One of the blogs on the longnow website stuck me as particularly interesting. The title of the blog is "The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment" by Paul Ehrlich. In his blog, Ehrlich describes human dominance as malignant, using examples of climate change and chemical toxification of the biosphere. He says, "Every cubic centimeter of the biosphere has been modified by human activity." Ehrlich also thinks the increasing global population poses a problem in the future.
Ehrlich's main point is on cultural evolution. Cultural evolution, defined by Ehrlich, is everything we pass on in a non-genetic way. He says around 50,000 years ago, humans made a great leap in cultural development, after which culture took over human evolution. After 50,000 years ago, our brains haven't changed in size. Ehrlich regards the understanding of cultural evolution as the key to providing a safe future for future generations.
Ehrlich and a graduate student at Stanford conducted a study of the progression of Polynesian canoe practices as their population expanded. He questioned whether the paddle shape changed constantly striving for a more efficient paddle shape or did the carving and paint on the paddles change more. The result of the study was the carving and paint on the paddles changed more to distinguish each group of Polynesians from one another.
According to Ehrlich, human evolution has stopped and in order to provide a safe environment for our future societies, we must analyze cultural evolution to move away from our malignant society to a benign one. So how can we accomplish this? Deep time part 2 focuses on finding a solution to our nuclear waste problem. My question is how can we analyze cultural evolution to become a more benign society? What are some solutions to our current problems by using cultural evolution? What future impact can cultural evolution provide us? And finally, how can we use cultural evolution when we don't know the culture of future generations?
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First let us deal with the issue of human biological evolution. Evolution works over thousands of generations, therefore how can we say that human evolution has stopped entirely after examining such a small segment of time? As long as our species continues with non-random mating there will always be certain traits that are selected for or against. Hence evolution will never stop. Not even to mention mutation (which is all the more likely in a world rife with nuclear waste). Now to deal with the rest of this nonsense. Studying the evolution of cultures has already been going on for over one hundred years. So yes, studying the evolution of our past cultures will give us insight into our own culture. Of course, anyone who studies our past cultures will realize that there hasn't been some wonderful Utopian society that has been totally 'benign' as it was put above. On top of that, there are numerous solutions that have already been put forth for reversing the effects of this so-called 'malignant' society.
Biological evolution has always happened slowly. Recently, however, biological evolution has slowed because people rarely die before child-bearing age. I think a different trend may become evident in cultural evolution.
Cultural evolution occurs much more quickly when other aspects of our environment change. New geographies, new peoples, and most importantly new technologies are the motivations of cultural evolution. Any discovery or invention can become an impetus for cultural change, even cultural revolution.
Therefore, given the technological development that characterized modern society, cultural evolution is just beginning to speed up. Our incessant industry, our obsession with the new and the better, will continue to further our development in society. Culture will naturally change with the change that we create in our environment. Even in the last 20 years there has been more change in our culture than in many 100 year periods in the past.
I agree that looking at things on a biological evolutionary scale has become increasingly difficult and can understand the cultural evolution is much more relevant. Once challenge that there is with looking at things in terms of cultural evolution is that it is much faster and less relevant to the long now perspective. As a culture, there will be so much change that it is nearly impossible to plan things and consider things on this scale. There is no telling how culture will change and almost impossible to plan outcomes. It is because of this unpredictability that it is difficult to consider things on this scale, and thus makes this a not very useful tool.
Evolution never dies until a species dies. There will always be changes whether made by nature or the society itself. The rate of change may be slower or faster depending on how much the stimuli affect the group, but changes still occur.
It is obviously hard to act now when we cannot see what the future will hold, but we can make estimates of what we think it will be like and do our best.
I don't believe biological evolution ever stops. Cultural evolution is separate from biological evolution and should remain that way. The example with the paddles illustrates how in our culture we have a need to identify and distinguish ourselves from others. This is as a result of the influence of other societies on the Polynesians---and how in our world today, less and less cultures can be completely isolated from the rest of the world. The means of cultural evolution is everywhere. It can be through song, movies or the media, but it can also be what we eat and what we watch on TV. We are constantly influencing our culture by the choices we make everyday. I believe that is the point Ehrlich is trying to make. He sees cultural evolution as an opportunity for our world to fix our mistakes. It will be difficult, but if we do wish to try and fix what we have done to our environment, we must revolutionize our culture and the only way we can do that is awareness--and awareness through the everyday things in life.
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