Our human culture: What’s in store?

Part 1 of 2

Culture is a word often associated only with the arts or media. But culture is what human behavior is based on, how our communication and inter-relationships work. Without culture, we would still be in the Stone Age or worse. 

Humans are a successful species, perhaps the most successful species on this planet. But Homo sapiens have only been around for perhaps 100,000 years, and in that time we have gone from apes more primitive than today’s chimpanzees to what can arguably be called the earth’s predominant residents. 

How predominant? Well, in that short period of time we have transformed the world around us, terraforming, aquaforming, atmosforming,  and now even spaceforming. We invented shelters that allow our species to live from the Artic poles to the equator and into space. We made tools and, more recently, technology that now allows us to communicate with every spot on Earth. We’ve created art, music and literature and, importantly, agriculture advances have changed global biodiversity — and thereby changing forever the way we feed ourselves.

All this proves that human culture dominates the Earth.

How did we achieve this? How did we rise above our closest genetic neighbors, the great apes, to become dominant? And, if we can understand that, can we see a way forward? Can we plot a course of future cultural impact and directions?

The most important human characteristic is this: We share. We share knowledge, we share resources, we share ideas. It is by this sharing that humans evolved out of the primordial “swamp.” And sharing has, as a component, learning. A mother shares her experience by showing her child not to touch the hot pot on the fire, and the child learns not to touch the hot pot. How the mother shares this secret of hot and scald is called teaching. 

So, you have sharing, teaching and learning. These are the basic human characteristics that have set us apart and, indeed, shape our society. When you share with your child, you double the impact of knowledge. If your child shares with two children of her own later on, then that’s doubled. Multiply the passing of knowledge across many families and the growth of knowledge is exponential.

Look at it this way: If you have a room filled with mouse traps and place a ping pong ball, carefully, on each one … if you then drop one ping-pong ball into the room it will set off one trap, making two bouncing balls, they will bounce and trigger two traps, two traps plus the two original ones will trigger four traps … eight in all … eight will trigger eight more … 16 will trigger 16 more … 32 will trigger 32 more … and so on. Exponential.

Observation is not teaching. I have watched chimps lifting a rock for grubs with a baby on her back. The baby observes and may learn, but the mother is not teaching the baby. The act of willful sharing is teaching. The act of willful teaching leads the parent to want the child to learn. 

That bond of teaching and learning is the essence of human sharing, the passing down of knowledge. And that knowledge becomes a base of learning passed generationally, upon which economies of learning and sharing are based. The child, having been taught not to touch the hot pot on the fire, doesn’t have to take time learning by experimentation not to touch the pot. That lack of repeated waste of time allows the invention of the oven glove. The correlation, the efficiency, is direct.

In time, the development of the human brain became adapted to learning, storing vast amounts of knowledge, connecting bits of knowledge to create newer inventions. The eraser and the pencil are a perfect example. Both were around for two centuries before a man stuck one on the blunt end of a pencil. Why did it take so long? 

And there’s the interesting work of anthropologists and sociologists. What does it take to expand human culture, human ability? Why did we begin to share and, if you can understand the root cause of that sharing as a species, where will it lead us?

Part 2 next time

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.