Episode 400: Robin Dunbar
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The Essence of Human Bonds from Tribes to Modernity
Unlock the mysteries of human connections as we share a compelling dialogue with the man behind ‘Dunbar’s Number,’ the number of connections that humans can and do maintain across different cultures and time periods. What evolutionary forces have sculpted the essence of friendship and religion, also impacting our well-being and longevity?
Robin Dunbar is emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of several books, including Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures, and The Science of Love and Betrayal.
Robin and Greg discuss storytelling and its influence on religion, probing how our cognitive prowess has enabled us to imagine unseen worlds and foster expansive social networks. Robin explains the transformative power of religious rituals and their ability to engender deep community bonds and emotional transcendence. They also examine the practical applications that our ancestral social constructs hold for the contemporary world. From the role of HR departments in nurturing community to the competitive edge ingrained within the collegiate system, they dissect the building blocks of successful organizational cultures and also what it looks like to cultivate meaningful relationships in an increasingly digital world.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Is religion what makes humans unique?
10:11: Of the things that distinguish humans from all other animals, birds, mammals, whatever: religion is certainly a key one, but I would probably want to argue that religion itself is derivative of something else that's more generally important; that is, actually storytelling. It's the ability to tell stories, as it were. And stories are about thinking about and concocting tales about worlds that we can't physically see. So if you like invisible worlds, things that, as in a sense of fiction, is the classic case, but all the kinds of many different kinds of stories you tell—fictional and even factual stories about places far away, metropolis tales, are all about things that we can't physically see. We have to imagine in our minds, and religion is part and parcel of that spread.
Friendships affect your lifespan
07:10: The single most important factor affecting your mental health and well-being, your physical health and well-being, and even how long you're going to live into the future from today on is the number and quality of friendships you have. And the optimal number seems to be about five.
Storytelling is a key component of religion
39:10: A key component, I think, of religion, storytelling seems to play a very strong supplementary role in bonding communities. So if we want to bond large-scale communities of the kinds we have now and then, one of those is having a shared history of that we are here, not necessarily as the favored sons and daughters of God, but that we are here because of a certain kind of history.
Is there a way to create a sense of belonging in an organization?
46:15: There's no silver bullet that applies to every organization; you have to look at the particular local culture and think about what kind of works in that kind of environment. And given the fact that these days people have families, they want kids, they want to get home to put to bed, and they have other friends that, outside, as it were. So you've got to design it around people's natural lives as we live them these days.