perspective extends the horizon of decision-making beyond immediate incentives toward the persistence of families, cultures, and institutions across time.
still cancerous distraction .. ie: invited vs invented et al.. dave’s campfire analogy et al..
A further expansion introduces the intergenerational self, which situates human activity within longer historical arcs. In this frame, societies become custodians of systems that must remain viable across multiple generations rather than merely within a single economic period.
Finally, there is the entangled self, which recognizes that human beings are non-divisibly embedded within spatial and ecological systems. The boundaries between actors, environments, and infrastructures become less discrete. Economic and political actions are understood as operating within fields of entanglement rather than isolated exchanges.
but if still in sea world.. still not legit ‘entangled self’.. aka: not yet back/to not yet scrambled ness et al
These expansions do not eliminate the individual. They situate the individual within wider temporal and relational structures.
Seen in this way, the challenge of operating beyond Dunbar’s number is not simply a coordination problem. It is a conceptual one. Civilization has already expanded the reach of human action to planetary scale. The question is whether our understanding of the self can expand to operate within the same field of consequence.
again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
This reframing also clarifies a deeper misunderstanding about growth, scale, and the structure of civilization.
The question is not simply whether expansion should continue or be constrained. The more fundamental issue is the relationship between our reach and our theory of the self. When reach expands while the self remains narrowly individuated — defined within the short temporal horizon of homo economicus — large-scale systems tend to organize around asymmetric extraction. A limited conception of the self acting through planetary-scale infrastructures produces planetary-scale extraction. The system becomes structurally oriented toward drawing value from ecological, social, and temporal systems that lie outside the narrow boundary of the decision-making actor.
In this sense, the problem is not that civilization operates at planetary scale. The problem is that planetary reach has been coupled to a limited theory of the self.
aka; black science of people/whales law et al
Expanding the conception of the self — from the momentary individual to the generational, intergenerational, and ultimately entangled self — opens the *possibility of reorganizing reach itself. **Once human actors recognize themselves as embedded within temporal continuities and spatial entanglements, the logics through which systems operate begin to shift. Economic and institutional systems can then be reconfigured not around extraction from the outside, but around the maintenance and continuity of the systems within which we are already embedded.
*ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
**thurman interconnectedness law et al
Understanding this plurality clarifies the real shift that is required. Moving beyond Dunbar’s number is not an argument for limitless growth. Nor is it a call to retreat into smaller scales of organization. The deeper task is to realign civilization’s systems so that the scale of our reach is matched by the scale of our understanding of ourselves.
The unfinished task is learning how to reorganize the reach that break created — by expanding the conception of the self through which civilization understands and governs itself..t
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..
Postscript
Even the fantasy of withdrawal depends on civilization.
A remote house in a beautiful and isolated landscape may appear autonomous, self-contained, or outside the system. But it is nothing of the sort. It remains dependent on civilization at every level. Dependent on civilization to stabilize planetary risks. Dependent on civilization for the satellites that enable communication, navigation, and continuity. Dependent on civilization for energy infrastructures, for material supply chains, for logistics systems, for maintenance regimes, for the production of light bulbs, wires, pumps, batteries, and tools. Dependent on civilization for the pencil on the table, the zip in a coat, the glass in a window, the toaster in a kitchen, and the accumulated knowledge required to make and repair each of these things. Dependent, too, on vast technical, institutional, and educational inheritances that no isolated household could ever reproduce for itself.
to me.. this is whalespeak
What appears as separation is in fact extended dependence.
This is why the idealization of exit is so often conceptually weak. It mistakes local visibility for actual autonomy. A thing can look self-sufficient at the point of use while remaining entirely embedded in planetary systems of extraction, production, coordination, and stabilization. The more closely one examines the material conditions of even the simplest contemporary life, the more obvious it becomes that what we call independence is usually just an obscured relation to larger systems.
but the system we are in is not about us.. so.. hari rat park law et al.. we need a way out
We have become systemically entangled.
That entanglement is not incidental; it is *constitutive of modern existence. **The question is no longer whether we are dependent on civilization, but whether the civilizational systems we depend on are being organized coherently enough to remain viable..t The real delusion is not interdependence. The real delusion is separability.
*aka: of being enslaved in sea world
**rather.. how do we quit being dependent on civilization (aka: sea world)..ie: tech as nonjudgmental expo labeling to undo hierarchical listening as global detox in order to org around legit needs
need global detox to see that ‘real delusion’.. aka: graeber make it diff law et al.. hari rat park law et al..
Or more plainly: the fantasy that one can stand outside the system is just that — a fantasy.
but we can dance/be/live outside the system (sea world) we are currently in (deluded by)..
need 1st/most: means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening – so we can hear what’s already on each heart as global detox in order to org around legit needs (rather than supposed/delusional/whatever needs our current system tells us about.. tells us we depend on for survival.. et al)
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- indy johar ons:
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be you. 