ABSTRACT
There are certain crucial numbers that have been recurring throughout history, the one of rhetoric, the two of duologue, the three of the dialectical triad, and the eight of the family, the oligarchy, and the small group. The Human Scale is a book about immediacy, mediation, and dialogue. The median group offers itself as a medium that is universally available; one that each one of us could set up to facilitate our handling of these cultural conflicts. The journalist Jill Tweedie wrote in The Guardian, 9 July 1981: A human scale is the key. Many human ills and evils are intimately linked to number. Tweedie asks whether it is possible to apply this human scale to all existing structures without diluting political beliefs. Sale writes that larger groups have the problem of humanizing, i.e. individualizing, the massification of giantism. Bureaucratic structures become uprooted, leading to personal irresponsibility and impersonal authoritarianism.
