Building Trust Requires Real-Life Physical Connections

Earlier, I mentioned that of our five senses, the three that are the most difficult to share—namely touch, smell and taste—are the most important for trust.

For instance, if I touch something, I am being touched in return, and that reciprocity makes the feeling difficult to share. That's why the longer there is skin contact, like between mother and child or among couples, the greater the feeling of trust. It's because we are both at the same time experiencing this unique sensation of touch.

The same thing happens when it comes to taste. If you see two people eating together, you immediately think "they must share a close relationship." You wouldn't think that about two people who are sharing their sense of vision by just looking at the same thing.

Exactly. If you want to strengthen teamwork—in other words, create partnerships based on empathy—you need to build trust through smell, taste and touch, rather than vision and hearing.

Going on a retreat, sharing meals, going to a hot spring together; having these shared physical experiences can have a tremendous impact on teamwork. I'd even go so far as to say that these experiences are the best way to improve teamwork.

Absolutely. Humanity has gone further by creating letters and words, and eventually modern forms of technology like the internet and smartphones. These technologies have allowed us to share a mental connection, even when our bodies are far away.

Technology has enabled us to feel a connection with one another, even when there is no guarantee of being in a relationship of trust.

To do something with your peers, you need a physical presence. For example, you'll often hear a boss say that their subordinate is "like their right hand." That's proof that even though you divide the process into different parts, the overall objective is a physical sensation of reaching an objective by acting as a single organism. That's why I think teamwork cannot be entirely about the mind, there has to be physical unity as well.

It is. Even though animals don't share a common objective, they behave similarly as a pack. However, if they feel like their interests are not being served, they can leave the pack, or the pack will disperse.

When it comes to humans, there are times where even though it may be a disadvantage to us, even though our life may be at risk, we still prioritize our team.

That's what happens in war, even though there's no more idiotic form of teamwork.

There is. In fact, it's linked to brain capacity. In humans, that capacity has increased with evolution, so the size of the groups we form has increased accordingly.

For example, when the average human brain size was around 500 cubic centimeters, they would get together in groups of about 15 people. Around 1.5 million years ago, brain size increased to around 600cm³, so there started to be groups of 30-50 people.

Approximately 600,000 years ago, brain volume started reaching up to 1500cm³, at which point we started seeing groups of 150 people. Brain volume hasn't significantly changed since then, so today humans still have a brain capacity suitable for groups of up to 150 people.

Nowadays we refer to 150 as the magic number. It's the number of faces the average person can remember. Not just remember in the sense be able to describe with words, but the number of people with whom we remember sharing past physical experiences.

The people we can talk to and rely on unconditionally when we have a problem is what we call our "social capital." The size of that social capital is said to be limited to about 150 people.

About 70,000 years ago, as a response to being obligated to live in societies of more than 150 people, we developed language.

However, verbal and intellectual connections are not as successful in creating trust. That's why to this day, we still rely heavily on physical connections.

That does seem to be the case. When it comes to teamwork and working toward a common goal, an online connection established via letters and symbols isn't enough. Teamwork becomes possible when we accumulate memories of doing things together.

It's something I'm very aware of. Before I became president of Kyoto University, I taught at the Graduate School of Science. At the time, the biggest problem students were facing was the inability to make friends. The reason was that they thought making friends was easy, so once they become friends they relied on each other too much, which ended up being a burden on that friendship.

They were trying to establish an intellectual connection, but they didn't have a good physical connection. Young people today are continuously feeling this sense of incompatibility when it comes to friendship.

Yes. It's probably because they have few memories of feeling connected through physical interactions. It's easy to become friends—you can do so quickly by working together on any common project. However, that has become less common in this day and age, given that we're more capable than ever of doing things without asking for help.

In the era of convenience,interacting with other people carries a cost.

In the past, you would acquire knowledge through either books or people. You either had to go to a lecture together with other people, or read a book and talk about your impressions with those around you. When that knowledge becomes available online, it is no longer necessary to go to a lecture or set foot in a library.

Modern capitalist society is specialized in fulfilling individual desires. It used to be that we had a social structure in which we would have a variety of human interactions that would make up our social capital—the 150 people with whom we form a relationship of trust. However, nowadays people have been stripped of that, left naked and isolated. Unless we do something about this situation, we won't find happiness.

We need to stop thinking of friendships as something that costs us time. It takes time for us to use our empathy to build a relationship of trust. Since the currency of trust and empathy is time, no amount of money will help you instantly make friends.

In my opinion, the idea that being successful means reaching self-actualization is a major misconception. It's better to have not just your own life goals, but also objectives that you share with several people, so that you can enjoy playing several roles.

We tend to say that leadership is very important, but it's fine to not always be the leader. Sometimes you can a follower or a supporter. It's an important thing to experience, together with your peers, to feel your doubts being erased by someone, or to witness a closed curtain be opened right in front of your eyes.

First of all there is a limit to how much we can do on our own, and we are being forced to do push that limit. We don't have to be lonely, but we are being made lonely.

What humans inherited from monkeys and other primates was the ability to increase our empathy and to string together cooperative relationships like a net. If we spread out the axis of time, we see in the long run we were striving toward a more plentiful environment, even if that meant sacrificing ourselves—which is how we moved into environments in which nonhuman primates could not survive.

That's something we must take the time to think about. There may come an era in which we can find happiness just through intellectual connections with one another. However, for the time being, the only path toward happiness is by establishing real-life physical connections.