Water seeks its own level
To successfully address climate change, we will have to re-discover the human traits that have made us so successful as a species.
Our civic life, the public conversations that we have online and through media, seems to be trending more and more towards silos of bias, an us versus them dynamic. A lot of this, I think, has to do with the fact that sticking with those who agree with you is just really easy – it’s comfortable to be surrounded by those who support your point of view, as opposed to being called out and forced to explain or defend it in the presence of a challenge.
And so we seem to increasingly have camps based on value orientation and predisposition, which are hardened to such an extent that finding common ground often seems nearly impossible. When we gravitate towards those who agree with us, and block out or deny a voice to those who don’t, we engage in a dynamic of group reinforcement that has a deep evolutionary connection to our success as a species, but that also presents a profound weakness in the face of global problems that require global solutions, that require us to find, in other words, common ground.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently due to a conversation I had with my son, who’s in fifth grade. The through-line is a little tangential, though, so bear with me.
A few weeks ago, on our walk home after school, he was telling me about the circulatory system, which he’s learning about in school. Our conversation wound its way through the workings of the heart – how it pumps blood, where it pumps blood, how blood provides oxygen and nutrients and removes waste materials.
We thought about the unique ways this process occurs in the human body, versus that of other species, and in particular those closely related to us. The organs our heart supports, for instance, by providing energy are different in degree from those of other large primates. While it isn’t a perfect metric, our metabolic rate, or the rate at which we consume energy, is far greater than other similar species, and our brain gets the lion’s share of that.
Part of what’s happened, researchers believe, is that we’ve made physiological trade-offs that enable our particular way of apportioning energy, with a slimmed-down physique that, by consuming less energy, allows more to go to our brain, and our greater fat stores support that higher energy requirement. Other large primates, such as the Silverback Gorilla, have differentiated, to use the evolutionary term, to have very large and very muscular physiques, directing the bulk of their energy toward support of that with, accordingly, less going toward their brain.
One of the fascinating things about this dynamic is, all things being equal, on a one-to-one basis, going up against a Silverback Gorilla, a near cousin of ours in the evolutionary tree, would see us mutilated and killed, or, if we’re lucky, beating a hasty retreat. Our large brains wouldn’t make much of a difference versus their brawn in such a contest.
Obviously, their greater physical power hasn’t enabled the Silverback in the same way, or to the same extent, that our large brains have us, and the question we’re left with, which my son and I got to, is why? How have we, relatively weak as a species in one to one match ups with many other animals, been able to so thoroughly dominate them and the rest of the natural world?
The answer is relatively simple, which is that we aren’t just one, rather we are many, and, even though that holds true for other species as well, the way that we operate as a multitude, cooperatively and in concert, is what has given us such an advantage.
An increase in the number of brains isn’t a simple matter of addition, either. Where the sum total of a troop of Silverbacks is, by and large, limited by their physical capacity, the human brain is an emergent property that has, in effect, vastly sped up the evolutionary process, itself the emergent property of nature. As a result, the addition of one brain to another brain is far more than simply the sum of the two. Repeat this combination over the course of thousands and millions and billions and you’ve got something approaching the potential of a galaxy, if creativity could be transformed into spatial terms.
The immediate question this prompts, is, how? – how can one brain connect to another in a way that enables them to function cooperatively, rather than as two independent entities?
This is where I depart from the conversation I was having with my son. We’d arrived at the simple fact that human beings have benefited enormously from our ability to work together, but it’s taken me a little more pondering and working through the question to get at what follows. It might not be perfect, but I think it holds together pretty well, and it’s changed the way that I think about some of the challenges facing environmentalism.
There are two characteristics that really set us apart as a species, I think, though these are in degree, rather than in difference. (I’ve always struggled with the notion that humans are different by kind, rather than degree, from other living beings. Any good faith foray into the natural world quickly disproves this.)
The first is our ability to communicate in abstract terms, or across space and over time.
Being able to communicate in abstract terms, even to the degree that we do, isn’t enough to really explain our capacity to work together so effectively, such that a human being can live a life almost totally unimpeded by the hardships associated with living in a state of nature.
When language is combined with a sense of the common good, however, we have what I think is the second, and most crucial characteristic. Once this happens we begin to see how extended communities take shape in their care for each other – value-sets are shared across large numbers of people in the form of morality, and behaviour is prescribed in a way that maintains broad societal integrity.
What this describes is systematic altruism, a form of social organization based on agreements, commonly shared and enforced, establishing that what is good for the group, is also, ultimately, good for the individual.
Neither language nor altruism are characteristics unique to human beings, other species certainly communicate and have strong attachments to kin and tribe. The extent to which we’ve developed language, however, and our systemization of altruism, using it to displace self-interest in space and time to the benefit of our greater good, does seem to be unique to us as a species.
Simple things, like waiting at a stop light, are examples of this combination of language, or recognition of abstract symbolism, and altruism, in the form of waiting and allowing space for others to go before you. In this example, a commonly applied rule recognizes that, while it may be to an individual’s advantage to speed through the red light, it is more advantageous for society as a whole if they wait, subordinating their individual preference, until it is communicated to them that it is okay to proceed.
All around the world we see this repeated in human societies, though with some variations.
More individualistic societies, such as liberal democracies, emphasize legal systems that reflect more universal, or cosmopolitan, values, providing more room for individual expression.
Communitarian societies tend to emphasize an overarching vision of what society should be, and the role of the individual is largely in service of this.
Authoritarian regimes, in an inversion of liberal democracies, prioritize the dictates of a select few, granting little freedom to the individual. Along a continuum of systemized altruism, this is the least developed and most like an organized social structure that exists in a state of nature. (A way of understanding authoritarian regimes is, in part, to view them as a response to conditions of uncertainty.)
These hierarchical forms of organization provide a structure that directs many individuals towards similar outcomes, and are very much an example of the systematization of altruism.
There is an additional element that, I think, needs to be outlined to understand how language and altruism are able to function together in this potent mix. The ‘fitness’ of any living being, as outlined by Darwin, has to do with its ability to operate effectively within its environment.
Rather than the simplistic notion that fitness, in the Darwinian sense, is a result of physical strength, it is, instead, knowledge of the environment and of one’s place within it, and using that knowledge to make good choices, enhancing potential to survive and pass on genes, that makes the difference.
Language, or the means of communicating information related to the environment, and the altruistic act of agreeing that sacrifice is worthwhile to ensure the larger group is protected, become a risk, rather than an advantage, if the understanding they are based on with respect to the environment is wrong. The communication to the group might provoke needless panic and wasteful use of energy, and the actions, even if done in the belief they are in the interest of others, could amount to self-sabotage.
I think it’s worth considering these dynamics in our world today, at a time when there seems to be a very large question of whether we will continue to be as successful as a species as we have been in the past.
Challenges, like informational noise, in the form of dis- and mis-information, geopolitical competition that seeks to benefit select groups of people, often at the expense of others, undermine our ability to address global issues of climate change and resource depletion.
To date, our understanding of where we fit and our attachment to those around us has been linked, first at a tribal level and then, at its largest scale, to the nation state. With challenges that are global in scope, we need to conceive of ourselves in a much more broad sense, to develop a much stronger sense of human kinship at a global level.
Our vast potential for creativity and progress finds its crucible, I believe, in what can happen when we come together to overcome significant challenges. The International Space Station is an excellent example of this. But there, the goal was clear, the sense of purpose well defined. With climate change, as well many other problems that are global in scope, the noise surrounding them makes focusing on solutions difficult. And in the absence of shared understanding of the problem, apathy and disinterest, our inclination towards the easy, towards unquestioning bias and prejudice, becomes a destructive force.
As environmentalists, these three features of humanity are very much top of mind. We try to use language to communicate matters that are closely related to the collective good, and a great deal of this has to do with the impacts that we have on the environment around us.
That is why we at the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition focus so much on solutions that bring people together. We believe in the vast potential of creating community spaces in our built environment, spaces where people can come together and spaces that are far more amenable to local initiatives that enable grassroots innovation, as opposed to big box and chain stores. We believe in democratic transparency and accountability. And, we believe in basing policy on the best information possible.
Environmentalism, at its best, is really about understanding who we are in the world, and providing information that enables us to make optimal choices for success. It is an essential part, in other words, of our success as a species. If we are to overcome the challenges that we face, we need to restore our connection with one another, recognizing that we have far more that binds us than we do that separates us.
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