a gaggle. why are there groups in the first place? isn't that so middle school and childish? aren't we past cliques and groups? news flash. life never evolves past middle school, ever. but aren't groups pretentious and exclusionary? aren't they mean? what does it mean anyway, to be part of a group? shouldn't we do away with social clumping as we get older?



the short answer is: no. as we get older, (i think) we probably tend to clump more. i feel that as we learn more about ourselves and our people likes and dislikes, we are more efficient and less forgiving; we learn to actively discard the dislikes and keep the likes hanging around. call it social evolution.



on this topic, lilly had this to say.

"childhood and adolescence lend themselves to uncensored communication with others, friend or foe. few are the tweens who can separate themselves from someone they don't like and be quiet about why they did so. thus cliques and whatnot."

i agree but disagree. i think that as we get older, we learn to vocalize our dislikes more -- perhaps in less dramatic ways and with more subtlety but effectively worse. i think lilly was driving at the idea that as we get older, we are forced into situations where we have to hang out with people we don't like very much, and we learn to keep quiet about it. but i think that we eventually realize that life is too short to be hanging out with people that aggravate you. and we learn to express our displeasure very well.



why do we even hang out with these people (affectionally referred to as "extras") in the first place? there are millions of reasons, number one being that your treasured friend wants them around, thus creating social passivity, obligation and dissonance in you.



partly for this reason, we have groups. having an insular environment gives you a good foundation for rejecting/shunning people. having a group gives you that luxury. those who have, can reject; those who have not, most often do not. also, people are designed to be grouped together. we tend to congregate with the people to whom we have the most in common, or with the people we feel most comfortable around. this will result obviously in cliques, groups, herds, tribes, what have you. groups aren't inherently bad or evilly exclusive, they are just a fact of life. you need to know not only what you stand for but also who you are standing with.



i find that life is most often not static enough to support any one group for an extended period of time. shit happens so groups are torn apart or fade away or just deform. so we are all really just clumping temporarily. which means as good or bad as your group has it, it'll probably change. i think the over under on groups staying together happily is two years. without an infusion or transfusion of new blood, things will inevitably break down. i will put together some data on this theory and present it in 2005. meanwhile, feel free to send grant money.