Sounds Better When He Says It
Thanks to our old friend Tallahassee Joe for alerting me to this Will Wilkinson article in the latest Cato Institute Policy Report - Capitalism and Human Nature. It's absolutely great, and it's the first time I think I've ever seen a political think tank use evolutionary psychology as the basis of its arguments. The times they are a changing. I have to admit that, emotionally speaking, I'm a little ambivalent about this.
There's something satisfying about being one of only a few pretty much underground writers applying this relatively new science to larger scale social and economic issues. Now that Cato's talking it up, I think it's fair to say the cat's out of the bag. So I should be happy, right? Of course, I am. My caveman pride aside, I am on a mission here and every little bit helps. So, check it out. Incidentally, I can't tell you how many queries I've sent to newspapers and magazines to write this exact article. In the end, I guess I'm glad they all passed - this guy's work is deep and wide, all in four pages. Bravo, Mr. Wilkinson.
posted by Chris Wilson at 2/23/2005 10:23:00 PM
7 Comments:
Good job EC. A rising tide raises all boats...
2/23/2005 11:36:00 PM
Oh, have you pegged my "beg to differ" meter. Yes, the world is what it is because of the people that inhabit it, but those aspects of it that are contrary to evolutionarily useful behaviors are here because of people who *chose* to behave differently.
There's logic here that should not be lost. Natural selection only works when there's a struggle, a struggle where specific traits can confer either a competitive advantage, disadvantage, or nothing. There is no such struggle going on right now. It hasn't happened for at least 10,000 years. Since that time, man has mastered his environment, which is to say that you can put a handful of humans together anywhere on this planet and you can bet that a few of them will survive. Two reasons for that.
1. Their genes. The folks who could not hang physically or emotionally or cognitively did not make the cut. The ones that remained, our ancestors were the elite.
2. Their culture. While Homo sapiens was competing with other hominids for survival eons ago, it was amassing a collection of stories, artifacts, and tools. As the only cooperating hominid, these things made a big difference. They were passed down from generation to generation, and ultimately made it possible for a human to be born with quite a leg up on life.
And here we are - our genes and our culture. At times in our history, humans have emerged who took their vehicle off of auto-pilot - Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Kant, Locke, etc. They defied what their genes dictated and they *chose* how things should be. This modern world is because of *them*.
One need only take a quick look at Africa to see what humans do when they are not taught to overcome their "free trade bias," their tribalism, their caveman genes. Look at countries like Togo, where the King, a supremely unjust human being, has just died and his son has illegally taken over. The Enlightenment notions of human rights and the rule of law have not taken root, so it's jungle rules out there. In short, their culture is lacking, and their genes are in charge.
Here, however, our culture is so advanced that we *choose* to have our cake and eat it too by taking birth control. Not only have the notions of human rights and the rule of law taken root here, we are *so* sophisticated that we use them as the very foundation for an industry that lets old coots get erections on command (intellectual property law).
We are to society as our genes are to our culture. See what I mean? We all have the caveman genes in us, and, if they were left unfettered, you might not be reading this right now. Instead of your comfortable home, you may find yourself in modern Africa or the Middle East.
Fortunately, however, icons in human history have come along again and again and shown us the error of our caveman ways. The smart ones among us have listened, and this explains how an entire society of folks who don't understand their own genetic predilections arises.
Can evolutionary psychology ever be a true science? Absolutely. Just type evolutionary psychology into Amazon.com and pick any of the top 10 books. The experiments are real and the conclusions make sense (at least to me, and I've been reading this stuff for well over 15 years).
I think that people are simply uncomfortable finding out what's really under the hood. So, my addition to our culture is this piece of advice - "it's okay, once you know, you're in control."
2/24/2005 11:02:00 PM
Evolution as a phenomenon requires three things in order to take place:
1. Inheritance - there have to be characteristics that are passed down from generation to generation.
2. Variation - there have to be different characteristics in the population. This is where mutations come in.
3. Selection Pressure. There has to be something differentially selecting some characteristics over others, so that some persist and some go away.
To answer your question - no, we have not evolved *genetically* in more than 10,000 years. That is the central thesis in evolutionary psychology. The logic is simple - as soon as man mastered his environment, the selection pressures that allowed the *survivors* to survive while the rest perished disappeared. For thousands of years, life and death has not been about genetic fitness so much as it has been about luck and circumstance.
If suddenly, however, the sun became very intense so that individuals with fair skin caught on fire (absurd, I know - bear with me), then we would see evolution start up again. Suddenly, there would be a differential fitness advantage for dark-skinned individuals. Our species would evolve. But nothing like this has happened in eons. Our human gene pool, and the culture that comes with it, is essentially equipped to survive in our world.
Of course, mutations still happen, and when they do, the victims usually die. We could think of this as a micro sort of evolution, but it has no bearing on the overall human gene pool. The bottom line is that the genes that were around 10,000 years ago are still here. They've just been reshuffled countless times.
Make sense?
2/25/2005 01:59:00 AM
Hmm. You bring up an interesting point. With respect to height, the argument could be made that evolution is still happening. The selection pressures would be fairly benign, only showing a preference for tall people to reproduce over short people. So, I'll concede that there may be minor changes in the human genome that are still taking place.
*However,* it is well known that our emotions are our motivators. Furthermore, given the location of the primary ones (fear, anger, etc.) in our brain (close to the brain stem), we know that they are evolutionarily old. My argument, and that of the evolutionary psychologists, is that these ancient emotions are flexible programs that respond to input by generating output that leads to survival.
It is the culture that has been accumulated by our species that separates us from the Homo sapiens of caveman days. That's it. You can see it in Africa, where they are still tribal and have very little reason-oriented culture to work with. We, them and us, have virtually the same genes. The chasm between us is cultural.
You may argue that the genetic capacity to grasp reason and to *decide* to do things differently than our genes would dictate means that this world is nothing strange to us. I can live with that. What I am saying is that our caveman genes are at work a lot more in our daily lives than we'd like to admit.
Yes, I go back and forth because I don't believe that our genes are all bad. They give us love, which is what makes life worth living. But they also give us status-oriented envy and pettiness. They also give us the "me-first" ethos that can translate into scoundrels oppressing other humans. So I say we have to recognize what's good and acceptable in our human nature and keep it, but *consciously* discard what is causing problems.
Where we disagree is in thinking of this holistically. I don't. To me, there's what our genes want and what an enlightened, rational being would want. Sometimes they agree; most times they don't. And, while I'll admit that the line between the two is sometimes blurry, it's there and it matters a lot.
2/25/2005 01:07:00 PM
You say it right, Caveman, when you say that this Cato piece is an indication of a move toward a more rational politics. A Libertarian think tank is far from the mainstream of American political thought, but it is a lot closer than your blog, or mine. I posted more on this over at Zero Base Thinking. I think that this is big. Time will tell.
2/25/2005 03:29:00 PM
Agreed. It's a credible precedent. The herd will notice.
Alice - Just send them this:
"Dear friend,
I just found the greatest website on the Internet. www.enlightenedcaveman.com. Be sure to click on the link to the Cato article on human nature and capitalism.
Please pass this to everyone in your address book.
Love, Alice."
2/26/2005 12:37:00 AM
Your obsession is my compulsion. Tomato. Tomahto.
Eric Hoffer's quote was not about how life in a world of consumerism is futile if you buy into it. It was about frustration. The central theme in the book is that the frustrated mind is succeptible to mass movements, especially ones that are completely irrational. He is saying that one who is poor, who is eaking out a living, doesn't have time for frustration. He or she is too busy.
He goes on to say that it is the "new poor," those who *had* a decent living and lost it, who are the frustrated poor, the ones to watch out for.
You really must read the whole book. It's almost eerie in how observant it is.
Just goes to show you how a quote out of context can lead down a completely unintended path. But, of course, I'm always good with exploring a new avenue. My brain was awhirr with transient nodes of thought after reading your comments.
(Please tell me somebody gets the "Blazing Saddles" reference.)
2/27/2005 01:45:00 AM
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