The secrets of lasting friendships
In early 2020, just before the start of the pandemic, I met a woman who said she practiced “aggressive friendship.” It takes a lot of her time, but she’s the person who regularly invites friends over to her house, who organizes events and outings with her friends. What a fantastic way to live.
I thought of her while reading Robin Dunbar’s recent book, “Friends.” If the author’s name means something to you, it’s probably because of Dunbar’s number. This is his finding that the maximum number of meaningful relationships most people can have is somewhere around 150. How many people are invited to the average American wedding? About 150. How many people are on an average British Christmas card list? About 150. How many people were there in early human hunter-gatherer communities? About 150.
Dunbar argues that it’s a matter of cognitive capacity. The average human mind can maintain about 150 stable relationships at any given moment. These 150 friends are the people you invite to your big events — the people you feel comfortably altruistic toward.
He also argues that most people have a circle of roughly 15 closer friends. These are your everyday social companions — the people you go to dinner and the movies with. Within that group there’s your most intimate circle, with roughly five friends. These are the people who are willing to give you unstinting emotional, physical and financial help in your time of need.
Dunbar argues that the closeness of a friendship is influenced by how many things you have in common. “You are twice as likely to share genes with a friend as you are with any random person from your local neighborhood,” he writes. People tend to befriend those who have similar musical tastes, political opinions, professions, worldviews and senses of humor. You meet a new person. You invest time in getting to know this person, and you figure out which friendship circle you are going to slot him or her into.
Time is one crucial element in friendship. Jeffrey Hall, an expert in the psychology of friendship, studied 112 University of Kansas first-years and found that it took about 45 hours of presence in another person’s company to move from acquaintance to friend. To move from casual friend to meaningful friend took another 50 hours over a three-month period, and to move into the inner close-friend circle took another 100 hours.
People generally devote a lot more time
by 2050 if we do nothing to address it.
The waste management systems in New York and across the nation currently reward disposal over recycling or reuse. Disposable products are a disaster for the environment, but they’re undeniably cheap to manufacture. If the companies that produce these products are held financially responsible for their end-oflife management, we can incentivize efforts to reduce unnecessary waste and create more products that can be recycled and reused. That’s the revolutionary idea behind EPR.
An EPR framework for packaging and paper products in New York would establish a more efficient, circular waste management system, financed by the very companies that produce potentially recyclable materials, and not reliant on taxpayer dollars. This system would advance new funding mechanisms and simplify recycling for the public. In doing so, it would reduce the overall amount of plastic that New Yorkers use and keep the plastic they do use in the economy where it belongs — instead of in our oceans, rivers and other critical ecosystems.
World Wildlife Fund applauds the governor’s decision to include a provision for EPR in her executive budget, as well as the effort by Sen. Todd Kaminsky, D -Long Beach, to refine what EPR means for New York in a bill he introduced last year. It’s clear that lawmakers are eager to tackle the waste problem and work toward solutions that benefit the planet, local economies and New Yorkers alike. The state budget process is the perfect opportunity to refine the details of EPR’S implementation and ensure that the goal of a more circular economy is included in the state’s priorities for the years ahead.
The Empire State has a crucial opportunity to promote accountability in the private sector, and give taxpayers and nature both some much-needed relief. We have a window of opportunity to implement EPR and transform our waste management system, and we must seize the moment. If New York can set an example now, other states will follow its lead and set the stage for transformational change on a national level. Only then will the United States be able to fulfill its obligations under a global treaty and help free the world from plastic’s chokehold.