MCV05:

Contribute to Each Level

This core value concerns the amount of time, effort, focus of attention, and other resources that you give to different activities in your life.

There is an implicit understanding that the different activities one has to choose from can be categorized by what "level" they benefit or belong to (keeping in mind that many activities benefit more than one level). These levels are distinguished by how many people are involved or affected by the activity in question; they are the same levels referred to in MCV14.

The core value is present when there is a balance in the amount being given to each different level. Some levels, in particular the individual, relationship and team levels, require a basic subsistence minimum. Each individual must choose how much to give to each level — notwithstanding the need for the basic minimums just mentioned.

Human beings have individual ability (of varying degree ranging from intellectual independence up to complete physical self-sufficiency) but tend to take advantage of the benefits of working together with others. Depending on the activity and the purpose, the number of people who can be involved varies. This results from some (at the lower levels) basic limits in the ability of the mind to communicate and represent knowledge about the outside world and (at the higher levels) the complexity of organizing large numbers of people. Because of these limits, the type, nature and style of interaction changes depending on how many others are involved, and this gives each level a different sort of flavor.

The levels are:

Individual — anything and everything you do by and for yourself; anything that does not involve or affect someone else.

Relationship — things concerning only one other person.

Team (or nuclear family) — a group of people numbering from 3 up to the subitizing² level. For humans (and for all other animals tested) the limit on subitizing, and thus on the size of a team, is about 1 (yourself) plus 7 others, for a total of about 8. This limit applies to such things as a human sports team or a hunting pack of wolves. Larger "teams" of animals such as a school of fish are more like a community. The cutoff at about 8 is particularly important to people because of the importance of modeling in teamwork. Beyond the subitizing limit, one loses the ability to keep track of who knows what and this greatly diminishes the efficiency of the rapid, nonverbalized communication upon which teamwork is built.

Organization (or extended family) — a larger group of people, too large to be a team but still small enough to retain character-identification of all people involved. The term small organization might be more appropriate — this is an organization in the classic sense, a group small enough to retain a family-style intimacy. There is a limit to how large a group can be to retain character-identification — about 30 or 40 people. This limit is evident in the size of a primary school classroom, the size of a sports club (including everyone on the field plus those on the bench and the coaches, but usually excluding special players, such as pinch hitters and short relief pitchers), the maximum size a company can attain before it must resort to heirarchical organization and middle-management, and many other modern social structures. Perhaps more importantly, it is evident in the living-group sizes of the most ancient surviving cultures — such as the Pygmies and Aborinies¹.

Community — This is an even larger group of people, limited by the ability to retain some familiarity. The size of your community depends on your own ability to remember people. (In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell gives the number 150, citing anthropological researcher Robin Dunbar³ who has found this is the average village size of all well-documented hunter-gatherer societies.) If you encounter someone you used to know, and have to start all-over-from-scratch getting to know them, then they were not part of your "community". Most people experience this limit at somewhere in the hundreds. The term "community" is also used to express larger groups, such as "the Italian-American community", but this is actually closer to the next level, "society".

Society — This is a group of people larger than a community but which share enough in common to communicate and/or interact effectively. Notice that "enough in common" does not usually require language (see MCV12), thus people who speak different languages can be part of the same society.

Mankind — All human beings.

Here I would like to acknowledge that many people recognize higher levels. A few examples are: all living things; the entire physical universe; a larger world including spiritual or non-physical things.

MCV05 for Teams

For teams, the team itself is the "individual", other teams and other larger groups represent the higher levels. For example we could refer to a "division" (e.g. the American League East) as a "team of teams", and a "league" as the next higher level, an "orgnaization of teams". I am putting "division" and "league" in quotes to signify that these words have specific meanings in certain sports which help illustrate the point, but to remind the reader that I intend this to be applied to all organizations of teams, not just sport organizations.

When this core value is present:

The team works and plays with other teams. (+mcv5a)

The team works for the success of the other teams in its "division" and "league", and supports the larger organization it is a part of. (+mcv5b, +mcv5c)

The team benefits society and Mankind. (+mcv5d)

When this core value is lacking:

The team is isolated from other teams. (-mcv5a)

The team neglects the success of its "division" or "league", or does not support the larger organization it is a part of. (-mcv5b, -mcv5c)

The team has no interest in community service or other higher causes. (-mcv5d)

Footnotes

1 : Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Disaporas (translated from the original Italian) ISBN 0-201-44231-0, p. 5 (Pygmies) and p. 19 (Aboriginies)

2 : Subitizing: described on my large-numbers page, search for "Miller".

3 : R. I. M. Dunbar, "Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates, " Journal of Human Evolution (1992), vol. 20, pp. 469-493.