HOW THE CULTURAL PROCESS WE’RE IN WORKS

Note: we humans inherit not just our genes,
But our cultures, too.
So unlike all earth’s other creatures,
We enjoy two inheritances.
The human advance, however, is a cultural process

Now that we’ve taken a brief review of human history, let’s examine how it works.

In essence, and taking the broadest view, the cultural works as follows:
The more we learn, the greater our powers,
And the more we exercise these powers,
The more they change how we live and what we are.
(Even our brief history reveals this.)

Anthropologists want more detail. They claim that history describes a cultural process and that cultural evolution, or change, takes place through a complex interaction of factors. The scientists group these factors into six categories. They are (1) environmental, (2) technological and scientific (sci-tech), (3) economic, (4) social, (5) ideological and (6) attitudinal.

To simplify, all cultural change takes place essentially as follows: For one or more reasons, perhaps motivated by changes in the economy, the environment, etc., one or more individuals begin to behave in a new way. For the same or different reasons, others copy this new behavior and maintain it.

So, as will be explained, a people might be conquered and then assume the language and ways of the conqueror. Here, war would be an aspect of the social factor. Or drought, an environmental factor, could cause a people to leave their lands and take up a new way of life elsewhere. Or, as we’ll show below, a new technology, like the automobile, will cause many changes in how people live.

Cultural change over time can be explored on many different levels. For example, one could study a particular trait (characteristic) of a particular culture, perhaps the changes in this trait over a certain period of time. At another level, one might examine one culture's entire history. At still another level, one might focus on interactions between two cultures over time. Etc.

My purpose is to examine cultural change on the largest scale, the scale including all humans and all cultures from our originating hunting-gathering days up to modern times. Let us call it largest-scale cultural change (LSCC). On this scale, the cultural process differs significantly from its smaller scale components. It differs, not in the kind or number of categorical factors, but in their weight, their relative influence.

So, for example, if we were considering the causes of a particular growth or change in a hunt-and-gathering culture, sci-tech’s influence could be zero. In this particular portion of the overall cultural process, true science doesn’t exist, and technology might neither grow nor play any significant part. And furthermore, it might be irrevelant to the trait being considered.

And again, in hunt-and-gathering cultures, the environmental factor tends to dominate. These primitives must adapt to the particular plants, animals, and condition of their natural environment. The technology the Austrailian aborigine uses for hunting kangaroos won’t help the Eskimo hunt seals. As sci-tech grows through history, however, the environmental influence wanes. So today an American can live much of the same life whether in the intense heat of Death Valley?Palm Springs, in the moderate climate of San Francisco, or the chill of Fairbanks, Alaska. And note that humans up in space stations are living in an almost perfect vacuum, living where, in a sense, there’s no environment at all. The vacuum, too, is of course an environment. The point is that as technology grows, it permits humans to live quite comfortably and much the same, even though they may find themselves in increasingly inhospitable environments.

The significant difference about the large scale of cultural evolution we are considering is that at this level the sci-tech factor clearly dominates-although always in interaction with the other factors- in causing the process to be progressive.

Although sci-tech dominates, it most certainly is not an independent factor, for its growth, although following perhaps its own rules, depends crucially upon many other factors - social, economic, ideological, etc. In the social category, for example, World War II hastened many advances in science - nuclear energy, radar, etc. In the economic category, budget cuts stifled the U.S. space program and axed the Super Conductor Super Collider. In ideology, the influence of Communist dogma under Victor Lysenko led Russian biology astray. Etc.

Sci-tech is the dominant, progressive factor on the largest cultural scale for two reasons. First, it empowers: new sci-tech allows you to do something you couldn’t do before, or do so inexpensively. Second, sci-tech can grow and accumulate, and as it grows it keeps providing additional powers, and keeps changing and enlarging what a human can do.

Because of sci-tech growth, we humans, compared to Earth's other species, are almost magical. All the others are virtually restricted to the capacities they inherit, while our capacities seem capable of infinite growth (See Chapter 1). It is just this wonderful growth quality in us that has us participating primarily in a cultural rather than a biological process.

But why don’t we, like all other plants and animals, participate primarily in biological evolution? It’s because biological evolution advances as the environment (physical and social) preferentially selects those individuals with advantageous mutations, and this takes a long time - many, many generations. LSCC advances, by contrast, as cultures acquire ever-greater knowledge and so ever-greater powers, and these new powers can be transmitted rapidly. So if our eyes grow weak with age, we needn’t wait for a mutation. We can buy glasses. And no doubt in the future, if such a mutation proves desired, we will just create it.

Let’s explore in a little more detail how LSCC works.

It works like this: As the major factors noted above interact, (1) some promote the creation of new sci-tech, and these and/or other factors help establish this new sci-tech in the culture. So, if it's a new aspect of science, e.g., a more accurate measurement of the Hubble constant (the rate at which the universe expands), it becomes accepted by a growing majority of the scientific community. If it's a new technology, e.g., a better car battery, it's expressed, i.e., it's built and used. (2) The new technology perhaps starts a new industry; the more influential this industry, the more it changes the economy. (3) And the more it impacts the economy, the more it causes social change. This is because if the new technology is to work efficiently, people have to be organized in new ways, and also because the technology creates new kinds of jobs and destroys old kinds, enhancing some social groups, and perhaps diminishing others. (4) Expression of the technology will impact the environment in some way. And again, the larger the scale of use, the greater the influence on the environment.

So, to summarize the process as covered so far, a new technology is expressed, and this causes changes in the economy, the society and the environment. (5) Now, those living under these new conditions experience life differently from their predecessors. In consequence, they tend to form new attitudes and new ideologies which are more in harmony with the new realities they experience. When science appears, for example, it promotes new technologies, and it also contributes directly to new ideologies and new attitudes. For example, Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642) influenced Christian thought. Before them, Earth was thought to be the center not only of what is now the Solar system, but the center of the universe, and therefore, in a sense, central to God’s interest. But Copernicus proposed that Earth was merely one of the Sun’s planets. And Galileo, with his telescope, saw the moons of Jupiter that tended to confirm Copernicus’s views, and moreover observed that the moon, while heavenly, was certainly not perfect. (6) Finally, as all these factors constantly interact, they tend to set the stage for still more sci-tech growth, and so the process continues.

Let’s clarify this general process with a specific example. Let’s look at the automobile.
In the late 1800s, a German, Gottlieb Daimler, patents his internal combustion engine and thereafter automobiles powered this way begin to be sold to the wealthy . Then, between l908 and 1927, Henry Ford manufactures almost 15.5 million Model Ts, the price the last year is $360, $15 more if you want a bumper.

The automobile changes the economy: it creates big, dynamic new industries: one to make autos, another to provide auto parts and materials (e.g., steel), another to provide the fuel, another for service and repair, another to build roads, etc. Meanwhile, horse breeders, wagon makers and blacksmiths are pushed out of existence. Finally, the auto industry, being so large, helps create a larger, more centralized, and more integrated economy. And, of course, it creates many new jobs and new kinds of jobs.

The auto changes the environment. Fields are cut up and paved. Roads and highways dominate the landscape, often determining which environmental elements stay and which go. Cities sprawl into suburbs as the auto allows commuters to live ever farther from work. Habitats are destroyed as fields give way to houses with garages and paved driveways; exhaust pollutes the air, and oil spills pollute both ground and water. And the Model T helps modernize the American countryside, for its engines powered "everything from hay bailers to sawmills and snowplows."

The auto changes society. Urban sprawl fosters suburban life. The central city disintegrates as suburban centers for shopping and services proliferate, grow wealthy and become the focus of the surrounding mini-community. The auto weakens the family unit. It contributes to loss of unity by encouraging each member to go his separate way to work or play. Taking teenagers from their homes, it contributes to sexual freedom and diminishes familial control. " ‘It used to be a boy and a girl sat on the porch, and her parents would watch. When the Model T came along, the boy and girl could take off down the road.’" The auto fosters more distant friendships and marriage with more distant partners.

Another social consequence of the auto is that it helps expand the role and size of government. Government must now plan for and produce roads, and then maintain and police them; it must set safety standards, and defend against criminals from more distant places. As for war, because trucks can carry more men and material, they contribute to larger armies, and the truck modified into a tank creates more mobile armies, and larger battlefields. "Some World War I tanks were powered by (four).. Model T.. engines." And since these vehicles can carry more ammunition and permit greater firepower, they contribute to the increased destructiveness of war.

The auto changes attitudes. It provides a new sense of freedom. No longer must the individual wait for the communal train, and go lock-stepping where and when all the others on the train go; instead, he is free to go exactly when and directly where he wants, and by the route he wants. Also, as people travel more, they tend to live in, and identify themselves with, a larger community, and so they become less provincial, and perhaps somewhat less attached to their immediate neighborhoods.

And considering attitudes, the auto you drive, that you wrap around yourself, so to speak, like the clothes you wear or the house you live in, says something about attitude, for it tends to be a statement that you make about yourself. It tells what class you’re in and how wealthy you are. Compare the shiny, classic, chauffer-driven car with the dirty, banged up car of the traveling fruit picker. And if you drive a vehicle of popular style, you are a conformist; if your vehicle is unique - built in the 40s or covered with shells, hand-made designs, etc., you are an individualist. A convertible identifies you as sporty, a car of superb design that you are discerning, and as advertisers keep promising, your car may even indicate how sexy you are. This author has been amused to note something else. When driving to an intersection in an upscale model, the other drivers often defer, letting him pass through first. When driving an old car, however, they often sped through first as though he weren’t there. As for the ideological factor, the car appears to exert little, if any, influence.

Finally, all these interactions in turn create a condition that rewards and therefore contributes to still more sci-tech growth. Autos contribute to the development of better engines, new materials (e.g., rubber tires, plastics, paints), and new manufacturing techniques (e.g., mass production and team production), etc. In ways such as this, the progressive sci-tech factor, interacting with the other factors, grows, and so helps keep the LSCC process advancing.

We can summarize the process this way: sci-tech grows in interactive response to the other categorical factors - economic, social, environmental, ideological, and attitudinal. And sci-tech's growth, in turn, pressures the other chief factors to interactive response. The new sci-tech and these changes, in their turns, tend to set the stage for still more sci-tech growth. In short, as sci-tech keeps growing, culture tends to progress. It progresses because growing sci-tech keeps enlarging human powers, and so it transforms to an increasingly greater degree what we do and, perhaps eventually, even what we are.

Now that we’ve examined how the process we’re in works, let’s see how we can use this knowledge to look into humanity’s future.

>Next Two Simplifications

© Warren A. Musser 2005