Human-sized humanity

“Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.”
Leopold Kohr

Picture the scene: you’re a big shot in a multinational soft drink company. There’s trouble in one of your plants in another country where workers are attempting to improve their pay and conditions, which will affect profits. The words that pass down from your lips to a chain of subordinates is “sort it out.” Two months later, the solution to the problem is reached: the key troublemakers are assassinated.

Now picture this set-up: you’re a member of a cooperative that has 18 people in it. Everyone is equal and has an equal voice. There’s a disagreement about the direction of the company, particularly between yourself and another member. The disagreement is resolved amicably and consensually, and nobody dies.

In his post-WWII book The Breakdown of Nations, economist Leopold Kohr raises the question of how size might play a part in the dys/functionality of a group of people. Put another way, at what size does a group of people cause it to lose its humanity, to become dehumanised? Twenty people? Forty people? Sixty people? A hundred people? What size is human-size and what size gives way to inhumanity?

Would it be useful for you to explore the humanity of your own work and play environments?

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Joseph Stalin

“It is only in small states that there can be true democracy. Because:
(i) It is only there that the citizens can have some direct influence over the governing institutions…
(ii) [It is] only there that culture can flourish without the diversion of money.
(iii) [It is] only there that the individual in all dimensions can flourish free of systemic social and governmental pressures.”
Leopold Kohr