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This book is supposed to be an analysis of human ecology. As
with any specie, this must include a description of the species
energetic and reproductive characteristics. Ecologically, it can
be looked at as that reproduction is what a specie does with
energetics. What is different for humans, is that another
catagory must be described. That is beliefs. This is to discuss
human beliefs in ecological terms.
A computer without software is a heavy box.
The skeleton, by itself, is a dry dead thing, far to rigid
to move. The addition of muscles and ligament give it the
movement and semblance of life. Thanx OSC. A human without experience,
knowledge or belief is just as effectively inert as the skeleton.
Neither a computer or a human can function without software. We
act only on beliefs. This book was started based on a belief
related to the question of why any other different person was
different from myself. The question immediately became a question
about the different peoples and strategies in the context of
massive changes in the human world. Finally the question becames
very basic but in a very broad context. It is survival, in both
the individual and the social sense. How can humans survive into
the future? The question and the answer are both based on belief.
Note that this section could just about as well refer to
values, knowledge, strategies, moralities or some label other
than belief, to help in producing a useful description of what
goes on in a persons head, but belief is the word used here.
Behaviors are actions. Beliefs are what a person acts upon. You
may find yourself avoiding some action, because it may violate
your beliefs, even though you are not clear enough on your
beliefs to be sure. Moralities are collections of beliefs that
comprise a complete survival strategy. So belief, is the word.
Belief is a real and important element in any biological
view of humans.
Belief is quite a word. It can be technical knowledge,
accepted knowledge or even faith. It could be the words of
Buddha, Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Copernicus, Marx or it can be
techniques for child raising or sanitation. All are elements of
our survival. Belief and value equate with education and learned
knowledge. In the past, almost all education has come from the
family. Not just socialization was taught by the family, son
followed father in occupation and was taught as his father. The
daughter learned the skills of her mother. Belief is not only
consequential, it is also the key to survival in totally new
circumstances or niches.
What was the consequence of belief systems in history? The
worship of fertility. The worship and techniques of war and
conquest. Beliefs in the pre-Christian gods. The beliefs of the
Patriarchal God of the Hebrews.
In that this is to examine how humans can respond to changes
in the ecology and how to create a new ecology, certain issues
get greater focus. Perhaps a useful description to define the
changes that humans are adapting to would be that, formerly a
parent just had to teach what they knew and valued. Now a parent
must teach a child to look and to judge, as well as to accept the
parents knowledge. As a result of physical and media
communication, every individual is exposed to a wide variety of
moral systems.
This is to discuss and catagorize human beliefs and
behaviors in a systematic way. It is extremely difficult to do
this in a useful form. Just as the beginning and end of this
book, a discussion of human beliefs must be oriented around
morality. So the format of this chapter is to give some
preliminary discussion of the nature of beliefs and how humans
believe, then it goes directly to discussion of beliefs in the
context of morality.
Later, other ways of organizing beliefs are listed and used.
these include:
1. History of Conciousness describes human beliefs as they
developed through time and history.
2. A list of human institutions. These are considered to be
multi-generational belief systems.
3. Archetypes are stories that illustrate human circumstance
and consequence. They are formed such as to communicate complex
meanings, but they are human meanings and so they are designed to
mean much to a human mind.
One type of belief set that we can use is archetypes.
Normally, there is only so much variety of
experience. Most relevant experiences can be categorized. As a
matter of fact, ancient Greeks extensively described
personalities and events as these standard archetypes that any
person might encounter. This method of understanding is based on
learning and experience. It is a very effective way for humans
to understand and represent the world around them.
The Mind
this must lead to a discussion of morality
nature of the mind physiology
nature of thinking - rational
- memes and mindsets
institutions
cooperation
morality - mention place of religion
Some Basic Premises
The most basic of all behavioral tools that humans have is
the mind. All behaviors and beliefs are based on potentials and
limitations of the human brain.
The basis of human survival strategy is cooperation. This is
going to be constantly balanced with self interest and
competition, but all human behaviors, especially related to
survival, are going to relate to cooperative potentials.
It has been widely believed for a long time, that the human
brain is a completely general problem solving device with no
specialization beyond what is created by training and choice of
subject. This view is only accurate in the sense that it
illustrates the almost unfathomable complexity and subtlty of
the human mind. That is a bit subjective, but it will do. Recent
careful analysis has shown that idea to be quite incorrect. The
overall function of the brain is specialized to evolutionary
demands and the parts of the brain are specialized in function.
When considering the mind from an evolutionary point of view,
these functions and functional parts are what must be examined as
elements subject to selection. In this evolutionary context, the
study of behaviors and beliefs must include consideration of any
genetically based part of the mind that facilitates the behavior.
Primarily though, this must be a consideration of how behaviors
and beliefs relate to our present and future survival. In that
the most unique and basic aspect of humans is their mind, that is
where the potentials to survive in the coming ecologies must be
found.
This starts with some basic considerations to help give a
context for the next three chapters. In that the picture of human
behavior is going to be quite large, it seems good to point out
the borders and some prominant features ahead of time.
While the an army of researchers have developed many useful
descriptions of the mind, using a variety of disciplines and
perspectives, including examination of the minds multi-faceted
and specialized character, the question of an integrating
conciousness, is still open. We know of another fundemental brain
functions and where they occur, but we have no real clue as to
how. We have an extremely limited understanding of
neurophysiology and brain function. For that reason, though it is
of critical importance to this analysis, most discussion of
neurophysiology is skipped to avoid making unwarrented
assumptions. Suffice to say, that it will follow the same rules
as other traites.
Intelligence is a social behavior. It evolved for
remembering, understanding and infleuncing an individuals social
environment. In the context of human survival, the most important
function of the human mind is to respond to the demands of the
human social environment. A corallary of this is that
intelligence is for communication. In current society,
intelligence is also important because it is what gives us the
ability to process the deluge of information that seems to be
such a common feature of modern life. In this book, it is also
considered that there is what is refered to here as occupational
intelligence. This is included because one focus of evolution in
humans has been for tool use and creation. Also, in the
stratified society, divisions were occupational and reflected
tribal differences. The general rule was that son followed father
in occupation. There are going to be many characteristics related
to occupation that will follow very simple rules of inheritence.
It seems likely that intelligence is going to be
increasingly necessary in the future to be able to use the more
complicated moral systems and mechanical technologies that humans
will have to develop for future survival.
Another point is about the persistence of beliefs. C.D.
Darlington extensively researched the continuity of the
of culture through history. He showed the great persistence of
culture and discussed the importance of the teaching of culture
and morality, especially by the parents. Culture does not just
appears. It is inherited just as surely as genetics.
The human brain is a pattern recognition device. We look for
patterns and create them even when they are not there.
Just to clarify things, in the nature nurture debate, this
paper basically follows Conrad Lorenz's description of a system
where environment and genetics interact to determine what
behaviors are expressed by the individual. This is discussed
further where needed.
So what must be examined to give an idea of what selection
focuses on, so as to describe how we have survived and what can
help us in the future?
How The Brain functions: Memes and Neurophysiology
While the brain appears to act as an excellent general
problem solving device, it is actually quite specialized for the
needs of our ancestral environments. Even the brain itself is
constructed of different specialized areas. There are specialized
areas for each of the senses, to control physical movements, to
control organ function and to allow speach. Even further, human
psychology exists in components that show different agendas and
characteristics that operate at different times. Presently, no
one has a good model of how these parts are integrated into an
individuals conciousness. Luckily, for this study, it is more
important that the parts, genetic traites that are subject to
selection, can be studied. If someone finds a meaningful way to
describe the integration of human conciousness and it is a
feature of biology, the same rules will apply.
When looking to see the discreet traites that make up the
human mind, the components appear to fall into two categories.
these are beliefs or behaviors and the underlying specialized
neurophysical components. Presently, understanding most of the
relationships between beliefs or psychologys to specialized
physical components of the mind, do not exist. This makes it hard
to look at neurophysiology and and figure out what a traite is.
The discrete biological parts of the mind are quite as subject to
evolutionary selection as are the rest of human physiology.
Unfortunatly though, it may be some time before we understand
much about this area. What can be described better though are the
thoughts and beliefs that go into making an individuals
psychology. This is what is examined next.
There is a fair arguement that an examination of visable
psychology is all that is needed because it is our behaviors that
interact with the environment, not some underlying chemistry.
Eventually though, we will need to understand behavior from the
physical view.
Memes and Mindsets - How people think
To study the ecology of most organisms is to examine facets
of their energetic and reproductive strategies. How a specie
gets its resources and how it uses them for reproductive success,
is the basis of the species ecology. In the case of humans, there
is another fundemental aspect to our ecology. It is our beliefs.
For a few other species, learned techniques and beliefs do exist
and are important to the species survival, but for humans,
learned knowledge and beliefs define and make their ecology
possible.
Since this is written to suggest ways to study humans in
their ecology, beliefs must be described. The trick is to come up
with a description that is both accurate enough to explain
what is already understood and also is a good enough model to
allow predictions about new patterns of beliefs. This can be done
because beliefs follow their own natral organizational system.
Previously, I have referred to this natural organization as
Mindsets, because humans beliefs occur in related groups. There
is more to it though. The beliefs of the group are related to
each other in a heirchy that leads up to some basic premises.
A description of human beliefs is best organized around these
basic premises. Here, these more basic premises are referred to
as memes. This is a term used elsewhere to describe any idea or
belief that can be transmitted between people. It has been called
the genes of beliefs. It is one of the units upon which beliefs
are based. It is an element which the human mind was designed to
think about. Memes appear alone and in groups. In groups, it
would probibly be useful to think of them as mindsets.
Memes are reasons to a person. The most basic meme is the
reason "to survive". That is the basic reason we do anything.
Actions are how we fulfill the meme.
Memes are like the 20 question game that children so love to
play. If a statement is made, the question can always be asked,
why. The statement is an element of a mindset. The answer is a
meme. As the question, why, is repeatably asked, the answering
meme is higher in the hierchy of memes. Always, the top meme is
that "it is done as part of survival". Elements of a mindset are
the actions, as opposed to the reasons.
A dialog could be analysed as follows:
"I am hungry" - high meme
"I should get food" - mindset
"I can get food a number of ways" - mindset
"I will go to the store" - mindset
"I am going to the store for food" - meme
A person can ask "why are you hungry". A higher meme can
be offered, "My body needs food to survive".
Memes are reasons to a person. It may be a desire, a fear,
a hope or any other reason that a person does something. There
the becomes sub-memes and super-memes. A person says "I am
hungry". That is a reason or a meme. The resulting mindset would
include that the person can ignore their hunger or get food in a
variety of ways. A new meme is created if the person wants to get
food, "I am going to get food". Then comes the mindset of how to
get food. Go to the pantry, refrigerator, store or where ever.
Where ever they go, their meme becomes "I am doing this action for
this reason.
In that the basis of human survival strategy is cooperation,
a basic meme is that an individual trys to act cooperatively. In
practice this may be called politics, but it is how humans act
together to accomplish something.
In this model, a meme is something like the belief of an
individual saying "I want to go to a location". Higher
Much of this may have to do with the mind being a pattern recognition device.
Memes are the keys to Mindsets.
So for the purposes of this book, beliefs and actions are
described as memes and their associated mindsets.
So what the basic beliefs are important to human survival
and how can they be ordered so that they can be systematically
evaluated?
It is
interesting to use the belief set model, because not only does it
describe the building blocks of an individuals belief system and
behaviors, but it also illustrates how we can have multiple and
conflicting beliefs.
How Humans Survive
We have basically two types of institutions. Ones that are
related to the family and ones related to resource production.
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