I, like everyone on the face of this earth have a fascination for people and why they do the things they do. People tend to call this psychology, its one of those “-ology” subjects thats supposed to make you look clever when you study it. On that subject I read a quaint little article on the subject of sociology and in particularly how many people one person can realistically keep a social relationship with. Without losing track of who is who and why you know that person specifically.

The article is on a constant know as Dunbar’s Number, this special number represents “a theorized cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships”. Can you guess the number? Well if you are a teen you probably have more friends on MySpace than this; its 150.

Robin Dunbar came up with an idea that you can only keep a relationship with 150 people at once. Does that mean you start forgetting people in the chronological order you met them to make room for every new person over the magical hard-limit of 150? Obviously not, but still it can’t be healthy for your existing relationships to saturate your brain with all these new relationships. I just think that people who try and keep a large social circle are creating more stress than they need and especially those who are in a sexual relationship with more than one partner.

Alas people cannot be reasoned with in this world of social networking and MSN, its too much I just can’t keep up. That might be why I haven’t been on MySpace in three months and I’m still very satisfied with my life at the moment, and the relationships I am keeping.