I was catching up on the articles at Many-to-Many recently, and saw this entertaining one about “the monkey-mind, that primal and social part of our brains that evolved long before the human species emerged.” I particularly like this rant about the Monkeysphere, where a guy uses the idea of Dunbar’s number (Dunbar postulated that our brains are limited to being able to track only about 150 other stable social relationships at a time) to suggest that anybody outside our 150 people network, which he dubs the Monkeysphere, is treated by our brains as nobody worth considering, thus explaining our indifference to them in our actions. It’s a bit of a rant, but it’s got some interesting ideas. In particular, something along these lines is why I don’t believe that anarchy can work at a large scale, despite my idealistic hopes that people would be responsible and take care of themselves and not screw each other over. At least until we all grow up and can see the value in everybody. Easier said than done.