The Group – Importance of the group
Life is a complicated matter. Humans are social beings, and we need and we love our fellow human beings.
Humans have lived together in small groups for hundreds of thousands of years.
Other human groups were usually hostile because of the intense competition for food, shelter, etc.
We know that we view others who are not part of our own group with extreme suspicion and usually feel fear or hostility toward them.
The strongest group among humans is one where individuals know each other personally and help and trust each other. This is the natural group of humans with 20–200 members, as it has existed for at least 500,000 years. Larger groups emerged sporadically only about 10,000 years ago, and it has only been for about 5,000 years that large, rather harmonious groups have existed, which are able to retain a sense of community through the tricks of their leaders. However, the natural tendency of humans is and remains to organize and feel comfortable in small groups. This is an instinct within us: An instinct like fear of the dark, the urge to play, hunger/appetite, or the sex drive.
The group was and is vital for us and that’s why it plays a very prominent role in our lives. Even our behaviour is adapted to the life for and within our group.
I will write a couple of short essays on different group aspects. I have discovered that many things can be explained and understood by our group instincts.

Humans have survived on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years because we organized ourselves into groups, and this concept was evidently successful.
An individual needs the group; the group doesn’t necessarily need the individual.
Various Considerations of the Group.
The Group and Racism
This concept is quite straight forward and briefly explained. We experience and provide security, familiarity, safety, and empathy within our own group. This does not apply to people from other groups. Historically, people from other groups (of strangers) have almost always been a threat and thus frighten us. To avoid a threat, it was extremely important to quickly recognize whether another person belongs to our group or not. How do we recognize this? First, of course, visually, and it is immediately clear: A different skin colour, different facial features, or hair, cannot be a member of my group. So our group instincts immediately kick in: we feel potentially threatened, suspicious, rather aggressive, and lack empathy. Ideally, this stranger would disappear again so that we feel safe again. Here, too, only our intellect can override these instincts and thereby change our behaviour — At least until everyone includes people of a different skin colour in their own group, and we therefore no longer identify them as outsiders.
However, we are still a long way from this in most societies/groups, and it is easy to build on this innate tendency by imposing more differences that further emphasize this strangeness and simultaneously fuel fear and aggression.