We are people through other people

What Drives Us?
We are people through other people (Bantu proverb)

Homo economicus and Homo geneticus

Two widespread perceptions or theories interpret or explain all human efforts and motivation from one single factor. One is socio-biology, which sees human agency as just a reflection of the selfish interest of genes to multiply, and the other is economicism and the invisible hand, which interprets all human actions as motivated by economic stimuli; that is, all traits that are ‘profitable’ will be chosen and will ultimately dominate. These two theories are not contradictory. Socio-biology is perhaps more applicable at the private level and economicism at the societal level. The more extreme proponents of both theories try toexplain all human behaviours with their respective theory, for instance that we chose partners on the basis of economic considerations alone.

Socio-biologists, with some support from the theory of natural selection, consider egoism of genes to be the engine of all developments and actions. They don’t deny that people can act altruistic but explain altruism as something that is driven by egoism in the first place.The fact that young men waste their genes as canon feed in a meaningless war—or in a dignified battle for freedom for that matter—is explained by the fact that they (or rather their DNA) can ‘count’ on the genes of their sisters being spread and, in such way, their own genes can live along. Or some other far-fetched explanation. 

That the world is not filled by rapists cannot be well explained by this theory but can well be understood with a societal perspective of human beings. If the desire for rape were genetic, only through a systematic killing of the infants born out of rape could it be contained, especially if there were no societal mechanisms against it (and such an infanticide would again be a societal response). Socio-biologists also fail to explain why women in high-income countries don’t have so many children. They could manage to raise four, and well up to ten, children and all would survive, spreading their genes much more effectively than with the current two children. Despite all these objections, it is quite clear that many human actions can be explained on rather simple evolutionary grounds—anything else would be sensational.

Simpleton economicists and their popularizers want to explain all human actions by economic drivers. Also, many Marxists tend to see the acts of different groups to be fully dependent on their economic standing in relation to as opposed to production factors—here the concept of ‘class’ is critical. The reasoning goes from self-evident things to very cumbersome explanatory models. History shows that economic motives and personal gain were in no way important drivers before capitalism. Material wealth has, for sure, always been attractive, but social status and power have always been more important. And economic wealth was not the route to these; many cultures despised trade and entrepreneurship. 

The basic error is the perception that economic drivers are superior to all other drivers and that all other drivers can be ‘translated’ into money. If one studies certain periods in history one might indeed get this impression. The strength in the reasoning is that the economic driver is a forceful paradigm with many self-reinforcing loops. And as a society is built along this paradigm, human beings consciously and subconsciously create a world that rewards exactly this; in such a way it becomes self-fulfilling. But this is not truer than the statement that the most important driver for human development is the ability of an individual to throw a spear farther than anyone else. This ability was most likely very important in a hunter society or a war society, much more important than the ability to amass wealth.

Even the liberal economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (2001) notes in his famous The Road to Serfdom, an attack on both fascism and socialism, that the ultimate objectives of a rational person are never economic; that there is no ‘economic motive’, but only economic factors that influence our ability to achieve other goals. Another version of economicism is the idea of ‘rational choice’ , that is, the idea that one can find a rational explanation to all human deeds. Also, this idea is to some extent totally self-evident and totally meaningless in the sense that irrational choices most certainly will lead to failure in the long run as this is more or less the definition of ‘irrational’; if it is successful it isn’t irrational . . .

The arguments of the economists and socio-biologists can complement each other and don’t necessarily contradict each other. Also, the economists and socio-biologists are often the same people, or the same people use their arguments alike. If economic wealth also leads to higher levels of reproduction, they most certainly complement each other. While there are some indications that success is attractive, it doesn’t seem to translate into rich people or rich societies having more children than poor people or poor societies. Modern population patterns seem to support a totally opposite view. The poor have more children and today they also have more surviving children. Both theories forget the importance of the social and cultural context.

We are tamed by culture

Many look towards animals for guidance on which behaviours are ‘natural’, with the

understanding that what is ‘natural’ is good or right or, at least, inevitable. And, for sure, many interesting parallels exist between human and animal behaviour. But the search in nature for examples of certain behaviours is often coloured by what people want to see. For some reason, many tends to look a lot more towards chimpanzees than bonobos. Both species are equally close to human beings, so why are comparisons drawn mainly with the aggressive chimpanzees? Chimps live in aggressive patriarchates whereas bonobos live in matriarchates, using sex for social interaction and conflict resolution. While social hierarchies do exist among bonobos, rank plays a less prominent role than in other primate societies. Isn’t it so that human beings project what they want to see in the examples they seek? Space doesn’t allow any major digression into gender, but if there is any area where the most meaningless comparisons with nature are made, it is here. Even human reproduction is described in terms of male activity and female passivity, while reality might be quite different.

Nature has such diversity that one can find almost any behaviour there.The long adolescence of a human being is long and slow for a (evolutionary) reason. Whileone can envision human beings growing up in a few years, like horses or cows, or in half a year, like dogs or pigs, in reality human beings need a lot more time. A newborn chimp’s brain weighs around 60% of a grown-up chimp’s brain, whereas a newborn human’s brain weighs just 24% of an adult human’s brain (Gärdenfors 2003). It takes human beings some 12–18 years to grow up, and this time frame seems to get longer as society becomes more and more complex. Humankind has to learn so many things and, more importantly, human beings need to be ‘socialized’. Some even qualify the human brain as a bio-cultural organ (Weltzer 2011), with layers of accumulated cultural learning. Through culture, society harnesses and adapts some genetic heritage.

For instance, let us look at reproduction. In almost all cultures, human beings wait to reproduce long after they reach sexual maturity; in many societies, parents try—admittedly, sometimes unsuccessfully—to control their offspring’s choice of mate. Most rules and customs in society are mainly about the preservation of society and not so much about biology. Ultimately, behaviours that are taught must, in the end, be considered as ‘natural’ as other behaviours that are more clearly genetically conditioned, and they areas much or as little ‘good’ as behaviours that are genetically conditioned. Society andculture are a part of the human species. Without society, without culture, without the mastering of fire or without language (which is a very good example of a social innovationthat is essentially human), we are simply not human beings one is simply not a human being. 

Therefore, the argument that genetically conditioned behaviours are more important or more ‘real’ than culturally conditioned behaviours is a denial of humanity. This is not incontradiction to the survival of the genes because human genes are most common with those of the family, then with those of society and, finally, with those of humanity at large. It is also not in contradiction to the human quest for utility as individuals, which the

economists claim is the predominant force. Human society and cultures recognize both behaviours but have always reined in their forces.

Mutual aid

The Russian geographer, and anarchist, Peter Kropotkin wrote Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) in response to ‘social Darwinism’ and, in particular, to Darwin’s supporter Thomas H. Huxley’s essay ‘The struggle for existence in human society’ (1891), where Huxley applied Darwin’s observations to human society, citing ‘survival of the fittest’ as the predominant force in shaping human society and development. Kropotkin was strongly against Huxley’s perspective. He supported Darwin’s theories about natural selection, but believed that, at least in Huxley’s version, it overemphasized the struggle between individuals of the same species. Kropotkin looked at other animals, but in particular at human society, and claimed that mutual aid is an important principle both in nature and in human development. He cited the cooperation in mediaeval cities, in village communities and workers’ cooperatives as successful examples of mutual aid. He showed how such self-organized voluntary systems operated the fisheries in the Caspian Sea, the Volga and the Urals.

And today, open-source software development is a good example of the successful application of mutual aid. ‘Perhaps in the end the open-source culture will triumph notbecause cooperation is morally right or software “hoarding” is morally wrong . . . , but simply because the closed-source world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem’ (Raymond 2000).

Recently, Sloan Wilson (2003) showed the importance of human cooperation (among others in the form of religion) in his book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. He gives an example to better understand how ‘groups’ or ‘societies’ can be ‘adaptive units’, that is, subject to ‘laws’ of evolution at the level of the group and not only at the level of the individual. Males of some species can kill infants in order to mate with the mothers. This would be, and is, a successful reproduction strategy for them, but not for the mothers, the infants, the group or the species. Human beings (human society) have a moral revulsion against such practice and the person trying it would be excluded from the group. Such a group would be better adapted and more successful than a group that did not have such moral codes. In this way, moral systems have evolved by group selection to suppress self-serving (but group-damaging) behaviours. Sloan Wilson notes, however, that ‘those groups of males who do not kill each other’s offspring might well kill the offspring and appropriate the females from other groups’ (2003: 38). This puts the solidarity of us our own group (people, tribes whatever category) and our hostility

towards ‘the other’ in an understandable evolutionary context. One can lift the discussionone level higher though, where the survival of the entire species depends on the human ability to adapt to new situations (such as climate change). Such a situation would then assign adaptive group properties to the whole species and be a ground for universalism.

All these are just examples of  that societies also are evolutionary, adaptive organisms, where the cooperation of individuals are almost as important as the cooperation of cells within the body.

The unit of survival is not the individual

Perhaps it would have been wiser or better to have grown a thick fur than to have built houses, and to have developed more body fat and flippers to swim better, but that was not the adaptive response of humankind. I venture that the speed of human development and the complexity of human society don’t allow for a sufficiently rapid genetic adaptation of the individual. Gregory Bateson says: ‘the unit of survival is a flexible organism-in-its-environment’ (2000: 457). I believe that ‘environment’ should here be understood to encompass ecosystems,

but also culture and society; all of these work together as adaptive responses, and it is only by taking care of all of them that one we can meet the challenges of the future.

How to change complex systems?

Donella Meadows describes in the paper Leverage Points, Places to intervene in a System where we shall intervene if we want to change a system (ecological, economic or social) on different levels. She lists twelve different ways (in reversed order of their impact)

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards)
11. The size of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows (say the treasure of a state)
10. Structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport network, population age structures)
9. Length of delays, relative to the rate of system changes (like building a new nuclear energy system)
8. Strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the effect they are trying to correct against (such as welfare systems or property taxes as means to re-distribute wealth)
7. Gain around driving positive feedback loops (housing bubbles or eutrophication of a lake)
6. Structure of information flow (who does and does not have access to what kinds of information)
5. Rules of the system (such as incentives, punishment, constraints)
4. Power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure (like in human cultures, in nature or even the human body)
3. Goal of the system (such as making profit)
2. Mindset or paradigm that the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters - arises out of (“we build skyscrapers because we believe that space in downtown cities is enormously valuable” says Meadows)
1. Power to transcend paradigms (Meadows 1999)

One can discuss single things in her outline, e.g. I am less convinced of the potency of information. I find that we live in a constant flow of information which doesn't change a lot. Still, by and large it is a helpful way of looking at our situation, as well as understanding the limits of normal “muddling through” political processes, so I follow her outline below. The points at the top are fairly easy to manipulate, but alas, they are not very efficient or important, Nevertheless, daily politics are about the level of a particular tax or the budget for this or that purpose (#12). I find the discussion around the negative and positive feedback loops particularly relevant, especially as I think we can see how important the positive loops are. In the social sphere we see housing or stock market bubbles as typical examples; increasing prices drive expectations of future increases, people borrow and banks lend all based on the assumption that prices will continue to rise, but around the corner the inevitable collapse lurches. Almost all actors know it is a bubble, but as long as you are not in the wrong end of the chain you can continue, and gain from it. In capitalist societies with no re-distribution policies the rich get richer and the poor poorer, through several mutually reinforcing feed back loops.
Monopolies also seem to be driven by positive feed back loops. We discussed earlier how there might be many positive loops related to climate change (such as melting of the permafrost). It is largely by introduction of societal negative feedback that the processes can be kept checked. Other negative loops are taxes on pollution, the polluter-pay-principle. The governor of a steam engine is another such example, the faster it rotates, the less fuel will be supplies; a simple self-corrective device. The negative loops are thus more of a “regulating” nature, while the positive loops threaten the stability of the system. Therefore, we need to pay a lot of attention to such tendencies. Meadows say: “A system with unchecked positive loops ultimately will destroy itself. That's why there are so few of them...if you keep raising the capital growth rate in the world model, eventually you get to a point where one tiny increase more will shift the economy from exponential growth to oscillation. Another nudge upward gives the oscillation a double beat. And just the tiniest further nudge send it into chaos” (Meadows 1999).

The rules of game and the power over those rules (#5) are apparently very important. Our whole economic system rests on a legal protection of property and a violent state to enforce it. Another such cornerstone is democracy and liberties. There is no coincidence that countries constitutions are a classical battleground for ideologies, and also that it is not changed so easily. In many earlier society religion supplied those rules, but as the religious hegemony withers (in some countries at least) they don't play that role any longer. The question today, is not what is the best thing to do within the rules as they are. The question is how we can get away from the rules we have been operating since the birth of industrial capitalism.
To challenge, the goals of a system, or even simply to ask what they are (!), can be very powerful. Most systems have evolved over a long time, in small steps, from a set of original goals, but mostly those goals are not present in the everyday discourse, many people don't know them, and perhaps they don't agree to them. To question them can be a seed of change. These kinds of questions most likely played a rather great role for the fall of the Soviet Union: when the difference between the actual situation (little freedom, low quality of life and drudgery) and the stated goals (solidarity and a non-exploitative society) became too apparent and too big the credibility of the system collapsed. In the end, we humans seem to like to be soothed and believe things will work out, but at a certain stage, when we lose faith in what is going on, only the most extreme oppression can contain our wrath. Today, we can ask if the purpose of the capitalist market economy is to create immense wealth for a few through profits or if it is to create wealth for us all, or happiness for us all, or freedom. Can anyone still remember? Did you choose to live in this society?

To go a step further and to change our patterns of thinking is what is called a shift in paradigm, which can be accomplished by pointing out again and again that the current one is leading us astray, or that another one is more appealing. I lose Meadow's thought when she goes one step further with her last point which is about totally transcending paradigms; to realize that no paradigm is true; that the universe is immense and goes well beyond human comprehension. In this stage we can “live in constant joy, bring down empires, found religions, get locked up, “disappeared” or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia” (Meadows 1999) .

Donella H. Meadows (1941 - 2001), American environmental scientist, teacher and writer. Lead author of groundbreaking, and criticized, book of the Club of Rome The Limits to Growth.

Whose nature?

When we discuss environmental destruction. we should keep in mind that exploitation of nature is also a question of whose nature. Different groups are affected by destruction of nature in different ways, and normally nature of the weaker is destroyed while the nature of the rich is preserved. This leads some to believe that the rich "care more" for the environment or that it is first when there is a certain wealth that humans "can afford" to care about nature, but this mixes up cause and effect to a large extent. The rich can exploit the nature of the poor and even export their waste to the poor, while the poor has no other option than exploitation of nature, be it in the form or their nature resources or in the form of their own labour. There are more "stuff" moving to the rich from the poor than the other way around; many dirty industries have moved to poor countries. To some extent the whole trick of modern civilization is about exploitation of nature; exploitation of historical production, of which fossil fuel is the primary example; exploitation of the future nature, by dumping waste. But it is also the history of a few people exploiting many other people. The fight for saving the environment and for a more just world are therefore intrinsically linked, it is basically the same fight.

We are part of society and society is part of us.

"We are governed and driven by our DNA, our brain and by our culture. It is all about information. DNA is coded information which governs some, but not all of our actions. Our brain receives impulses from the inside or the outside and processes this information and take action to improve our chances of survival. It does that in sync with our genes, but not as a slave under our genes. Our culture is the collective memory of who we are, where we came from and where we are heading. This memory, this information also guides a lot of our actions. We are formed by culture during our upbringing and in this way each generation is adapted to the prevailing culture. There is always an element of revolt as well, young generations opposing the ruling ideas and experimenting with new ideas or new ways of living. This can be seen similar as mutations on the gene level, ensuring variation and that development will take place.

In this way culture and society are rather extensions of our human bodies; we don’t really exist without it. The lonely able savage (as depicted e.g. by Rousseau) or his later followers are constructions, we were never alone. Without society we are as helpless as an ant without his anthill or a bee without a hive. Few of us would have the force, like the queen bee to establish a new colony. It is like that we should see society (not to be confused by the state), like an organism. Society is the organisational form so to say and culture is the information in its wider sense (including religion, economy etc.).

Therefore, we can’t pitch the individual against society. Sure there will be, and has always been, a tension between the independence of the individual and the demands of submission of society (I am myself an example of an individual that most reluctantly submit myself to the demands and expectations of society) – but this tension is part of the project of being a human. To see ourselves and society as integral parts of being human is a first step in thinking about how we can build a better world. And they are in contrast to (not negating, but transcending) both the socio-biological idea that we only act in the self-interest of our genes and the capitalist ideology of that each person acts as an individual in order to increase his or her direct benefits."


I am busy writing the English version of my book Garden Earth, the above is an extract from it.

The state and the market - two competing institutons

In politics there is often a gap between those that want that a problem should be regulated by the state or by the market. The former are often socialist and the latter liberals, somewhat simplified. One can view both the state and the market as social institutions that regulate the relationship between people. Which institution you like the best may depend on how it is organised and which context you are in. The same person that is sceptical to market solutions may feel fully at ease and on an equal footing with the farmer from which she buys her organic veggies, and may think that it awful that the government forces him to keep her chicks inside because of bird flu or that he has to spend a lot of money to invest in a new packing shed for the veggies to comply with government regulations. And she that is against "big government" may demand that governments step in and take over bankrupt banks or support ailing car industries.Not to speak of that they often support big tax-financed repressive forces (military and police).

In shape and form the market and the state are very different. We, as citizens have very little access to the state, our role is to pay taxes and regularly cast a vote for who should rule us. The market on the other hand is a lot more participatory and at least in theory we are all equal (admittedly a bit theoretical). The market can be seen as a social network, and with that view the difference to the state is less. And it becomes even less when governments, like they increasingly do, take over the management methods and organisational principles from them market place; the language of the market place (we all heard government agencies speaking about clients and customers) and finally purchase a lot of its services in the market place.

The problem with the market is mainly that those that already have the upper hand, those with better information or better bargaining power gets a better deal most of the time and that the gaps tend to increase rather than decrease. Government take-over of markets have been disastrous most of the time, but the market take-over of government is almost as bad. The main challenge for the future lies not only in improvement of the workings of the market and improvements in democracy and finding the right balance between market and state. I believe it lies as much or more in the development of new institutions that will take over relevant parts of what is now done by either market or state.

Herein lies the real opportunity for change.