What a great place to be.

Anyway, I should be rushing my work before my tutors come hounding for my tutorials. But these few days had got me thinking about many random issues, from approaches/methods to doing things, to perception, to associations. A busy schooling kid like me probably shouldn’t be thinking too much about these relatively profound stuff, but I guess everyone does it sometimes. It’s just how long/often they do that for.

Emm say associations. One way I’ve been thinking about this is wrt Dunbar’s number, and relationships/friendships that matter. Scientific research has indicated that everyone’s brain is only capable of making 150 stable “meaningful social relationships”. Haha some of us seems to realise that we know close to a third of our batch? Yeah, that plus your relatives and people you meet outside school? Easily over 150. Or 300. Even 500. Although the report did state a criteria of these meaningful relationships (knowing how each friend relates to every other friend, you care about the person, and you contact him/her at least once a year etc.), I still found it quite difficult to understand how that is being applied to us, or how we can cope in a situation like this. It actually isn’t surprising if you know how ~100 people are related to each other in school, you usually care for them, and being in a school, yes you do contact these people at least once a year. Furthermore, with facebook, this becomes painlessly easy. So, how does that work out for us? I can’t be sure, but assuming this theory is true, aren’t we having a ton of meaningless/ less meaningful relationships? The fact is that our number of actual friends isn’t limited by technology or time, but by human nature. Facebook probably does not help with growing your group of actual friends, but rather helps you keep in contact with those in your outer circle. This just doesn’t sound very optimistic because most of the people you meet in school are probably not going to be your friend in a year’s (or a few month’s) time, and scientists seem to classify them under “meaningless relationships”. Argh.

I keep thinking that I am hitting/ have already hit Dunbar’s number, which means I become restricted in making friends or feel less comfortable doing so. Also, it is difficult doing the shift – bringing new people you meet (and interact well with) into the 150 group, and taking some out to the periphery.

Bleh, just imagine people you know popping up in front of you one by one. When it’s in tens, you can say “That’s Shaun the lame, my secondary school classmate. That’s Justin the cool, my cousin. That’s Samantha the blur from primary school…” but when it reaches the hundred mark, the situation becomes hazier. Crossing the 150 mark just turns the group into a “group of people”. You are no longer able to focus and recognize any one of them, and you care less about any one of them. Crap, Dunbar’s Number at its best.

Omg, relationship management problems are so troubling. Maybe I should stop thinking about these issues scientifically, and… act by instincts, let things flow? These science-y human behavioral tools make it easier for me to put things into perspective, but then again, doesn’t solve my problems that much.

Yep, and this is just one of the several things I’ve been thinking about. Why can’t I channel these to tutorials. Bleh.