The Voting Machine

The Second World

"The world has changed, Temo. And when the world changes you need to rethink everything. That's what Marcus didn't understand. To run a company effectively you need to find the best people on the face of the earth, no matter where they are. It doesn't matter if they sit in the next desk over or the opposite side of the world. It doesn't matter what passport they carry or what God they worship. I can't be thinking about my company in terms of the people who were sitting in this building. I need to be thinking about the whole world. We're all human beings on the same planet. At the end of the day, that's all we really share."

"How can you say that?" I argued, surprised by the courage in my voice. "The people you let go are people I know. I've met their families at the holiday parties. We live in the same city. We are all Americans. Doesn't that count for something?"

Chet grinned at me and took a moment to ponder his response. He was past the shock that I had the nerve to ask him tough questions. He was enjoying the challenge of explaining his decisions.

He led me to a separate area of the gallery, passing a family photo with his wife and children in conservative, East-Coast attire.

On a wall next to the window was yet another picture from his travels. This one was a misty scene from a jungle. Chimpanzees were congregating in the distance, barely visible through the dense foliage of the rain forest.

"A few years ago, I was at a nature reserve in the Congo. We were completely separated from the modern world. We spent a lot of time watching the animals interact, especially the monkeys. Primates are like humans in many ways. They need to form social groups. They need close personal contact with other members of the group. This communal bond helps them to survive. It creates a protective function to fight off rival groups of monkeys.

"But it also satisfies something in their minds. The social network gives them comfort. So I watched these cliques of monkeys roam through the jungle, nurturing the members of their group and fighting with other groups for resources.

"So this led me to wonder: Why are chimpanzees so close to the members of their group? Why do they have such affection for their clan while they are hostile toward outside chimpanzees? They are all the same species, right? There must be a scientific explanation for this behavior.

"It turns out the monkey's brain is only so big. It can only store so much social information about who they know and care about. There are only a finite number of personal relationships their brains can manage. And so the limits of their brains form the limits of their social network. Everyone outside that limit is an outsider, a rival, a potential enemy.

"Well, the neo-cortex of the human brain has grown larger than our primate cousins in the past few million years. But we still share 99 percent of our genes with the chimpanzee. Our mind still has constraints. It can only store a finite series of relationships, a limited number of people in our lives that we can really care about in a meaningful way.

"The earliest humans were hunter gatherers who lived in tribes. These tribes had populations ranging up to 150 people. Archeological evidence shows they never got larger than that.

"Then, as humans evolved, our ancestors started farming. They created villages. Again, these settlements would vary in size. But they usually got no bigger than 150 people. Humans finally converged into larger cities, but even then, key organizational units never grew too large. In ancient Rome, the average unit site of the professional army was 150 soldiers. This military structure lasted over a thousand years. The rulers of the largest empire in the history of the world knew they had to organize their conquering armies around the realities of the human mind. They knew there must be a maximum number of personal relationships their soldiers' brains could handle. They needed to organize their soldiers accordingly.

"Because if someone you know is wounded on the battlefield, you will risk your life to save them. If someone in your tribe or village is suffering, you will empathize and do your best to help them. You do this because you know them."

"Of course," I said. "We care about people we know."

"Exactly," he said. "We care about people we meet day to day. We care about people who look like us or live in the same city. We care about people who are citizens of the same country and salute the same flag and worship the same God. Those are our social circles."

"That's normal," I said.

"That's right. That's normal. It's a tragedy when something happens to people we know. When it happens to people we don't know, it's a just a statistic. You feel awful about your co-workers in the call center who lost their jobs, right? But in Africa, a child dies from malaria every 45 seconds. Did you ever cry for any of those children? Of course not."

"It's like you said. Our brains can't handle the suffering of all those people out there in the world. It's too terrifying."

"Exactly," he said. "It's too terrifying. Billions of people around the world stare terror in the face every day, Temo. They don't know whether they will have food or water or medicine or peace. And when we realize they are the same as us, they are human beings just like us, it's too terrifying for our primitive minds to handle.

"But the world is getting smaller and more crowded every day, Temo. If someone on the other side of the world is struggling, we're going to get a taste of their terror, Temo, whether we know them or not. People on the other side of the world are going to want to climb out of their suffering. And that has consequences for us right here in our offices, in our neighborhoods, in our social networks."

He gazed back out the window at the empty parking lot. "I know your co-workers in the call center don't understand why I let them go," he continued. "I know it seems cold and harsh. But we've all got to prepare for the future. We've got to evolve. We've to break through the barriers of our genes that only let us care about the 150 people in our circle. We're connected to everyone, everywhere. One planet. One species. The old tribes have scattered. The old institutions don't matter. We're stepping out of an old world into a new one. And none of us knows our way around in this new world. So we wander. We stumble."