Saturday, September 3, 2016


279. The evolutionary advantage of cultural segregation

In preceding items in this blog I discussed the difficulty of mixing different cultures, traditions, or language games. But there is also a sunny side. From an evolutionary perspective it is a good thing.

See cultural traditions in analogy to natural species. If species could easily mingle, in cross-species breeding, differences would peter out, and evolution would stop. Mixing all colours yields a drab brown. Natural variety is preserved by the impossibility of cross-species breeding. Horses and donkeys can breed to produce mules, but that is about the extent of it.

The argument could also be used against interdisciplinarity. If disciplines could easily mix, after a time there would be no discipline left.

In nature, novelty is produced by random mutation of genes and cross-over of chromosomes in sexual reproduction. In culture, novel combinations of species can occur, but only with great difficulty, as discussed in preceding items.

An example is Protestantism arising from Catholicism, at the cost of great strife and long, bloody wars.

But if in culture cross-species breeding is so difficult, how, then, to account for the apparent global homogenization of cultures? That is not the result so much of mixing as of domination of cultures by an overpowering one. That has been the culture of consumerism and marketing, in the all-encompassing embrace of markets and the efficiency of concentration in large volumes of production and distribution of products.

MacDonaldization, Disneyfication, Shopping Mallification, and idolization of stars in sport and entertainment, enhanced by the ‘winner takes all’ phenomenon (see item … in this blog).

Evolution stalls if the selection environment can be fabricated by some unit that is being selected, in what is called ‘co-evolution’.

Researchers survive when selected in access to journals. However, ill-recognized scientific communities can escape by instituting their own journal.

In society, there has also been co-evolution. Markets have become the supreme selection mechanism, and they select for the proliferating culture of markets. Older selection mechanisms such as religion and ethics have been overruled and whisked aside.

But in its successes, the market tradition is about to crumble, with increasing revolts in several forms: nationalism, authoritarianism, religious fanaticism, anarchism, and hedonistic, money grabbing dissolution.

Democracy also is a selection mechanism, and it is now threatened by authoritarian leaders commanding and enticing support with appeals to nationalist passions and prejudices, and the fabrication of external threat from rival cultures.

Now, I may be seen to suggest that all this is cause for celebration, for rejoicing in a newly emerging diversity of cultural species. But evolution is not necessarily for the best. I do see the threat of rivalry between cultural species developing into new wars. That is already happening.

To profit rather than suffer from the emerging variety, the art and effort of mutual understanding and the formation of hybrids becomes crucial. To dismantle myths of external threat, to learn, and to reduce prejudice, to tolerate and appreciate diversity rather than stamp it out. In the preceding items in this blog I discussed the logic of how this might be done.

In this way, one might trick evolution of cultures, preventing it to proceed along a course of violent strife between rivals, by crafting some cross-species breeding, difficult as it is, without, however, falling into the stagnation of cultural homogeneity.            

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