Along The Road

The Ends of the Earth

Well, not really. It is just that, over the course of the last 14 months I've driven from New York City to Homer, Alaska. Not the farthest east (I didn't start in Maine), nor the farthest west (I'm not planning to drive out the Alutian Chain), but pretty damn far. I'm actually pretty impressed with my little Honda Civic, rust, drooping bumper and all. I've driven up slope and down, through snow and creek beds, and over more than one bumpy dirt road without so much as a single breakdown, though I did have to replace an axle (it was worn out from before). Not bad for a nineteen year old car.

And, as I have pointed out before, THE END (of the earth) is not really near, though we are well on along the course of making the environment a lot less congenial to our own survival. I have my own theory as to why we are having such a hard time taking corrective action: it occurs to me that we (that is, our species) may be preparing to respond to an impending crisis. And whether it is, in fact, a crisis or not, whether it is, in fact, impending or not, if we (that is, the vast majority of homo sapiens) believe it is, we may well be preparing for it.

I've been reading The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker. Among other concepts Pinker explores is the liklyhood that humans, through the evolutionary process, have developed a number of mental facilities, including intuition and cognition, that were (and are) designed to give us a true and accurate understanding of many (most? all?) aspects of our environment, physical, social, and otherwise.

Of course, our mental facilities have also lead to the creation of today's complex technological environment, a very recent development in evolutionary terms, a development to which, therefore, we have not yet even begun an evolutionary response. We have knowledge, certainly, but that knowledge is a thin layer over the complex mental structures that developed over the course of millions of years of evolution. We are still "primitive" creatures, built to respond appropriately to conditions extant hundreds of thousands of years ago (if we hadn't responded appropriately, back then, we wouldn't be here now).

One thing most (all?) social mammals seem to have is a dominance hierachy: there is a boss dog, one rooster rules the roost, there is an alpha male among herd animals, chimpanzees...even male cats, which might be said to be hardly social, spend a considerable amount of time beating each other up to establish who has a right to some territory and, one assumes, the females therein.

The human dominance hierarchy may be more complicated, but it is unlikely that it is any less a primitive response. Dominance hierarchy has a valuable purpose in evolutionary development, giving the best adapted individual the greatest opportunity to pass along his genes, because you cannot be the strongest (physically, mentally), you can't have the necessary excess energy if you are spending most of your energy simply surviving in an inimical environment.

Humans, through technology (from primitive agruculture through super-computers), have progressively worked to eliminate the inimical aspects of the environment. Yet we still have a dominance hierarchy: those most fit to perform well in our technologically advanced environment are the most successful, in the terms of that technological environment. I think you'd find few people who would suppose that Bill Gates could beat the piss out of every other corporate CEO, or even just the CEOs of other computer companies. If physical strength and endurance were needed, these days, to run away from saber-toothed cats, for instance, it is likely that Bill and his buddies would soon be chopped liver. But saber-toothed cats disappeared long ago, and we've confined the lions and tigers to increasingly limited areas, and a facilitiy with technology, economics, corporate structure, and marketing are what get you to the top of the dominance hierarchy these days.

But what if the environment were to change radically? What if an increase in the presence of greenhouse gasses were to radically alter the capacity of humans to produce food, to obtain clean water, to protect themselves from the weather? Would Bill still come out on top? What if everyone were spending so much of their resources (time and money) simply surviving that they couldn't afford to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading to the latest version of Windows every few years? What would happen to Bill?

An important aspect of dominance hierarchy is that subordinate individuals often (always?) subordinate their needs to the needs of the dominant individual. This is especially important in survival situations, when supporting the dominant individual may be necessary to the survival, not merely of the dominant, but of the group. That cat fight, the one in which Simba established his supremacy over a particular piece of the savannah, the piece with the most abundant herd of wildebeasts, means that Bob and George had to move to the piece next door, where their survival is much less assured. They could have continued fighting until they or Simba were killed. Simba might still have come out on top, but he might have been seriously injured, lessening his chance of survival (even with all those wildebeasts), and his opportunity to pass along his genes. In their own feline way, Bob and George have subordinated their needs (for food, for dominance) to those of Simba.

So, my theory (my question) is that we humans, perceiving (rightly or wrongly, consciously or subconsciously) an impending crisis, one in which the survival of our species will be threatened, are in the process of subordinating the needs of the non-dominant among us, preparing the way for our dominant individuals to survive the crisis. (Never mind that the current dominance hierarchy, fit for our current environment, may have little or no chance in a radically altered environment.) The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Public hospitals, those that serve the poor, are "losing money" and being closed down, leaving those most in need of services with less and less access to health services. The technology gap is widening, despite Nicholas Negroponte's efforts. And even if it weren't, increasing internet access for nomadic tribesmen in Mongolia is as likely to produce additional income for Bill Gates and his buddies as it is for the nomads, probably more, as those nomads become more aware of what they've been missing and start trading their Yak butter for MP3s on eBay.

The way to ensure more survival for more people is to increase the even-ness of the distribution of resources, not to further concentrate it. And anyone who is marginally aware must be noticing that the world is trending toward inequality not egalitarianism.

Why isn't there a general outcry against this trend? Could it be that we homo sapiens are responding to an intuitive and/or cognitive understanding that we are facing imminent disaster (in evolutionary significant time, not next week), and are preparing ourselves to survive it? In his book The Great Wave, David Hackett Fischer explored price trends in northern Europe over the past 800 years or so. He observed a repeated pattern in which prices rose, and inequality increased, until some disaster happened, after which price trends leveled out and distribution of resources equalized. He notes that in each such period (the pattern repeated itself four times over the period he studied, roughly every 200 years), there was an awareness that a problem was developing. He notes that, in each period, those in charge of the economy tried to do something about it. But one thing they (and we, today) never did was to radically equalize the distribution of resources. Not surprising, really, considering the (cliche) wisdom that says what's mine is mine (I earned it), and what's yours is mine (if I can figure out how to bamboozle you out of it).

But perhaps it is also not surprising given that we are, at the root, social mammals, for whom the survival of the group (tribe, nation, race, species) is, ultimately, more important than the survival of the individual.