Evolution affects human destiny

Garland Waleko

Pittsburgh Standard

The "events" of September 11, as we’ve begun to call them, have without a doubt etched themselves permanently into our consciences, leaving us to wonder, beyond the scope of the immediate future, what their impact will be. Whatever their effects culturally, morally, and politically, in our own nation and in the larger world, when viewed later through the sweep of past history and with the benefit of hindsight, they will surely have the marks of a world altering catalyst, a time between "before" and "after," a landmark in human experience. What do we do now? A book that came to mind almost immediately after the September 11th attack is one by Robert Wright entitled Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

The thesis of his work is primarily that human history and evolution, along with good old biological evolution, has a direction and a purpose, and that as societies and organisms evolve they reach higher and higher levels of complexity and organization. They cross "thresholds" from one level to another, and all of this is driven by "nonzero sum games." Game theory in this case attempts to explain interactions among people. A non- zero sum game yields positive results for both parties, like trade. Zero-sum games yield, well, a zero sum, like death to both involved. His thesis, and "god", has more to do with natural selection and the "playing" of these non-zero sum games than conventional concepts of a deity. In the end, however, he asserts a spiritual level in it all, and a world that isn’t devoid of meaning, but heading towards, eventually, a sort of moral culmination, the apex of human existence, as we know it. What does this all have to do with the current situation?

A perplexing aspect of this idea and of interest to us at this point, is the role of war in evolving complexity. Up until modern times, at least, it can be a means to non-zero sum relationships, and the crossing of the threshold from one level to another, as economics alone may not be enough to encourage people to surrender their individual freedoms to a political leader. "With war people have no choice but to pursue economic and organizational advance," Wright says. Even though it is essentially a zero-sum game, as Wright puts it, "the crevices of social organization- the zones of zero-sum contention between families or villages or chiefdoms or states- keep getting filled in by the cement of non-zero-sumness; and the zero-sumness thus displaced keeps retreating to higher levels of organization." Hence, nations work to "wage peace". This is why society evolves: to avoid war, or the threat of war, or to work war’s avoidance, we spread political influence and make the "Silk Roads" of any time safe for trade.

In terms of natural selection, what is "selected for" is more non-zero sumness, with one of the selectors being war. "If two societies are in contact for any length of time, they will either trade or fight. The first is non-zero sum social integration, the second ultimately brings it." It would seem to me that with all of this round about pursuit of what will end up as the same positive end, humanity has caused itself a lot of unnecessary suffering. Of course this was all unconscious, as chief battled other chiefs, but now we know better.....don’t we?

As more and more non-zero sum games are played, it raises the level of complexity and interconnectedness in and among societies. Once you start to trade, or engage in some other non-zero sum producing relationship with someone, you share their fate and no longer want to see them destroyed. One of Wright’s examples was the ancient Athenians, who had to "concede the humanity" of fellow non-Athenian Greeks when they united against the Persians. One can easily see that globalization and creation of a "smaller world" has the potential for worldwide non-zero sumness and as being a great reducer in the need or logic for war. In fact, at the end of his historical survey, Wright states that even though war and conflict has "ultimately elevated the human condition," it has "outlived its usefulness." He asserts that even at the beginning, war was only used to bring about the expansion of peace and technological evolution that in turn brought more freedom. "The darker side only negated its own value system."

Eerily enough, he predicts that our culture is on the verge of a transition from one of turmoil, real or imagined, to one of peaceful stasis; that we are about to jump to the next level of cultural organization and complexity. It may be helpful to remember that this book was only published last year, and this was obviously before "new developments" that could encourage necessary global reorganization. He stresses that eventually all of the instability in the modern world will yield to a new level of organization, perhaps a supranational organization reminiscent of the UN, NAFTA, the European Union, the WTO and the IMF. These prototypes will yield to entire confederations of nations and peoples, and if not a global government, he suggests, at least an "overlapping of narrow agencies possessing global reach." The result? World Peace. Or, world catastrophe. That’s the thing with cultural evolution, and Wright mentioned this repeatedly throughout. It doesn’t care who in particular gets destroyed, as long as the memes (not unlike successful, favorable cultural genes) are passed on by the conquerors or destroyers, and someone, sometime, accomplishes what the ill fated civilization could or did not. If we screw it up and continue to make the choices that impede a positive development, fractionalization and tribalism will extract their horrible consequences from the world in general as it enters a period of "transitional instability," similar to the cited situation observed in history: "as a theocratic chiefdom becomes a nation state, it is normally in a state of convulsion..."

The question Wright puts before us then is if we can make this adjustment — the one from nation to supra nation — without going into "convulsion" and paying the obvious prices of doing so. Though it could be argued that destruction was wreaked on us before we returned the favor, perhaps there is another way, besides war and destruction, to make the cultural transition that no longer requires such turmoil, at least if for nothing else than our own sakes.

With the level of organization today, simple economics and non-zero sum games would be enough, Wright points out, as with the formation of European Union. He has a few suggestions for "Saving the World."

Basic trends throughout history have yielded some results grounded in very old "dynamics of cultural evolution" that are evident in our world now.

Wright explains seven of them, but I’m going to highlight one in particular, one which upon revisiting sent shivers.

Number 6 is entitled "Jihad versus McWorld," after Ben Barber’s book by that name, and is about the paradoxical "falling apart" and "coming together" of our societies, and the ensuing "world sent spinning out of control."

In ways it seems the world is growing more tribal, inevitable says Wright, due to technological and information revolutions that have persisted throughout history and have always made it easier for groups with common interests to unite and pursue "positive sums."

Tribes range from the American Association of Retired Persons to the French Canadians who want Quebec to secede, to Islamic Militants who oppose the West and Turkish secularists.

At the same time, there is MTV in Europe and Brittany Spears in Japan. Depending on your view, Wright says, there are two places to take this, either to conclude impending chaos, or fear too much order, the imposing imagined Orwelian New World Order.

The first fears "ever more virulent tribalism: civil war, cross border ethnic strife, and terrorism- all empowered by new and deadly technologies and all in the explosive context of overpopulation and environmental stress."

But, before we panic, Wright comes back to tell us that world governance is "in the cards." Tribalism will, however, continue to grow. This does not mean that it is irreconcilable with supranational structure, but is instead, Wright asserts, integral to it, if only as a catalyst for driving the "world to the final level of political organization, the global level." This of course, can all happen without conflict, and Wright shows us the way.

First, eliminate the "super empowered-angry man," aka Osama Bin Laden, frustrated nationalists ("...there are Islamic and other religious fundamentalists who find their values threatened by modernization"), and other less ominous groups like radical environmentalists, by slowing the pace of globalization.

The "disruptive" parts of society, technology, get ahead of the "adaptive" part, culture and government. Slowing down deeply unsettling change is a "benefit worth the costs" of market slowdown. We can also build a moral connection of sorts, or see ourselves, Muslim extremists and westerners, in the same boat, and "lower the supply of ill will." This can be done he suggests, again, by slowing globalization, our probable destiny, and decreasing the demand for "material acquisition" that would "reduce the breakneck pace" of things and the "environmental havoc."

Culturally we can all be integrated into a worldwide system of governance, eventually into what Wright and others before him like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called a global brain "that can purposefully guide their course, consciously seeking worthy goals they were once blindly, often painfully driven toward." This global "organic web" a product of "a high order of natural selection" will not be easy to come upon, but it does not have to be yet another painful exercise in human history.

At this point we can control how fast, and how violently, we reach the next level and also what that might be. If Robert Wright is correct in his theory of where we stand in the historical and evolutionary scheme of things, the attacks of September could lead us to seek a higher order, a more lasting peace. But we are only given the choice it is not inevitable. We should, then, proceed carefully, in whatever we choose to do; we have a unique opportunity to take the next step. The world is waiting, but it will go on without us.

Give us your feedback on this article

View other reader's feedback