Group theory -- 1, 2, 3, (4), 5, Some, 16, More

With 16 people, all the Gifts are present. In any smaller group, there's always something missing. I noticed this by doing many retreats with different-sized groups, working in software startups, and directing.

The Gift that's missing isn't what you would expect, either -- it might be Fun, Intuition, Sexiness, Play, Downtime, Follow-through, Eloquence, Courage, Organization, Reading, Realism, Cooking, Instant Action, Dreamtime, Giving Great Dinner Parties, Is Russian.

There are always Gifts in the room that are not being shared, even within the most intimate group, even marriages or between children; because we're all growing. There is always tender emergent stuff at the edges. As more Gifts check in, the world transforms.

Different environments encourage and suppress different Gifts. A church group, an office, a therapy room, a kitchen, a playground, a gym, a fair, a forest, a town. This is why I love theatre -- theatre consciously uses metaphor, creates space, explores how the world affects the people. Odai Johnson says the great playwrights know how to use the liminal spaces -- the space between, beside, almost.

My counting system, for group thresholds, is:
1 -- the starting infinity
2 -- makes the biggest difference of any increment
3 -- an incredible, suprisingly large boost of power. All the things you never knew you were missing, until it walked into the room. If 1 is "I have a dream," 2 is "I think we can do it," then 3 is "I know we can."
4 -- a curiously unstable size
5 -- a nation. This is the first level where it really locks on, an incredibly stable powerful number. Some groups stay this size for a long time, or their inner core does.
Some -- all the sizes from 6 to 15 feel the same to me -- capable, but missing something
16 -- all the Gifts are present. 16 people can do anything. Eventually they will need help, but they CAN... do ANYTHING.
More -- the grey area until up around 30; the growth period
32-ish -- starts to swell, can swell to 36 at the upper limit
The tough spot -- cantankerous, people leave, new people join, memories of The Early Days are diluted and lost, a changeful time
50-ish -- new structures emerge and dominate
75-ish -- the culture settles in, enough to make the new structures work
108 -- this is the next number like 16 -- where suddenly you're in a whole new world of what's possible.

THE INFINITE STRANGER, THE INFINITE SELF

I added "Is Russian" to the Gifts list above, because of a discussion yesterday. After class we stood in the sun, talking heatedly about the presidential candidates. We had moved onto domestic issues, when Anya said, "The medical system in Russia is so much better than here." Instant silence. "There, we do not have insurance systems, each person pays with their own money, so the prices stay reasonable. Not crazy like here." There were a few murmurs about whether people HAD their own money, but everyone was fascinated. "The equipment in a Russian hospital is new -- maybe 10 years old, at the most. But the equipment in Overlake, and in (I forget the other hospital she named) -- it is 40 years old!" She shuddered. "I prefer the Russian hospitals." More silence, broken by a small voice saying, "Try Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland; they've got great facilities." But mostly, in that moment, the world had changed.

It reminds me of rehearsal a few years ago, with an East German woman and a Russian woman, in a scene set on an Indiana farm. In the backstory improvs, we had gone back to the time of World War II. "When did that war begin?" I asked. They answered at the same time, with two different dates. We talked for a while before we realized -- we had three different dates. Our wars each began when our country entered it.

Knowing each other better leads -- as it should -- to conflict. Like that old theorem of the four stages of group-formation: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.

From theatre I would say -- the more intimately you know someone, the more infinite, strange, and translucent they become.