We humans are unique among all of earth’s species in a number of ways. One of our diagnostic differences is the extent to which we’ve taken cultural evolution. It’s not that no other species use cultural evolution to their advantage. It’s that humans have taken it
to its extreme.
· When we humans first ventured into the colder Northern Hemisphere, instead of evolving larger overall size and thick fur coats, we invented clothing and discovered how to carry fire.
· To become more efficient hunters, instead of evolving sharper teeth and claws, we invented weapons like spears and axes.
· And instead of relying on the number of calories per m2 of land provided by nature, we invented (discovered?) agriculture, which massively increased the calorie to area ratio.
Instead of relying on slow genetic evolution, we humans resort to the much more rapid cultural evolution. This allows us to solve the same evolutionary/ecological conundrums other species have to solve, but at a much faster rate than they can. But it also comes with costs.
One of the most consequential attributes of cultural evolution is its
rapidity. In stark contrast to the emergence and proliferation of genetically evolved adaptations, processes that take many generations to occur, culturally evolved adaptations can crop up and gain widespread adoption
within the lifetime of a single individual.
An anatomically modern hunter-gatherer human is using a smooth, easily-gripped rock to crack open his share of nuts. A second human, nonchalantly watching the first, makes the astute observation that the stone’s nut-cracking capacity would increase were it put at the end of a stick. By increasing the distance form the fulcrum, leverage increases. In this particular instance, more leverage means more power output per unit energy input. Making nut-cracking a less energy intensive job! (Not that it’s very energy intensive. I only use this as an example to illustrate the point.)
After making the necessary modifications, and using the new leveraged nut-cracking tool for some time, a third human makes yet another astute observation. He sees the connection between nut-cracking, and the head-bashing behaviour he engages in whenever inter-tribal warfare occurs. He weaponises the nut-cracking tool and turns it into a devastating bludgeon.
All it took for the evolution of a rock to a head-bashing bludgeon was a series of observations, iterations, and improvements. And all within the lifetime of a single individual!
From the perspective of the first tribe to have innovated this new weapon, life is good, since they now effortlessly defeat enemy tribes whenever it comes to inter-tribal warfare. However, form the perspective of enemy tribes, this innovation is catastrophic. They now suffer many more losses at war than they otherwise would have. This technological innovation has serious consequences, both positive and negative, depending on the perspective you take.
Of course, the real world is much more complex than our hypothetical scenario. But I hope the above example illustrates just how rapid and consequential cultural evolution can be.
· Hyper-novelty is a term coined by the authors Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein in their book “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21
st Century” (Heying H., 2021). It refers to the rapid rate of change that now outstrips our species’ capacity to adapt to said change. The
amount of novelty in our environment is
itself novel. Humans have never experienced such rapid change in so short a time. This rate of change surpasses our biological capacity to adapt, either genetically or culturally.
· Hyper-normal stimuli are highly concentrated stimuli that raise your body’s baseline expectation after continual exposure.
· Expropriation of the senses (Linden, 2020) is the idea that our evolved sense organs are no longer sufficient for detecting risks and hazards in our modern threat landscape. Risk has become so hyper-novel that we are blind to the potential danger it poses as the organs we would normally use to detect risk are no longer up to the task.
I’d imagine many of our uniquely modern ailments could be put down to disruption of ancient biological systems by hyper-novelty. The evolutionary mismatch between our biological design, and our novel environment can lead to a number of preventable diseases (Randolph M. Nesse, 1995). Were we, as a society, inclined to thoroughly investigate this New Landscape of Threats, much of what currently baffles modern medicine would become clearer.
A major problem we must confront is that of hyper-specialisation. It encourages a siloed form of thinking, which itself encourages an Us Vs. Them dynamic between fields and disciplines. Obviously, this form of thinking is not conducive of fully comprehending the predicament we find ourselves in.
As people becoming aware of our hyper-novel landscape of threats, we’re lucky, because we can give ourselves permission to learn as widely and broadly as possible. If we understand the dangers of hyper-specialised thinking, we can formulate in our minds a picture of our world
were we to continue on this trajectory. By extrapolating and projecting into the future, we should be able to see how our world only becomes
more confusing, polluted, and dangerous as we continue to encourage narrow, specialised approaches. This is extremely motivating, as it pushes us from behind towards a more desirable vision of the future.
The relentless pursuit of adequate answers to some of our most pressing environmental/ecological problems is difficult on the best of days. Made even more so by bad-faith actors who actively distort the reality of our situation for the sake of profit (Naomi Oreskes, 2011). Our ultimate goal is to see the precariousness of our situation
for what it is. No bullshit.
Coupled with the potentially catastrophic situation humanity will face were we to continue on our current trajectory pushing us from behind, an enticing vision for the future should be pulling us from in front. This vision will look different in its particulars for everyone. But there should be convergence with regards to the overall generalities each vision possesses.
For me, I sometimes like to imagine the crystallisation of a more beautiful alternative future as being catalysed through the tenacious work of a rag-tag, idiosyncratic, somewhat picaresque population of fringe humans:
the self-elected post-industrial new gypsies. These people are Bohemians, and simultaneously function in cooperation with, and antagonistic to, mainstream society. These new gypsies (of which I consider myself!) are those who voluntarily opt-out of mainstream society
not with an eye towards creating an ineffective hippie commune, but instead with an eye towards establishing a parallel polis (Václav Benda, 1988). An independent society that will seamlessly pick up the reigns where mainstream society inevitably drops them and crumbles. I will expand upon this idea in a piece for another day (called something along the lines of “Carving Out a Sensible Corner of the Internet.”
Across all 4 of The Most Basic Basics we are faced with the challenge of hyper-novelty. The rapid rate of change in these fundamental areas of our lives now outstrips our species’ capacity to adapt. Everything is changing so fast that we can no longer keep up. We’re like the Red Queen, forced to run ever faster just to remain in the same place!
Humans are deeply social creatures. For many thousands of years, face-to-face communication in close proximity where body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice were all perceived in combination with the content of conversation, was the established norm.
With the post-WW2 growth of mass media (as distinct from social media) the way we distributed and received information radically changed. Whereas before, information was disseminated through discussion and dialogue within a relatively small group of participants, where
everyone’s contribution could be heard and accounted for if they so pleased. With mass media, the environment for information sharing changed from a relatively small group where everybody’s opinion could be heard, to a relatively large group where there was a single source of
unidirectional information dissemination. This one-to-many format was facilitated by the widespread distribution of TVs and radios to every household. And the main source of information became those entities with enough money and will to purchase airtime.
The main format of information dissemination has once again changed (within the lifetime of some individuals! Hello hyper-novelty!) With social media, although we’re still in the process of figuring out how best to wield this technology for information dissemination and exchange, it’s already having an undeniable effect on social discourse.
Should the current effects of social media on social discourse remain the same, it’s easy to foresee catastrophe. The behemoth companies that run the social media platforms currently adhere to a business model that optimises attention for maximum profit. In optimising for the attention metric, a slew of negative unintended consequences crop up. Polarisation of the general public, re-emergence of Us Vs. Them-style thinking, and mindless scrolling to name but a few. Were these effects to continue indefinitely into the future, societal collapse would surely follow in tow?
It is incumbent upon we WEIRD individuals who constitute our culture to steer the direction our technological innovations take us in. Without the active participation of conscious citizens in guiding how the internet should affect our thoughts, speech, and actions, the business model of the behemoth companies who run the platforms will. That business model involves limbic hijack, and the rendering of an otherwise rational human mind into a mindless scrolling machine, incapable of pulling itself away from the addictive content it is being fed.
In a future post “Carving Out a Sensible Corner of the Internet” I hope to more fully address this problem. For now, suffice it to say our technology shapes our biology. It is up to us to wake up to the threat of mindless robotic monotony, and consciously participate in the evolution of social interactions towards a more desirable future.
This one’s somewhat easier to expand upon, because most people are at least vaguely aware of the negative effects certain extremely tasty foods have on our bodies. But why, if they taste so good, are they bad for us? Shouldn’t
good taste be a proxy for
good nutrition?
Yes! It should! And it was! But not anymore. In an ancestral environment we could trust our taste receptors to detect whether or not the foods we consumed were good for us. In our hyper-novel modern world, such trust would be misplaced and detrimental to our health.
But why is taste no longer an accurate indicator of nutrition?
In an ancestral environment, certain compounds found in foods (like sugar and fat) were indicative of energy-rich, nutrient-dense foods. Other compounds (like salt) could only be found in small quantities. As a result of this, the human body evolved a greater sensitivity to these compounds, in the form of taste receptors specifically designed for detecting these compounds. Whenever these compounds were detected, a reward circuit would be initiated, and a good sensation would follow. This is the body’s way of rewarding evolutionarily advantageous behaviour.
However, these taste receptors, and their link to reward circuitry, have been gamed in hyper-novel modernity. Foods that are engineered and optimised for sugar, fat, and salt content are made readily available to us. But they lack the substantive nutrition those compounds would otherwise indicate in an ancestral environment. These compounds can no longer be trusted as proxies for nutrition, as we humans have cleverly figured out means by which to artificially increase their concentrations. Without acknowledging that the reason they taste good is because of the substantive nutrition they
used to be accurate proxies for.
The good news is that we can re-train our palate to prefer substantive nutrition over hollow mouth pleasure. It takes an awful lot of will power at first, because of how highly addicted we are to the artificial, engineered food-like substances we’ve come to love. But it’s well worth it.
There was a time when sleep was relatively simple and straightforward. When the sun was up, we moved, when the sun went down, we slept. Our bodies have evolved physiological mechanisms to remain in tune to this simple, but elegant, rhythm.
For example, our bodies know to dump cortisol into the bloodstream first thing in the morning to help wake us up and get us moving. And the release of melatonin from the pineal gland indicates the onset of evening, and time to wind down just before sleeping.
A number of our biological systems (endocrine, digestive, nervous, etc.) are involved in the complex process of tracking circadian rhythm. Is it any wonder then that, given how disruptive hyper-novel modernity can be for each of these systems in isolation, some of us find sleep difficult to slip into?
Many physiological systems are at play when it comes to initiating and maintaining good sleep. It would be useful to pinpoint one or two of these systems that might be preventing your properly sleeping. Have you a history of endocrine problems? Is your appetite normal? Have you any issues with your nervous system? Although it might seem distantly related to your sleep problem, issues in these separate physiological systems might be major causes of your not being able to sleep.
Also, there are certain circadian cues you’d do well to align yourself with. Getting sun first thing in the morning helps to recalibrate your circadian clock, making falling to sleep later on that evening easier. Allowing adenosine to build up is another cue. Caffeine blocks adenosine build-up, thereby inhibiting the onset of important physiological cascades needed for good sleep.
In an ancestral environment, movement was a necessity. In our hyper-novel modern world, movement has become an option. Society has “progressed” to a point where an individual can live a life of
absolutely minimum movement. Living a mostly sedentary lifestyle hunched over their PC, from which they can work
and order food to be delivered. What a dream!
But unfortunately for some, we humans will never be able to realise this sedentary dream as long as we remain constrained by our current biological form. Although it might be inconvenient for some, our biology demands at least a minimal amount of movement to remain healthy. Without this bare minimum of physical movement, our bodies begin to turn in on themselves. Muscles atrophy, and joints begin to harden and become stiff. Pent-up energy stores that would otherwise have been expended outwardly through physical exercise turn inward, and wreak havoc on the mind. A future piece called “Battery Full of Lunacy” will address this more fully.
The rate of change in how we humans live day-to-day has changed massively since ancestral times. This change has occurred so rapidly that our bodies have failed to adapt (hello again hyper-novelty!) Perhaps in 1000 years’ time, when enough people with slouched bodies, atrophied muscles, and square eyes have mated and produced offspring, then the sedentary dream could be realised. But until that day, our current biological forms demand some sort of physical movement to remain vital and healthy.
Understand that movement/exercise is
not an option. It’s a biological necessity. In another piece (“Battery Full of Lunacy”) I will expand upon this point. Suffice it to say that you must choose an outlet for energy expenditure. Or else the energy allocated by your body to physical demands will turn inward and begin eating you up from the inside out!
