Working at different scales: from small to big

The theory

My post on feelings started some interesting email conversations, and one of them ended up talking about roles in Greek tragedies. I find this an interesting digression, because roles are something that happens in groups, and it's high time to start talking about what happens in groups.

We think about groups of anything - people, animals or rocks - because it's an easy mental shortcut. Imagine that you were looking at a field with sheep and you saw each sheep individually - you'd soon be overwhelmed by trying to think about so many sheep. Instead, we look at a field with sheep and what we see is a flock of sheep. We can think of all those sheep as a single entity. Makes life a lot easier. As long as all the elements in a group are similar enough and behave similarly, it works quite well.

But this leads to a very common mistake, which is thinking about groups as if they were the same thing as one of the elements of the group. For example, when talking about international politics, people often say things like: "The States want this and France wants that and Greece wants this other thing." The truth is, even Greece is a country with millions of people who want all sorts of things, and I'm sure there are precious few things that all of them want (I can only think of oxygen). Even if you are saying "Greece" as a shortcut for "the Greek government", it's still a lot of people we are talking about, who presumably have a number of disagreements.

You may be thinking that you can tell what a group of people collectively want if they put their disagreements to a vote. But it's a bit more complicated than that. Groups just aren't the same thing as an element, no matter how easy your life would be if it worked like that. For example, people normally have clearly ordered preferences. Give anyone a list of possible things to do, and a bit of time to sort out their thoughts, and they'll be able to order it from most to least desirable. Groups just don't have that. A simple example with three friends: Alice would prefer to go to an art exhibition, next to the beach, and last to the cinema. Bob would prefer to go to the beach, next to the cinema, last to an art exhibition. Charlie would prefer to go to the cinema, next to an art exhibition, last to the beach. You get the idea. The group, collectively, can't order their preferences.

To make things even worse, small groups aren't the same beasts as big groups. A small clump of trees isn't the same thing as a large forest. (You won't find deer in an isolated clump of trees usually.) A town isn't the same thing as a city. (Try walking down the street dressed in bright green and orange in a small town and in a big city if you don't get my meaning.)

This means that things that worked at small scales often stop working when they grow to bigger scales. Or things that work at large scales may not work at all at a small scale. Growing is a very tricky business indeed, as any child could tell you. You can't grow every bit at the same pace and in the same proportion. (Ever wondered why all infant animals are chubbier than adults? Because if they had exactly the same proportions as adults, they'd be terribly cold. Even physical laws make growth complicated.)

In future posts, I'll get into more details of how different scales require different approaches, but for the moment, I'd like to leave you thinking about it.

The practice

Experiment 1

Look for bodies of water in your area of different sizes: a puddle, a pond, a lake or river if there is one near you, the sea if you live near the coast. They are all in the same area, so they should be very similar, but as you probably have noticed already, they are very different. What animal and plant life can you see in each of them? In what ways are they different? Can you find out why are they different? (For example: Why does the sea have waves? Why is it salty?)

Experiment 2

Think of all the groups of people you belong to, and order them from smallest to biggest. The first one should be only you, the next should be you and your partner if you have one, the next your family. Include anything you can think of: your circle of closest friends, the organization you work in, the team of people you work with, any association you belong to, your neighbourhood, the location you live in, your country. Can you notice things in common in the smallest groups? Can you notice things in common in the biggest groups? In what way are small groups different from big groups?