Ranthropologist

Tag: adaptation

  • (R)anthropology Class: Cultural (Mal)adaptation

    (R)anthropology Class: Cultural (Mal)adaptation

    There are about as many different definitions of culture as there are cultural anthropologists. Much ink has been spilled by people attempting to refine the concept to make it account for all the detail and nuance of the human experience. In my classes, though, I don’t have that kind of time, so we keep things simple: culture is the ideals, values, and standards of behavior shared by a group of people. I spend most of the semester explaining and illustrating how this simple definition can encompass everything from the most extraordinarily complex group behaviors at the macro level to the smallest, most (seemingly) insignificant behaviors at the individual level. There is a reason that cultural anthropologists choose a specialty; it is impossible to be an expert in the culture of everything.

    I could write pages and pages on this, but the point of this post is not to exhaustively analyze the concept of culture. Instead, I want to discuss the broad strokes of what defines a successful culture, and then talk about what happens when cultures start to break down – that is, when they become maladaptive. First, a few main points about the general defining characteristics of culture:

    • Culture is shared. This means that everybody within a particular cultural group has internalized the same ideals, values, and standards of behavior  The shared nature of culture also means, vitally, that we are able to predict what other members of our cultural group are likely to do in a given situation. It’s like driving – imagine how terrifying it would be if we had no idea what the person in the next lane was about to do as we whizzed past each other at 70+ miles per hour in our 3,000 pound glass, metal, plastic, and hot fluid-filled machines! But we drive with no fear most of the time because we can (usually) safely predict that the other drivers are going to follow the same rules that we follow. The rules of culture operate in much the same way.
    • Culture is learned. Through the process of enculturation, we are taught what the shared rules of our culture are by our parents, family members, teachers, peers – basically, by every person we encounter, whether intimately as a parent or fleetingly as a stranger. Obviously, as children, we don’t know all of the rules yet – which is why we chuckle with amusement when a toddler runs naked across a public beach, but gasp in shock when an adult does it. By the time we are young teens we have learned all the basic rules.
    • Culture is symbolic. This is best illustrated through the example of language, although almost every aspect of culture is symbolic. Language is a system of arbitrary sounds that, through learning and sharing, we all agree serve as stand-ins for particular concepts. There is nothing necessary or natural about the fact that the set of shared sounds we call English have to symbolize the things that they do; but English speakers have learned, collectively, what those sounds symbolize and can thus use them to communicate ideas about our world. Many other symbolic cultural systems – economic, religious, political, artistic – operate in the same way.
    • Culture is integrated. This means that all the parts of culture work together, like gears in a machine. No part is independent of the other parts. And if something changes in one of the parts, it can affect the rest of the machine. Sometimes these changes are small and have limited effect; sometimes they are enormous and have a tremendous effect throughout the machinery of culture. The recent recognition that gay marriage is legal is an example of a cultural change with far-reaching reverberations.
    • Culture is all-encompassing. This one is simple. It means that no aspect of human behavior is insignificant enough to not be a part of culture. Everything from the food we eat to the complexities of our economic system are a part of culture.
    • Finally, culture changes. This can happen through new inventions (how to use fire; agriculture; television; the internet) and it can happen through disagreements between members of the culture (again, gay marriage makes a good example). A lot of cultural change can be easily illustrated if you think in terms of generations. What kinds of things did you do as a teen or young adult that you thought were okay but that horrified your parents? I vividly remember my grandpa, who was born in 1920, bashing me on the head with an empty plastic soda bottle when he spied my first tattoo as I sat lounging by the pool. He was furious because to him, a woman with tattoos was a woman of loose morals. Today, tattoos are everywhere and are generally accepted. Remember, back in the Victorian era, a woman who showed her ankles (GASP!) was a woman of ill repute – a concept my grandpa would have laughed off but that his grandparents may well have taken seriously!

    These are the main characteristics of culture, but they don’t define whether or not a culture can be deemed successful. Fortunately, that definition is simple: a successful culture is one that meets the needs of most of its members in a satisfying way most of the time. Successful cultures meet every member’s need for water, food, shelter, and material resources. They develop strategies for the production, distribution, and consumption of resources. They provide guidelines for appropriate social interaction. They make sure that the members of the group are protected from threats and harm, from within and without. They have a system for making sure every person has a role to fill in the group’s maintenance, and for sanctioning members when they do not adequately fill their role. They are flexible in adapting to individual needs and find ways to accommodate difference. They find ways to comfort and soothe their members in the face of difficulty, tragedy, and doubt. They provide a story for how the culture came to be and where its members will go. They provide cohesion, organization, stability, and purpose. They ensure survival.

    A culture that is unable to secure these things for its members in a satisfying way most of the time is in danger. The danger of a maladapted culture can be acute; maladaptation can result in the extinction of the culture and its members. And that leads us to the problems of today. The adaptive strategies of culture have worked extraordinarily well for over 100,000 years – but they are strategies designed for small groups of people who know and depend upon one another. Cultures have certainly adapted to changes – bigger groups of people find ways to manage the larger population in a satisfactory way; hunter-gatherers who began to grow food and domesticate animals adapted to the new lifestyles of horticulture and pastoralism; even the larger populations that developed as intensive agriculture began to take hold still, mostly, managed to find ways to accommodate to change. But as history shows us, the larger and more technologically advanced human cultures have a frightening tendency to collapse as they become increasingly maladapted to the needs of the majority of the members.

    So the question is: is culture today – and now by culture I mean not just specific small groups or even countries, but global culture – adapting? Consider these symptoms of a maladapted culture:

    • crime and violence
    • mental illness
    • substance abuse
    • suicide
    • alienation
    • warfare
    • revolution

    Any of this sound familiar?

    I am convinced that our current culture is maladapted to the modern world. I am also convinced that this maladaptation is a driving force behind so much of the trouble we see today. Individuals are alienated. They don’t feel recognized or important. They see themselves as tiny gears in a vast, impersonal machine controlled by people who don’t care about them. Unlike in the small groups of prehistory or the close-knit small towns and villages of recent centuries, we have no possible way to know and recognize every single member of our group; it’s not uncommon for people to not even know their neighbors – I don’t know mine. We don’t have to depend upon each other as individuals any more, but we do have to depend on this enormous, teetering edifice that is struggling to fulfill the needs of nearly 7,500,000,000 – that’s 7.5 billion – people, and growing, with adaptations designed for populations that number in the hundreds. Is it any wonder that we have ISIS? Is it any wonder that we have global terrorism? Is it any wonder that we have refugees swarming all over the globe in the terrified hope that somewhere, they will find welcome and respite from hunger, hardship, and violence? It is any wonder that disaffected young men have formed online groups where they fantasize about exacting revenge on the women who ignore them? Is it any wonder that some people turn to guns and spray bullets at innocent people in public places? Is it any wonder that there are protests in our cities over systemic inequality, violence, oppression, and racism? Is it any wonder that there is a whole subculture of people who are preparing themselves for Armageddon? Is it any wonder that people turn to magical thinking and conspiracy theories? Is it any wonder that so many people are living in fear? I still believe most people are good. I still believe we can turn back from maladaptation and find a way. But it’s still not a wonder to me.

  • Technology and Its Discontents: Planned Obsolescence

    Technology and Its Discontents: Planned Obsolescence

    Last Sunday a friend and I took a trip to visit the Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum in Vista. I have been tremendously enjoying the process of learning to use my new camera, and the museum provided an abundance of wonderful subjects. Yet, as I wandered amongst the rusting hulks of old tractors, engines, trucks, and farm equipment, I felt a pang of unease. The museum is a testament to obsolete or aging technology, and some of the machines have been lovingly cared for or meticulously restored so that visitors can appreciate the technology of days gone by. In many cases, the old machinery did not look that different from what is in use today, but small, incremental changes over time led to the abandonment of the old in favor of the new. In other cases, as with the steam engines, radical new technologies led to the complete obsolescence of previous innovations.

    George Bernard Shaw said “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” When I came across this quote I shuddered. To me it speaks directly to the human desire to shape the world in his image. It is steeped in a theological ideology of man’s supremacy over and domination of the world. It does not see humans as the animals they are, destined to adapt – or not – to their environment. As I noted in a previous post, human adaptation takes the form of wanting things to be easier, faster, and better, and this idea was amply illustrated at the museum. What was wrong with the machines that had been abandoned for better (and there’s a word that needs a critical unpacking) models? I’m not arguing that innovation is necessarily a bad thing; but when we consider how our ability to do more things more easily has changed the world and our ability to survive in it in greater and greater numbers with a greater and greater impact, it’s worth thinking about whether it’s necessarily a good thing.

    Taking a turn towards more modern technologies, I find myself wondering when we will have museums filled with obsolete televisions, computers, and cellphones. I realize we have antique communicative technologies in museums already; radio has been around for more than a century, and so have telegraphs and telephones. Television is not far behind, and computers are nearing the half-century mark. But unlike the technologies of old, which seemed to change and innovate relatively slowly, computers in particular are changing so fast that what you buy today is practically obsolete tomorrow. This is not an accident. Humans seem unable to leave well enough alone and adapt to what they already have. Shaw’s remark about progress is pertinent, except that I don’t think it’s the unreasonable man alone who is responsible for Shaw’s so-called progress. Instead, it is human nature itself, because it wants faster, easier, better… and ultimately, higher status technologies even if we don’t actually need them. We are being relentlessly manipulated and trained into believing that we must have the next big thing, and nowhere is this more apparent to me than in cellphones and computers.

    I don’t want this to turn into a rant about advertising, but I am so angry and distressed at the commercials I have seen recently that attest to this planned obsolescence phenomenon. One is for Cox Communications and features a recurring, annoying dad character who races around boasting of his blazing fast internet speed and his ability to watch streaming movies and TV everywhere he goes. In a scene where he walks down a staircase, eyes glued to his computer tablet, I found myself wishing the commercial’s punchline would be dad tripping and tumbling to his death from a broken neck. Alas, that wouldn’t sell many subscriptions to Cox. Another commercial, for AT&T, states that they are offering a new plan wherein customers can Upgrade to a New Phone Every Year! With No Activation Fee! And No New Phone Upcharge! All I could think when I saw that one was “holy shit, we are doomed.” I recently met an old friend for dinner, and he was using a cell phone he’d had for 13 years… and it still works. It doesn’t text, or have more than a rudimentary screen, or a (what used to be so cool) flip cover; it’s just a phone. And guess what? We were able to use it to communicate. I found myself feeling a mixture of envy and nostalgia for his decision to stick with the basics.

    What are we doing to ourselves with this attachment to newer, better, faster? What are the ultimate long-term consequences of “progress”? Is it really better that we have increased the earth’s human carrying capacity to billions? Or is our insatiable need to take what’s not really obsolete, or even necessary, and trade up for something better going to lead to a crash? In a way, by refusing to adapt to the world as it is, we are planning our own, ultimate obsolescence.

  • Adaptation to Extinction

    Adaptation to Extinction

    I am at a climate change adaptation conference in Denver for three days, and I fully expected to come away from the experience thoroughly demoralized and depressed. At the end of day two, I find that I have both reason for hope and reason for concern. As a person who is well-versed in the scientific method, I have approached the climate change issue as a skeptic should: with a critical eye, and with a desire to hear multiple sides and multiple interpretations. It did not take much research of my own, though, for me to be convinced that climate change is occurring, and that it is extremely likely that it is being made much, much worse by human activity. Ultimately, this may well be what causes the extinction of the human species.

    Scientists have determined that 99% of all species that have ever existed have gone extinct. That’s a huge number, but you have to consider that extinction is defined more broadly than the sudden disappearance of a species. Some extinctions occur through speciation; that is, an organism or group of organisms undergoes adaptation and evolution, and over time, changes enough that it is no longer the same species. For example, the common ancestor of chimps and humans, which lived about 5-7 million years ago, does not exist now; but (some) of its descendants do, in the form of Homo sapiens (humans); Pan paniscus (chimpanzees), and Pan troglodytes (bonobos). Other members of those two genera have also existed and subsequently gone extinct (e.g. H. erectus). So, extinction is not always the end of the line for an organism or group of organisms. Even the dinosaurs, many of which went extinct in the commonly perceived way (that is, they were wiped out entirely in a fairly short period of time, geologically speaking) have living descendants. We call them birds.

    If things continue the way they have been, I’m not sure humans are going to have any descendants. And I also think that humans will be the first species in history who have caused their own extinction. Most species go extinct in one of two ways I described above: through adaptation and speciation; or through an inability to adapt to new or changed environmental circumstances. The dinosaurs, and many other organisms who lived 65 million years ago, were unable to adapt quickly enough to the changed environment following a catastrophic asteroid impact, and so they died. The asteroid impact was a random event over which the organisms had no control. Humans, on the other hand, are paradoxically bringing themselves (and not incidentally, many other organisms) to the brink of extinction because they are so good at adapting to their environment. This is a case of too much of a good thing, and when it happens, what used to become adaptive becomes maladaptive and starts to negatively affect the species.

    How is the human ability to adapt to the environment bringing about our own potential demise? Humans are supremely skilled at technological innovation. What started with stone tools has evolved to microprocessors, digital technology, nanotechnology, genetic modification, and so on. These things are built on a basis of energy and raw materials extraction. Our technological abilities led to the ability to grow more food, have more children, live longer, and make more and more things. In biological and evolutionary terms, an organism’s ability to reproduce is measured as a level of fitness; and the more offspring you produce, the more fit you are. For many organisms, and for animals in particular, mate selection depends on fitness characteristics – males battle each other for the right to females; females select mates based on displays of desirable traits. For humans, one of the most salient traits is status. The higher an individual’s status, the more likely that individual is to mate and produce offspring – that is, the higher his or her fitness. Status is also linked to the ability to raise offspring to maturity. In humans, status is often linked to power, power is linked to wealth, and wealth is indicated by material possessions (among other things). So, the more stuff you have, the more status you have, and the more power you have, the more people – including potential mates – you control. I don’t want to be too broadly sociobiological about this, but for all intents and purposes, our incredible ability to innovate and adapt through making tools is a direct result of the biological imperative to mate and maximize our evolutionary fitness.

    So, what does our drive for evolutionary fitness have to do with climate change? It’s simple, really; making tools is what we do. Gathering material things to show our status is what we do. Using yet more tools to make having more material things easier is what we do. Desiring material things to show our status is what we do. Innovating, adapting, making the path of least resistance easier and easier and easier is what we do. Competing for resources is what we do. Dividing ourselves into status hierarchies is what we do. Trying to climb higher and higher up the status pyramid is what we do. And to do these things, we have created more and more tools and technologies that are requiring more and more energy and more and more raw materials, and the technologies we use are having a hugely disproportionate impact on the global environment. Put every one of the over 7 billion people on the planet together in one place, and they don’t take up much space, in terms of square mileage; we can all fit pretty neatly standing side by side in an area about the size of Los Angeles County. But our impact – the impact of our technologies, of everything we harvest and cut and mine and burn and use – is global in scale. We have pushed the bar so high that going back seems impossible.

    I know there is much, much more to it than what I have written here, but I really, truly believe that at its very core, it is the biological imperative gone to extremes that has led to the unintended consequences of humans adapting themselves into maladaptiveness. I can also have hope that our innovative, tool-making genius may save us yet. This is not the last I will have to say on this subject, but you have to start with first principles, and I believe our evolutionary history holds that position.