John R. Miles

The idea that bigger is always better for the soul.

That's the Dunbar Reset, and it starts now.

But accepting the science isn't enough.

It forces us to confront a question most of us have been taught to avoid.

So if we can accept the science of the 150, if we accept that our brains are physically hitting a ceiling, it leads us to a radical, almost heretical conclusion for 2026.

What if the most ethical thing you can do this year is to be less global?

For years, we have been told that to be a good person, a responsible citizen, means carrying the weight of the entire world in our pockets.

We're supposed to have an opinion on every conflict, a stance on every policy, awareness of every tragedy across 8 billion people.

But pause and look at the results.

Is the world more peaceful because of it?

Or are we just more exhausted, more polarized, more paralyzed?

When you try to care equally about everyone, you end up with the emotional bandwidth to truly care for no one.

By trying to be global, we've spread ourselves so thin that we've lost our real agency.

And I'm arguing that in 2026,

The greatest act of social responsibility is to relocalize, to shrink your focus to the scale where your actions, your empathy, your energy actually moves the needle.

And this brings us to the hardest question in Paul Ehrlich's text.

He asks, is there an optimal level of diversity for a given society?

That's uncomfortable.

It's heavy.

But here's the counterintuitive truth.