March 18, 2024, Monday morning
Good morning.
The folks who own the townhouse in which we stay while in Florida have a refrigerator magnet with a quotation from William James (1842-1910, Harvard professor, philosopher, and who is said to be the father of American psychology), "Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world." That quotation has intrigued me ever since I first saw it here. The whole notion of "friends" is one I find of interest. I will return to Professor James later.
(Note: My Washburn Facebook friends will have seen an earlier version of the next three paragraphs.)
I have a friend—male—who graduated from another Minneapolis high school a few years before I did. He and five of his male classmates have remained in close touch for the six decades since they graduated. Three of them stayed in the Twin Cities, three live elsewhere in the U.S. Once past child rearing, they began to get together once a year or every other year someplace in the country. As timing and schedules permit, they travel together, they attended each others’ weddings and their childrens’ weddings as possible. They stay in touch in between events. One might say they are a "band of brothers."
Even more remarkably, all six of the wives have become close friends. Six women, essentially chosen at random, have become about as close as the original six guys. Not quite "at random," of course, because the six guys all came from a similar socio-economic-religious background, so it's no surprise that they mixed it up with women who came from a similar background. Even then, however, that doesn't mean they all have to like each other. I know a number of people from the same general background that I have whom I don't particularly care for.
Anyway, this strikes me as an unusual and extraordinary set of friendships. I know that I and many of my high school classmates have friendships with one or several of our classmates, but those tend to be individual relationships, or with another couple of people. I don’t know of any that have a group like my friend’s, an entire group of six people plus spouses who’ve stuck together continuously since graduation, a part of one another’s lives for over 60 years. It’s an amazing—and, for them, rewarding—constellation of enduring friendships.
My friend communicated with the group about my comments. One of the wives wrote back:
I would attribute
these lasting friendships to the following:
1. We saw each other repeatedly so we got to know and like
each of the men and women individually.
2. We have been witnesses to each others' lives for many,
many years. We have seen the births of children and grandchildren and the
deaths of parents and even some of us.
3. We want to get along and so we do. We care enough about
each other to not dwell on negatives. In fact, some things are actually funny.
It seems that we have all decided to be this way.
4. The men were all
smart enough to pick strong, intelligent, interesting wives and the wives were
smart enough to recognize this.
5. We were all
affluent enough to travel and see each other as well as share some
adventures.
6. We have a broad agreement on values in the world and although we are not identical we do not let polarized views disrupt our friendships.
In short I think we just decided to be friends.
As to how did this happen? I think [one couple] are continuing links and facilitators. We all have contributed in our own ways but they have been a strong planning and communicating link.
One of his five male classmates also wrote:
[My wife] and I also marvel about our group’s friendship for all these years. You have really been our coordinator and touch point for our gatherings, particularly our trips to Italy and Sicily. Everyone has taken the lead in putting together trips to various U.S. cities. You and [your wife] have hosted . . . gatherings w/our Minneapolitan friends for years. We have been fortunate to have had spouses who have fun together and get along w/everyone. The dynamics of our group are unusual and we’re glad to be a part of it.
Contemplating that group of friends led me to think again about Dunbar numbers, the proposition that in general people can have about 150 meaningful relationships, developed by anthropologist Dr. Robin Dunbar of Oxford University in 1993. According to the New York Times,
Dr. Dunbar defines meaningful relationships as those people
you know well enough to greet without feeling awkward if you ran into them in
an airport lounge. That number typically ranges from 100 to 250, with the
average around 150, he said.
At birth, it starts at one or two. Friendships peak in the late teens and early 20s. By their 30s, people tend to have about 150 connections, and that number remains flat until people reach their late 60s and early 70s, when their number of connections, Dr. Dunbar said, "starts to plummet." "If you live long enough, it gets back to one or two."
The number 150, and the associated numbers, have been criticized by social scientists, especially since the hypothesis was developed on the basis of research that took place before the development of social media and based on brain size. The criticism is directed largely toward the 150 number; other research suggests that the number can be much larger than that. Dunbar sticks to his 150 and suggests that many—perhaps the majority of—social media relationships are not meaningful in the sense that he uses the term. Maybe 150 isn't right; Dunbar himself suggests a range of about 100 – 250 with 150 as the average. There probably is, in reality, no exact number—but the notion that we can have up to 500 friends strikes me as fanciful. Who could possibly keep in touch with that many people? (See below) Even if the numbers and categories can be debated, I find Dunbar's numbers to be a useful heuristic device.
Here’s
a nifty visualization of the Dunbar numbers (from an article in The Atlantic,
May 20, 2021); the indented language following the depiction is a quotation
from Dunbar in the article):
The innermost layer of 1.5 is [the most intimate]; clearly
that has to do with your romantic relationships. The next layer of five is your
shoulders-to-cry-on friendships. They are the ones who will drop everything to
support us when our world falls apart. The 15 layer includes the previous five,
and your core social partners. They are our main social companions, so they
provide the context for having fun times. They also provide the main circle for
exchange of child care. We trust them enough to leave our children with them.
The next layer up, at 50, is your big-weekend-barbecue people. And the 150
layer is your weddings and funerals group who would come to your
once-in-a-lifetime event.
The layers come about primarily because the time we have for social interaction is not infinite. You have to decide how to invest that time, bearing in mind that the strength of relationships is directly correlated with how much time and effort we give them.
I’m not sure why the center is 1.5. You love 1½ people?
I
wondered how many "meaningful relationships" I had. Am I close to 50?
150? I made a list of all the people I count as "good friends" per
Dunbar's description, as of 2019, using these criteria:
-- I see them at least a couple of times per year or, when physical interaction is impractical because of geographic distance, I stay in regular touch by email and sometimes Facebook.
-- They would not be surprised if I asked them if they’d like to get together for lunch. (I've *had* lunch with many of them!)
-- I believe they would call me a friend.
-- The list did not include friends who’ve drifted away, for whatever reason. The list also does not include people who I know reasonably well but whom I don’t count as friends.
-- The list includes 15 friends who have died in the last five years. (As Dunbar commented, the number remains stable until one reaches the late 60s or early 70s, so I chose 2019 as my counting year because I was 68 and because since then 14 have died.)
I have a total of 120 in the first, second, and third rings (5-15-50) from the center, of whom 105 are living, although a couple of those might more appropriately be in the 150 ring. (Dunbar says the ring of 15 includes the 5, so in the 1.5 center plus the first three rings there are a total of 66.5. I didn't try to parse further and put people in the 5 or 15 category.) Ask me tomorrow and the number might be 110 rather than 120. It’s not always easy to place friends in the categories; the lines are fuzzy. Assuming my assessment of the relationships is reasonably accurate, I seem to have more friends who fall in the first three rings than the Dunbar number would predict. (Statistically speaking, I bet the standard deviation for the Dunbar numbers is fairly high.)
I don’t know how it would work for you, if you want to amuse yourself with this same exercise, but I found that I could group friends by different periods of life or activities: friends from and ever since kindergarten through high school, friends made during student days in college, friends made from my work setting at the University of Minnesota, high school classmates who’ve become friends in the last five years (because of social events before and after our 50-year reunion), friends made recently in the course of serving as bridge instructor, and "other." That last category includes such people as my ex-wife, my sister-in-law, my daughter-in-law and her parents, former neighbors, and so on; it’s a potpourri. There is also a category with one person in it: Kathy. She’s my 1.5! (Chuckle. If she weren’t in the center, she’d fall in the "other" category.)
It occurs to me that the people whom I might put in the 5 circle, "your shoulders-to-cry-on friendships, . . . the ones who will drop everything to support us when our world falls apart," might not put me in their 5 circle. That doesn't surprise me. I also suspect that some (for example, the six guys and wives I mentioned at the beginning) have more than 5 in that first circle.
Thinking about circles and quantity of friends led me to revisit Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, (published in 2000) in which he documented the decline of social capital in America. Per the Wikipedia summary, for those of you unfamiliar with Putnam's work:
Putnam discussed ways in which Americans disengaged from
community, including decreased voter turnout, attendance at public meetings,
service on committees, and work with political parties. Putnam also cited
Americans' growing distrust in their government. Putnam accepted the
possibility that this lack of trust could be attributed to "the long
litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s", but believed
that this explanation was limited when viewing it alongside other "trends
in civic engagement of a wider sort".
Putnam noted the aggregate loss in membership and number of volunteers in many existing civic organizations such as religious groups (Knights of Columbus, B'nai Brith, etc.), labor unions, parent–teacher associations, Federation of Women's Clubs, League of Women Voters, military veterans' organizations, volunteers with Boy Scouts and the Red Cross, and fraternal organizations (Lions Clubs, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, United States Junior Chamber, Freemasonry, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.). Putnam used bowling as an example to illustrate this; although the number of people who bowled had increased in the last 20 years, the number of people who bowled in leagues had decreased. If people bowled alone, they did not participate in the social interaction and civic discussions that might occur in a league environment.
The publisher's blurb for the revised edition, 2020:
Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing
behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected
from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the
PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised
edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the "social
capital" that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing
still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these
consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes
critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the
internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social
connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation.
At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society.
If Putnam is correct, and social bonds have declined, then one might wonder if Dunbar's numbers, research conducted a few years before Putnam's book but in the period of decline, might not represent a low point in the number of people we have in various categories of friendship. Did people in earlier decades, before the 1960s, have larger circles of friends? I know that my parents, born in the 1920s, had a huge circle of friends; they also belonged to several "social" groups: the ones I can recall were the PTA, church choir, fraternal organization (Sons of Norway, even though there was not a drop of Norwegian blood in either of them), VFW, amateur theatrical group, and singing groups. Their friends came from all of those groups. In contrast, I don't belong to any such organizations. (One difference is that I made many friends over the years of my career at the University; my dad and mom did not socialize with any of the people from my dad's office.)
One observation that's true for me, at least: both social media (for me, only Facebook; I don't use any of the others) and email have allowed me to retain friends, those who are in the 50 circle, who might otherwise have fallen away either because of distance or not finding time to get together.
What I've also found is that in retirement I've had the time to renew moribund friendships that would otherwise have gone from moribund to dead. In the instances when I reached out, my friends were delighted and reciprocated and the relationships were revived. One key may be "in retirement": many of us did not have time, during our working career when we may also have been married and raised kids, to give a lot of attention to fading friendships. It seemed to me often the case that they faded purely from lack of time to keep them up, not a parting of the ways because of differences on some scale (economic, political, religious, etc.); as Dunbar points out, "the time we have for social interaction is not infinite."
Others
think about these same questions. Frank Bruni had a marvelously apropos column
in The New York Times on March 15. The title was "The Friends Who
Got Away" and begins this way:
Where did J. go? For a while there, he was such a treasured
part of my life, someone I thought about frequently, someone I yearned to see,
someone whose dinner company I relished, someone whose emails made me smile. I
can’t remember how we met — a mutual acquaintance, I think — but after we did,
I never traveled to his city without contacting him in advance and making plans
to see him. And he regularly checked in on me.
Until he stopped. Was that five years ago? More? And did he
stop, or did I? I’m not sure. I just know that I was busy, he was busy, my
travel decreased and one day I suddenly realized that we’d lost touch with each
other. I also felt strangely timid about reaching out: If he wanted to hear
from me, wouldn’t I have heard more recently from him? Or was he thinking the
exact same thing?
I wondered and wondered. Then some pressing obligation or
competing anxiety tugged my attention elsewhere. Then more time went by. And
here J. and I are — or, rather, aren’t. We’re onetime confidants who never had
a falling out, never said a proper goodbye, simply evaporated from each other’s
lives like dew from a blade of grass.
I’m haunted by how many times, and with how many friends, that has happened. By how the bustle of our lives and the bustle in our heads take people away from us, though we never intended to let them go. By how unintentional, unavoidable and subtly but stubbornly sad that is.
I don't know if Bruni has read Dunbar (he makes no mention of Dunbar), but Bruni makes this striking observation, echoing Dunbar:
It is
a cold and bitter truth: There are too few hours in a day and
days in a year to tend adequately to, or even keep proper tabs on, all the
people who have meant something to us and all the people we have meant
something to. Affection and attachment battle basic arithmetic, and arithmetic
wins.
Bruni, like me, acknowledges that there are friends in our past who will stay there. He recalls either hurt or disappointment, by one or the other in the friendship, or that it became no longer healthy or happy, and "while that was unfortunate and perhaps painful, it was also clear. Those friends don’t exit our thoughts, but they also don’t hover there like question marks. We understand what happened." In my experience, it can also be simpler: a lack of interest in continuing the friendship. Not hurt, disappointment, unhealthy, or unhappy, just a failure to stay in touch—on both sides. It is remarkable that these often happen by mutual but unspoken consent.
Off the top of my head, I can count about 15 friendships that have faded. In some cases, they and I let them go; in a couple of them, the aging process took them out. These are difficult relationships to recall because they are gone from my usual contact lists and mostly from my memory. Even where possible, I have no intention of seeking to renew them.
I wonder if, in the past four or five years, there has been an increase in the dissolution of friendships because of political differences. One reads in the news that families have divided and friendships have ended because of the polarization in American politics.
Let me circle back to Professor James. If he is correct—and I believe that in part he is—then the more friends we have, the more diverse and potentially interesting our lives are. (I write "in part" because unless one defines family as friends, family—unless you are a hermit or have no living relatives or are separated from them all—also makes your world. I am sure Professor James would have agreed.) I revel in my friends, most of whom receive these epistles. So thank you for the contributions you make to my world.
Gary
