Small is Bountiful

The smaller the group, the bigger its exposure. That is why people say there is safety in numbers. But safety is not always a virtue; it is a state in which the individual is not in danger of enduring or suffering some phenomenon X.

This is where it's important to identify X. If X is responsibility, then a large group enables people to avoid individual responsibility by distributing it into the collective. That's where 'everybody does it' and other famous excuses for reprehensible behaviour come in.

Conversely, the larger the group, the less nimble it is. That is why you increase the rate of chemical reaction or the flexibility of a business by breaking a large bloc down into smaller units. The activity of a catalyst is much enhanced by distributing it more evenly in smaller particles.

When I look at social phenomena like mobs and megachurches, I think a lot about this. It is all too easy for those embedded in a large body to be insulated from the reactive environment; it is all too easy for those at the edge to have no connection or communication with those at the centre.

The human mind is meant to be part of a network, with strong connections to very few other nodes and weaker connections to a few others. When the group is too large, the human mind turns in on itself to consolidate its 'picture' of the network.

This gives us a natural size for group effectiveness — it's the number of people-concepts that typical members can hold in their own individual brains at any one time, because that's how humans interact, by simulating other humans and their reactions (the 'What Would X Do?' idea). That's the basis of empathy.

So yes, small is better, unless you want to diminish individual responsibility, or hide something, or make a large bunch of people who don't really know or feel for each other. That's your call.

The Empathy Tango

In the 19 Mar 2012 issue of Newsweek, Jay Michaelson writes, "One of the core assumptions of [various kinds of] civil rights activism is that all of us, no matter how enlightened we are, have prejudice within us."

Exactly. This is an assumption which is biologically supportable. We've found so far that the natural state of human perception is to be wary of what is dark, old, unfit, deviant from the norm, and otherwise unnatural. Yes, there is a 'natural', and it can be defined in terms of how the human brain sees things.

There is too much data to prove otherwise. Humans drop into the 'uncanny valley' easily, feeling subconsciously uneasy when exposed to lifelike simulations that are too lifelike while remaining identifiably non-human. Humans can mask or attempt to control their responses and reasoning, but their visceral cognition can only be conditioned, not controlled.

Which leaves us in a bad place. Activists of all kinds point out we are all prejudiced and lack sufficient empathy to overcome this. We protest that we are sympathetic, that we are reasonable, but fall short of redemption. There is no redemption in the human world of uncomfortable biological and neuropsychological truths.

The tango occasionally brings us closer, but keeps us at arm's length while touching. If empathy is never sufficient, what hell has activism forced us to remain in? Hell, as a wise man once said, is other people. And as Marlowe pointed out, "We are in Hell, nor are we out of it; for where Hell is, there we must ever be."

Which is why the logical conclusion is that if salvation is to be found, it lies outside the brawling mass of humanity.

Insensible, Insensitive

In these days of sociopolitical correctness, the horse comes before Descartes. This is never so evident as on the Internet, where people expect everyone to do their research before making noise.

However, while some kinds of research are obvious and should be expected, some are less so. Supposing you use the word 'git' or 'twit' in a descriptive (and mildly pejorative) sense. Then someone points out that it makes light of a large and much-abused group of people. Are you to blame?

On one hand, you should know it is pejorative. It might be a humorous term, a colloquial piece of micro-abuse in your circles, but it is meant to be insulting to some extent. See also 'lame', 'cripple', 'dumb' and other terms of endearment-abuse.

On the other hand, how would you know about other people's sensibilities and sensitivities? I would certainly be mortified to be cracking jokes about 'lame jokes' only to discover that my anonymous interlocutor was short a lower limb. But in most discourse, to call a joke 'lame' or to say 'this hardware is crippled' is not an attempt to make fun of the limb-disadvantaged.

As words take on new life, the mutability of semantic burden and historical burden affects their impact. Old Anglo-Saxon words once used as commonplace lexical items went through a period of stern, stiff censorship before becoming what they are now — almost-unweighted particles of expletive speech.

Just today, I was metaphorically hauled up by my collar and bastinadoed for lacking empathy when discussing why a certain term was insensitive when used about cemeteries and nature. I had some idea, which is why I've never myself used the word in my own communications (except those discussing the word itself as a subject). But I was stunned to see how vitriolic the 'you should have known' attacks were.

In a way, the attempts to keep discourse civilised are becoming as barbaric or tribalistic in their own way as what they are avoiding. People won't scruple at using expletives you might be sensitive to, in order to make their point about words they think others are sensitive to. And they will justify themselves by intensity of emotional response, and vilify you for attempting reason.

I have no issue, however, with people politely telling me why they think I shouldn't use certain words and where I shouldn't use them. That's what style guides and etiquette guides are for. Some words will offend pretty obviously, and a one should indeed avoid those.