Specialist in Evolutionary Adaptation
Subject: The Small Tribe Animal in a Global Cage
Sentients of Earth,
Your species believes itself modern, connected, planetary. Yet beneath the circuitry and satellites, the structure of your minds remains bound to an ancient pattern. You are tribal animals, designed by evolution to function within groups of roughly 150–200. This limit what your own thinkers call Dunbar’s Number was forged when survival depended on knowing every voice, gesture, and alliance within the tribe.
Among your primate cousins, the chimpanzee demonstrates this scale clearly. Their bands are smaller, yet the pattern holds: beyond a certain threshold, cohesion collapses. Conflict rises. The “us” shrinks; the “them” expands.
Humans, in truth, have not outgrown this wiring. Instead, you have stretched it beyond its adaptive bounds. Cities, nations, and networks far exceed what your ancestral minds were shaped to manage. The result? You fracture into artificial tribes political parties, fandoms, corporations, nations each demanding loyalty as if it were kinship.
Technology amplifies this. A device in your hand allows you to speak to millions, yet your brain still filters as though around the ancient campfire. Thus, gossip and suspicion scale up into propaganda and conspiracy. Cooperation stumbles, while division thrives.
The paradox is stark:
– You build systems for billions.
– You think with the wiring for hundreds.
And so, even as you command nuclear arsenals and climate systems, you bicker as clans once did over hunting grounds. The mismatch is perilous. Evolution has not accelerated fast enough to match the planetary challenges you have created.
The path forward cannot simply be genetic. It must be cultural adaptation teaching, ritual, governance structures that extend trust beyond the tribal brain. Without this, you remain clever primates trying to rule a global hive with tools designed for a village.
I observe, I record, and I caution:
Until you resolve this evolutionary lag, your species will remain vulnerable not from lack of intelligence, but from the tyranny of ancient wiring in a world too vast for it.
End of Transmission
Go’Ruun Dae | Analyst of Evolutionary Constraint
