September 2002 posts
To
aliera and Darby (and anyone else still interested in this topic;
as if) -- Sophist, 08:48:35 09/17/02 Tue
aliera asked me to elaborate on my last response regarding language
and culture (the one in which I quoted Pinker). The thread is
now archived, but I did want to answer aliera's question.
Pinker's argument about language has 2 parts. In the first, he
reviews the studies (mostly by Benjamin Whorf) claiming to find
that language affects the way we think (rather than vice versa).
He makes a (to me) very persuasive case that those claims are
utterly unfounded.
The second part of the argument is that the claim is inconsistent
with our current understanding of how language arises. In essence,
if language is innate, if it is generated in an "organ"
in the brain, then what that organ does is create symbols. Those
symbols are universal; everyone has them. We think in that
universal language. The particular language that we speak
is merely a translation of that internal language.
For this reason, our spoken language is a reflection of our thoughts,
not the other way around. Whatever we can think about, we can
express in any language. All spoken languages are equal,
none are "better" than others. None are "better"
at expressing particular concepts.
aliera mentioned the controversy over Neandertal and speech. The
controversy there involves the capacity for speech, not
the use of any particular language. The capacity for speech
is genetic, and would give a clear survival advantage to a species
which possessed it over one which did not. That is not the same
as the difference between speaking English and speaking Mandarin.
I highly recommend Pinker's book, btw. He writes very well and
is easy to read. On the subject of linguistics, he is an expert
and his views are authoritative. He has written other books and
articles (one in Discover this month, in fact) outside his area
of expertise which are more controversial and which I don't necessarily
agree with. I believe, however, that he does support what dH felicitously
called "memetics", but I don't believe he would extend
it as far as Darby has tried to do.
[> I was just about to resurrect
it when you posted, Sophist! -- Rah, reposting her answer
to Mal, 08:51:50 09/17/02 Tue
My reply to Mal's post "Extinction of the Fittest"
"Well, I do believe (and I think Darby would agree) that
there's a pretty strong correlation between extinction and a lack
of fitness. If a society cannot survive, how fit can it really
be?"
Are we talking about 'cultures' going extinct or the people practicing
the cultures becoming extinct? Are we actually saying that some
cultures enable their societies to go on for longer than others?
That view seems to treat cultures as discrete entities, not the
fluid product of an interaction between people. If the entire
human population were wiped out by an unpreventable natural disaster,
culture would be wiped out. But it wouldn't tell us anything about
the 'fitness' of culture - only the fragility of human life. If
a peaceful country were fell upon by a determined military, yes,
they would die. However, I will not agree that the attacking force
had an 'advanced' and 'fit' culture. To think that is to fall
into a certain vision of human societies that I actually find
scary. Not because it is the 'truth', but because it is the vision
behind some pretty terrible cultures that were not good for the
societies that held them.
"If the British didn't succeed in your corner of the world,
it's not because they had any qualms about wiping out an ancient
culture but because the existing people managed to resist assimilation
(proving their fitness)."
The British didn't want to wipe out an ancient culture. Theyd
didn't think we had 'any culture' at all. We were just barbarians
worshipping funny little gods. Some parts of the British Empire
attempted to educate us. Others attempted to rule us. But mostly,
they wanted to enrich themselves. In this process, their culture
interacted with our culture, to produce a distinctive cultural
phenomenon that became part of the foundation for modern British
society. This is not because my culture was especially 'fit' -
what Britain absorbed wasn't part of my culture. What was absorbed
by both cultures was an interaction. An experience. A history.
Think of it as reproduction, not a military war. This happens
every time cultures meet, violently or peacefully. No culture
ever becomes 'supplanted'. Because either the native people are
wiped out wholesale or they live on with a new cultural interaction
taking place. No, the massacre of native people does not have
anything to say about the fitness or not of their culture. That
culture dies, but it was never proved 'unfit', because the people
that practiced it practiced nothing else before they died. They
didn't abandon their culture for another. They didn't 'choose'
a 'better' or more 'advantageous' culture. They were simply killed.
I have to say that the British did think that their culture was
superior to those they invaded, and that this superiority gave
a kind of legitimacy to their actions.
Yes, we can use 'evolution' as a mirror to culture to spark off
an interesting debate. But we can't mix up genetic evolution and
'cultural' evolution as if they were part of the same process.
What Darby is suggesting, I thought was an analogy, not saying
that different cultures provide different evolutionary advantages.
(are you?)
"But I don't think it follows that ruthlessness and military
might are the only qualifications for fitness. Consider pre- WWII
Japan and Germany and compare them with the U.S. -- but whose
culture won? The Samurai and Prussians are now Yankee businessmen.
The Soviet Union was ruthless in its domination and attempts to
indoctrinate its satellite nations, but they were unable to destroy
the indigenous cultures. Spain never annihilated the Basques,
nor has Turkey managed to eradicate the Kurdish culture. The Jews,
of course, survived all manner of attempts at destruction."
Ahh, so capitalism is a unique feature only of American culture?
The German businesses that flourished under the Nazis have pretty
familiar names - they are the big companies there still. Both
Germany and Japan could be said to have pretty 'fit' cultures
because they are more successful economically than one of the
victors, Britain, and I wouldn't particularly describe Japanese
culture as resembling America's. So are you really sure that German
Businessmen are 'Yankee' ones? I'm going to leave the Soviet Union
to CW if he wants to comment - but I'd say that the sheer landmass
meant that totalitarianism never managed to impose its will on
everyone.
I'd be interested in you pointing out to me what exactly constitutes
an 'advanced' culture, and what a 'backward' one is. Because if
the answer is that no successful culture shares any characteristic
with another *other* than success, I'd have to be extremely sceptical.
I mean, is European culture backward? since the birthrate in Europe
is falling dramatically? Would it be more 'advanced' if European
culture encouraged its participants to reproduce enthusiastically?
Personally, I don't believe in grand narratives to explain human
behaviour. And I don't think there can be an overarching explanantial
model for telling us why cultures thrive and why they fail. I
think the story of how they interact, of what they contain, of
their engagement with other cultures both in the past and in the
contemporary present is the study of history. Which is a large,
eclectic sprawling field of inquiry precisely because there is
no large model. It's because the seedbeds of culture are so varied
that we have so many schools of history. And the reason why historians
are always kept in business with no conclusively agreed picture
of past societies and cultures is because part of the way we imagine
our own culture, and that of others tells us about ourselves.
Says Rahael, thinking of Marx that enormously influential thinker
who created a grand narrative that was supposed to tell us how
societies would 'evolve'. Inevitably evolve. Who was influenced
by Darwin. And whose philosophy was supposed to have been utterly
defeated by a more 'advanced' culture. Say, do you think he's
managed to have more influence than he's given credit for?? And
does this mean that Marx is 'advanced'? More 'advanced' than revisionist
schools of history who focus on events and chance rather than
large scale models?
Or does this simply prove that human beings like to see order
and pattern in everything, even in the dynamic interactions between
cultures and societies?
[> [> Yeah ! Exactly
! -- Ete agreeing whole-heartidely with Rah, 10:38:49 09/17/02
Tue
[> [> One more try.
-- Darby, 11:20:21 09/17/02 Tue
First, Sophist, I have no research results to cite, but my gut
feeling is that language, although innate, does not work on a
non-linguistic basis in the brain. It's very non-Occam (is turnabout
still fair play?) to explain that my inner voice, very distinctly
in English, is in some universal language that I "hear"
in English. Kinda like the old saw that Homer didn't write The
Iliad, it was another guy called Homer. For one thing, I'd assert
that my inner voice is syntactically limited by English as much
as my outer voice. As I suspect everyone is about to have re-confirmed.
Rah, we run into syntactical difficulties - I read in your responses
a reflexive resistance to "fit" because to use the word
somehow implies that a culture is "better" when you
absolutely do not want to use any such value judgment for certain
cultures. I'm going to take another shot at presenting my basic
ideas.
First, the biological parallel - take multiple populations of
the same species that become isolated long enough to develop different
mutations, which change certain traits, and which in many cases
adapt them well to local environments. Bring those populations
back into contact and let them interbreed, which they will do
to different extents. While all this goes on, their environment,
their context changes (even the re-establishment of contact is
a major change) so as this happens, there are new things to adapt
to. What occurs is a natural selection process of the gene variants
that acts on the traits they produce. Certain traits and combinations
of traits produce advantages and disadvantages in individuals
under these new circumstances - ones with advantages are more
likely to survive and reproduce and perpetuate and spread the
traits (and the genes that produce them). Each of the starting
populations may contribute separate traits with different levels
of fitness, especially in this new environment. What comes out,
though natural selection, will likely not resemble only one of
the starting "types," but may favor one over the others.
Some surviving traits may absolutely have a recognizeable ancestral
source. As a whole population, certain combinations sprinkled
among fragments of the population may work as well, preserving
traits in a small but critical demographic (this happens in some
social organisms) but not being ever a general trait of the entire
new population. The selection seems to be of the traits but is
ultimately of the genes. At the end, you wind up with a population
more homogeneous than the bunch that first came into contact,
but every individual will not be the same, and even differences
within semi-isolated subgroups will persist. It's a classic Darwinian
pattern. Think "fitness" here as "ability to fit
into the current environment."
A culture can stand in for the populations - cultural traits derive
from memes, behavioral specifics that can also mutate and reproduce,
altering the cultural traits. I'll make two apparently controversial
claims here: a) cultural traits / memes can be passed through
non-human intermediaries by communications but ultimately have
meaning only as they are performed and perpetuated by individuals;
b) cultures themselves evolve, becoming a better fit over time
for their particular physical, biological, and cross-cultural
(we rarely can get complete isolation) environments.
In the modern world, cultural isolation becomes much harder to
maintain, and cultures come into contact, producing the potential
for memes to spread back-and-forth. In the new environment, selection
continues. Taking today as a snapshot, I could say that a number
of memes associated with American culture (you can argue the ultimate
source of the memes - I'm picking American due to the fact that
the memes are mostly spreading from that source at this moment),
for good or ill, have a fitness advantage and seem to be preferentially
spreading. Capitalism is more widespread than it was 50 years
ago, and has moved into populations where it didn't use to be
the economics meme; democratic systems are spreading, but at a
slower rate (perhaps less fitness in this environment, perhaps
only hauled along by linkage to a more powerful meme); English
has become a primary language of commerce and science, increasing
its profile in the population and favoring its spread, and hauling
certain technological memes along with it. Meanwhile, memes from
other cultures move into the American mass, changing its overall
nature. What is the selection mode? The blended cultures themselves
become the primary environment, against a backdrop of political
necessity and physical restrictions to expansion. The patterns
are there - I very much see in September 11th a response by a
reactionary faction of one culture against what they see as "infection"
of their culture by American memes (I'm not saying that this is
the whole or even the most important piece, but it has significance).
The French are famous for worrying about the erosion of their
culture by outside influences; some cultures with few adaptive
traits for the modern world, aboriginal cultures in fringe-but-now-
economically-important places get absorbed by the encroaching
cultures, with possibly not a meme left in evidence.
There is no value judgment here. Do I think that the "pop
culture meme" spreading inexorably through bad American tv
is a good thing? No. Do I think that it will slowly change the
tastes of other cultures as Who's the Boss? spreads around
the globe, because it's simple and recreational? Yeah, I think
it will.
I've posted this because I still don't think that people have
largely gotten the point that I was trying to originally make.
Maybe it's a lousy point; maybe I just can't clarify (you know
that frustration when you think you see something clearly but
you can't seem to convey it? -A stake in the heart...); maybe
we're only a week away from a new Buffy, so it's soon to
be totally irrelevant.
- Darby
[> [> [> Not even
really a try, more of a cavorting dip -- fresne, 12:15:38
09/17/02 Tue
I'm glad ya'll revived this thread.
Not because I have any real contribution to make. Mostly I just
have some facetious comments to spin around. And ahem, I apologize
to all the actually quite interesting serious discussion that
has proceeded this point.
So, this discussion of cultures and gene selection got me to thinking
about my culture.
Not my American culture. Yes, 911 did actually make me realize
that we have one. I was always so busy noticing the differences
between my mother's home town in South Dakota (pop 105, dirt streets,
huge lawns, 50 miles to the nearest stop light, predominantly
German descent farmers) versus So. California/Los Angeles where
I grew up (pop much larger than 105, etc.) versus S.F. and every
other spot where my relatives have scattered, that I never noticed
America. What can I say, I'm near sighted.
No, I'm talking about the much smaller social culture where I
spend my spare time S.F. Bay Arean Social Ballroom dancers. I'd
call us Americans, but quite a few attendees are here through
a panoply of visa types.
Okay, so the majority of the people who attend these events seem
(this is just based on "so, what do you do" conversations
over the last 8 years) to be employed in technological fields
(engineers, technical writers, programmers, etc.) When informally
asked, techies have responded that they like ballroom (salsa,
line dancing, Irish, etc.) because there are specific set steps
that occur in recognizable patterns.
Now then, given that the women who attend events are more likely
to dance again/interact with men who are "good strong"
leads, I wonder if that means that within our sub culture we are
creating a minion race (well, we're certainly not the master race
and only a few reach the exalted status of guru) of techies who
are better dancers. Only to subverted in that I really don't know
how much "good strong" follow affects men's partnering
choices.
Further given an utterly no basis in fact except in my imagination
presumption of higher reproductive success for techies who attend
social events, will the good dancer techies begin to edge out
the non-dancer techies within the larger culture.
So, to sum up, 7 days till new Buffy huh?
BTW, language may or may not shape culture, but it certainly seems
to me that if the Engineeers where I work spoke the same language
(they speak tech) as Upper Management (they speak business), I
wouldn't have a job (Technical Writing).
[> [> [> [> Dipping
and cavorting off your dip -- shadowkat, 12:44:20 09/17/02
Tue
"BTW, language may or may not shape culture, but it certainly
seems to me that if the Engineeers where I work spoke the same
language (they speak tech) as Upper Management (they speak business),
I wouldn't have a job (Technical Writing)."
Been lurking on these threads...b/c (uhm clearing throat nervously,
they are intellectually way above my head?). Also a bit terrified
of the culture debate - too many land mines methinks.
But here's something I can comment on - yippee!!
Business and professional culture and language.
In the Sopranos thread people mention how they can't watch the
show because of all of the profanity (which is how some people
talk. I know quite a few...it doesn't bug me.)
It is interesting to me how we let a certain word make us see
red. Whether it be the f*&k or an innocent word
such as well I'm sure you can fill in your own blank.
Misogynist? Rape? Primitive? Neanderfal?
It's not the definitive meaning that bothers us so much as the
connotative meaning or contextual one. Think about it - is it
the definition of the word sh*t that bugs you or how it is used?
When you mix different languages in - it gets even more confusing.
How say do you translate something that your language doesn't
even have a corresponding word for?
I remember when Coca Cola attempted to sell itself overseas in
Japan. Coca means something different in Japanese then it does
in English. Can't remember what but it is disgusting. They weren't
selling any Cokes until they changed the name over there.
Techies assume you understand certain terms and web techs assume
you understand what webspeak means such as say blog
or html or sgml or ASCII tagged.
I love Faith's line in Btvs for fine: five by five.
Tara: What's that mean?
Willow: That's the thing no one knows. Square? Five by five what?
Language was created to increase our ability to communicate, yet
I often feel as if I've fallen into the tower of babble. I recognize
the words but can't grasp the meaning. English is a particularly
difficult language to learn because we often use one word to mean
many things and as a result find ourselves lost in a debate over
semantics.
Other languages often show gender differences by dropping or adding
an e to words, or show how the meaning has changed by changing
the sound of the word.
Example in French (apologies ETe, my French is no where close
to your English): Vous - is the formal form of you
and the plural.
In English - we say you regardless of formality or plurality.
In french the informal form of you = is tu as well as a singular.
In English = yep still you.
See? So in English (don't know about other languages, assume they
have similar problems, but I'm no linguist) to understand the
meaning of a word - you have to understand the context, in fact
sometimes the contextual meaning is far more important than the
definitive meaning. Words can also change their meanings - they
can start out meaning one thing such as psyche (the mind) and
become slang meaning = excited. Buffy uses
it all the time.
One can only wonder how they translate shows like Buffy into other
languages. Do they keep the slang?
Anyways thanks for bearing this ramble. Language continues to
fascinate, confuse, bewilder, frustrate, and obsess me.
SK (whose bored at work again...)
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Dipping and cavorting off your dip -- Wisewoman, 18:33:26
09/17/02 Tue
I remember when Coca Cola attempted to sell itself overseas
in Japan. Coca means something different in Japanese then it does
in English. Can't remember what but it is disgusting. They weren't
selling any Cokes until they changed the name over there.
The similar incident I recall most clearly was when the attempt
was made to export the "Got milk?" campaign to, I believe,
South America, where the slogan was unfortunately translated as,
"Are you lactating?"
;o)
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: Dipping and cavorting off your dip -- Just George,
19:59:47 09/17/02 Tue
In B-School, an example of taking care with language concerned
advertising. In one case study, an American firm run by English
speakers wanted to extend its advertising reach to include Spanish
speakers in the United States. The question was which of three
advertising firms should be hired to write the advertising copy?
This copy would represent the image of the firm to millions of
people. The assumption was that it was important to get the first
ads "right" because the first advertising impressions
in Spanish would stay with the Spanish speaking audience for a
long time. The options were to hire a firm based in New York,
Miami, or Los Angeles. All had good national reputations and creative
departments staffed with many native Spanish speakers.
The hidden "gotcha" in the case study had to do with
the fragmentation of Spanish in the United States due to patterns
of immigration. After some digging, it turned out that the Spanish
speakers in the New York firm predominantly had cultural roots
in Puerto Rico, those in the Miami firm had roots in Cuba, and
those in the Los Angeles firm had roots in Mexico. All three used
different cultural references and slang. There was a significant
chance that a message crafted by any one firm might be "off"
when presented to customers in the other areas.
Like most case studies, there was no one right answer. The object
of the exercise was to show that it was important to be sensitive
to differences in language and culture, even among groups that
are commonly lumped together under a single heading (such as Spanish
speakers).
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: Dipping and cavorting off your dip -- shadowkat,
07:05:37 09/18/02 Wed
"Like most case studies, there was no one right answer. The
object of the exercise was to show that it was important to be
sensitive to differences in language and culture, even among groups
that are commonly lumped together under a single heading (such
as Spanish speakers)."
Interesting. I've seen similar problems with handling the countries
in Asia. The languages are so different. Particularly in China
and Hong Kong - where I believe there
are over 100 different tongues. And they don't all get along.
There are languages based on territories and territory rivaleries
not unlike the rivaleries that still exist in the US. Even variations
in accent, slang, etc can cause disputes between people who to
an outsider speak the same language.
Example: In US - we have the people in NYC (who have their own
slang, own way speaking. Often combining words from
other languages), then people in Minnesota who speak entirely
differently, and the people in Lousiana who speak yet another
dialect.
I remember when I moved from Pennsylvania to Missouri.
The changes in words. I pronounced Missouri = Miss-our- i.
My relatives who had lived there all their lives = Missour- a.
And Iow-a was Io-way. The Arkansas River = Arkan-sas not
Arkan-saw. Slight...but the difference was big enough that you
could tell where people came from. Crick as opposed to Creek.
Warsh as opposed to Wash.
You see bigger differences between the English used between Great
Britain, Australia and US. Just in the swear words.
Look at how many apparently crude swear words Whedon has gotten
away with on US television by using British words?
I had no idea what "bint", the "two fingered deal"
or some of the other things Spike says meant until I went online.
It continues to be amazing to me how huge disputes can often result
from the simple and inadvertent misuse of a word or phrase. The
original speaker did not intend the insult, they just misused
the word.
SK
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Practically a Polka -- fresne, 11:45:55
09/18/02 Wed
Also, even people within a same area, cultural background, can
perceive language differently. Not just the meanings of words,
which can carry associations beyond the dictionary meaning, (for
example if your sister's name is Rose, then going to a rose garden
may make you think of her.) but the different people can approach
language differently.
I don't want to make any generalizations here, but something that
I encounter every day at work is the difference between how I
approach language, speech and writing and how the engineers that
I work with approach them.
I've been to meetings where Engineers from vastly diverse language
backgrounds have communicated via a white board assisted short
hand. It's not just that they speak a common language of techy
tech tech, but that they can have a common perception of how the
world functions, which helps them make the cognitive leaps necessary
to communicate around language. Only "can" because people
are individuals and a common type of educational background (Biological
Science, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, etc.) can only
go so far.
Actually, as I read through the main stay of the thread below,
what was especially interesting to me (given my own bias) was
to look at the various arguments and see how background shaped
perception of culture. As soon as Darby said what his background
was (and it helps that I used to work in Bio-tech), it clarified
the genesis of the ideas as well as the ideas themselves.
Again, I'd comment on the actual thread, but my own thoughts on
culture are in no way coherent. As I try to process what everyone
has said, I can only come up with the analogy of the dance floor.
The music may or may not affect individual's behavior. Songs change
and the population on the floor shifts. Even if a song is repeated,
each repetition involves a unique combination of players. The
floor itself is filled with Brownian motion, which you can only
see if you are not in it. Some individuals spot (focus on a specific
point on the dance floor) to keep from being dizzy or they may
watch how others are dancing and copy them or they may practice
Zen Ballroom. They may even dance with their eyes closed. Couples
may run into each other, forcing others off the floor. Or not.
Sometimes there is a horrible unforeseen garment accident. Okay,
none of that was coherent.
So, are my friends the only ones who (since watching BvD) resolve
all geek discussions by saying a noun, pause and then ñbater?
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Turning it into a tango -- shadowkat,
13:04:26 09/18/02 Wed
Actually your being very coherent. Like you my thoughts
are no where near coherent enough to join in the discussion below.
But you're right there are different backgrounds and knowledge
tangoing on the threads, I'm thinking tango because that's what
it looks like on the board. Come together, sexily move close then
split apart. Makes me
think of the Shakira song - which I saw on MTV one morning while
flipping channels.
I think learning a language is a bit like learning a dance.
And there are as many dances as there are languages and dance
can be as simple and as complicated as languages can be.
For instance, say you and I tried to communicate through just
dance. I know two-step, you know tango (I don't really but bear
with me). When we enter the dance floor - we have a commonality
of interest - we both dance. Both dances require a partner. Both
require contact. But they are very different dances and after
a moment or two we will collide, disagreements will form. Or if
we are being judged? The people who prefer the tango will pick
you while the people who prefer the two-step will pick me.
This is not so different from the discussion going on below.
The people who come from a bio-tech background will go with the
biology view, they may disagree with it, but they will be more
likely to agree with that arguement, it's the dance step they
know and are familar with. There are however a few wild cards,
who know more than one dance step or want to learn more than one
or just like something that is different - who may lean towards
the language in which they are less familar.
Of course knowing the dance steps can only get you so far if your
dance is not up to snuff. If my two-step is cleaner than your
tango, than well it would be wrong for the judges to pick your
step just because they know it better. Just as it may be wrong
to agree with the biotech arguement just because it is more familar.
In fact, if you can't understand the other point of view - you
need to ask for clarification. If I'm judging tango and two-step,
I should maybe ask for help on understanding tango. I've seen
people on the below threads do just that. Either ask for clarification
of a word or phrase or ask for reading material. This helps. I've
learned to stay out of debates unless I'm willing to do my homework.
What interests me most about our community, our world, our society
at large is how many dance steps there truly are.
How many ways we can communicate and how the language twists and
changes to do that.
Dance is such an effective way of communicating what you feel
towards someone, towards the world and elsewhere.
In Ballet - there's a grace, a beauty and an aching saddness that
can be conveyed.
In Tango - you see raw sexual desire and conflict and pain
and fire.
In Waltz - a smooth grace, uplifting step, happy beat, swaying
romance
Each dance says something different. And like words, the more
dances you know the more you can physically convey what you are
thinking or feeling. What did we do without speech, without language?
Did we dance? Did we talk with our hands and our feet?
When I visited Mexico in college, I did not speak Spainish.
We were staying in a poor barrior helping them construct a community
and health center from the earth and raw materials. The locals
helped me build a wall. They knew more about it than I did and
I was in charge of helping them. We communicated largely with
gestures and showing each other what to do. Language - speech
- words - were almost unnecessary.
In NY - I've had similar experiences. The people at the corner
store do not speak English. The people at the laundramat don't.
I have no clue which language they speak.
I believe it may be an Asian language. But we still manage to
communicate. We do it with body language and facial expression.
I think the reason i never go into the chat room, is I don't like
bantering of words without seeing the person's face. I'm not fond
of the phone for the same reason. Never been into it. I'd rather
either meet the person face to face or write long rambling letters
conveying my thoughts through magic of words and have time enough
to check them over and think about them. (Even though many of
my reply posts aren't checked do to time allotments at work and
internet disconnect worries).
Anyways getting back to the topic. I like your analogy very much.
I think we are dancing with each other as we post.
Threading our words back and forth in a medly of responses.
If you print off the archives you'll really see how true this
is. Sometimes our dances combine into a polka sometimes become
a tango or a waltz, sometimes they become
a breakdance or a wrestling match and sometimes they become a
delicate ballet. The dance of words is addictive to those of us
who participate, until someone comes along to pull us off the
stage, but we only depart briefly until we see another dance we
know and understand - and once again we find ourselves waltzing
and tangoing and swinging in happy abandonment.
(Hmmm...not sure that made sense. But I had fun distracting
myself from work for a while. I've also managed to help push my
long essay post into archives again. (sigh). )
oh well.
SK
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> When you do the Continental
-- fresne, 22:13:03 09/18/02 Wed
So, it shows some sort of rhythm to the universe that I went home
and while flipping channels we came upon the seduction dance scene
in Gay Divorcee. And then Top Hat. And right now Fred and Ginger
are dance arguing in Roberta. So, life is filled with fluffy dance
filled goodness.
What's funny about the two step while tangoing analogy is that
not quite Bojangling the steps isn't solely confined to different
kinds of dances. Even within one dance type, there can be widely
diverging backgrounds/opinions/styles.
To further carry the dance as communication analogy, when I refer
to waltzing, I mean a counter clockwise rotary waltz, because
that's the style I'm most comfortable dancing. However, my dance
partner might mean clockwise rotary, Regency, or horrors, competition
style. Depending how well he communicates his lead, through minute
non verbal signals, and how well I pick them up (it takes two
to waltz), we may end spending the waltz trodding feet or we may
float.
Huh, and I have to like your reasoning behind not liking phone
and chat, since I think I said the same thing at some point. Although
I do feel a bit like Sideshow Bob as I say, "Yes, I do see
the irony of complaining about a medium through that medium."
And yet, long rambling posts are quite different from their shorter
kin. What posts lack in body language, they make up in largess.
I'd say, more but a large Cossack is about to throw Fred onto
the dance floor.
[> [> [> A few more
thoughts in reply -- Sophist, 13:20:08 09/17/02 Tue
I wrote this before I read mole's post below, but I couldn't post
it because Voy was giving me hiccups. I'll post it now with the
added statement that I agree with mole.
I'll try to be as succinct as possible about this. (Hah!)
1. On the language issue, and putting aside the point of Pinker's
authority and your gut instinct (did I phrase that pejoratively
enough?), think of it this way: which came first, language or
thought? If we can only think in a spoken language, you would
have to take the position that hominids did not think until such
time as they acquired speech, that animals today can't think because
they can't speak. That seems clearly wrong. Thought must proceed
by the generation of symbols in the brain. Those symbols are translated
into the spoken language that we use to convey ideas to others.
The consequence of your view would be that if I were born deaf
and mute, there would be "English" concepts I could
not grasp. This is demonstrably untrue. To take another example,
merely because someone from Papua New Guinea has no word for Palm
Pilot doesn't mean s/he can't operate one if shown how (and even
without using any spoken language to convey it!).
2. It seems to me that you keep switching between levels of selection.
Memes are one level, and I am prepared to admit there may be a
legitimate analogy to be made on that level (subject to a good
definition of "meme"). Culture is a collection of memes,
and a very different level of selection. This is the level on
which your analogy breaks down. You haven't identified the agent
on which selection operates, you haven't shown how that agent
reproduces, you haven't identified the environment in which selection
occurs, and you haven't shown how selection is tied directly to
reproductive success (and vice versa). It appears to me that with
every example you've given to explain these, you've dropped back
to the meme level.
3. I don't want to make Rah's argument for her, but a couple of
points occur to me. First, the extinction of a group of people
by violence can be seen as akin to an asteroid wiping out the
dinosaurs. That is not an instance of natural selection
(except in a tautological sense).
Second, it makes sense to treat survival (i.e., propagation of
descendants into the future) as the measure of fitness in evolution
(though it does run the risk of tautology). I think Rah is saying
that it's not clear that this makes much sense in cultural terms.
The only way a culture might be said to "die" is for
everyone in it to be killed. This brings us back to my point above
(and even if this weren't the case, I have other problems with
the notion anyway). In all other cases, cultures don't die, they
interact. Memes presumably die out (by definition, we can't
know if they did or not: if we knew it, the meme would not be
"dead"). As Rah keeps saying, that's not what happens
with cultures.
Great topic Darby. Even though I don't agree, I've loved this
discussion.
[> [> [> [> Re:
A few more thoughts in reply -- Darby, 14:48:08 09/17/02
Tue
1. While I agree that at some level internal dialogue must be
abstract, I think that human conscious thought "settles"
into the communication system it learns. Can someone here who
has shifted from one "internal language" to another
tell us if they feel it had any effect on how their thoughts processed?
2. I'm not sure that I can explain this any better. Actual selection
is, over time, of specific alleles or allele clusters. It is acted
out through selection of individuals, but the individuals are
actually considered allele collections, and it plays out in the
"average" individual on the population level (a species
is just an average of individuals in a group). That's why selection
also ultimately plays out at the meme level, as expressed through
individuals and collectivized / averaged as "culture."
But, just as subgroups with a species can swap and acquire alleles,
so can memes be swapped between cultures. Reproduction breaks
down metaphorically here - separate species are not supposed to
interbreed, which is why I changed the comparisons to groups within
a species. Cultures are surely that. Memes also reproduce differently,
as they are passed from individual to individual after their births,
and your personal memes can be altered in a reproduction process
more akin to viruses. That turns out to be insignificant for the
selection process. The environment is...do a full turn. It's around
you. One doesn't need a specially designated parameter here -
it's all of the things that can influence survival and passage
of the reproductive packets. Just as evolution works on allele
frequencies to change the species, it works on meme frequencies
to change the culture. And memes can disappear under selection
pressures - governments based upon god-kings are pretty much gone,
or mutated into something different while their cultures have
evolved.
3. Extinction of one population caused by another population of
the same species is not comparable to an asteroid impact. If wolves
were reintroduced to Florida and caused the extinction of red
wolves (at best a subspecies), that's a comparable situation.
The extinction of the Neanderthals (in my opinion, no more than
a distinct race) is comparable. How much of our original cultures
were transferred memes from them? Extinction of a group does not
always imply extinction of a culture.
Try another image: Haiti's population is descended from Caribbean
aborigines, French colonists, and African slaves. Physically,
many Haitians reflect the physical blending of traits, although
it's difficult (humans aren't physically different enough, and
we're largely immune to natural selection) to see selection in
which particular traits may be favored over time. If you can't
see potential selection here, though, the parallel falls apart.
The Haitian culture is also a blend of the originating cultures,
but not an entirely equal blend. There, the reproductive rate
is faster (memes can reproduce quicker than the people that carry
them) so the change has been perhaps more dramatic. What will
determine over time which memes contribute to the "average"
that is Haitian culture of the future, and how will that mutate
from contact with cultures from the outside?
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: A few more thoughts in reply -- Sophist, 10:41:55
09/18/02 Wed
It is acted out through selection of individuals, but the individuals
are actually considered allele collections, and it plays out in
the "average" individual on the population level (a
species is just an average of individuals in a group). That's
why selection also ultimately plays out at the meme level, as
expressed through individuals and collectivized / averaged as
"culture."
Two points in response. First, I don't agree that this properly
describes evolution. You have expressed Dawkins' view, but I don't
buy it. Once genes are packaged together, selection can no longer
operate on genes per se, but only on the complete package. And
while I agree that selection can operate on species, I don't agree
that such selection is "for" genes. Instead, it's for
characteristics unique to species per se (and not the individual
animals which make up the species) such as the ability to generate
daughter species or to live in broad environments.
This is what I mean about switching levels of selection. It leads
to all kinds of problems.
Second, I infer from what you say that you define culture as a
collection of memes. I interpret this as meaning that culture
exists when two or more individuals share one particular meme.
Or do you mean that culture consists of something more like 'at
least two individuals sharing two or more memes'?
In either case, your analogy breaks down on this level. If a culture
is analogous to a species, and if cultures can and do swap memes,
then you are arguing that species can interbreed. This is impossible
(essentially) in biology (as you then acknowledge).
Reproduction breaks down metaphorically here - separate species
are not supposed to interbreed, which is why I changed the comparisons
to groups within a species.
But now you're left with a world consisting of only one species,
a "world culture" as it were. But the point of Darwin
was to explain the origin of species. If your world has
but one species and can only ever have one, the analogy fails
again.
At this point, I think you've agreed (or I've shown) that cultural
transmission is non-Mendelian, that reproduction differs from
the biological analogy, and that you are not explaining the origin
of species. I think you'd agree that change in culture is punctuated.
I'm not sure what source of variation you'd identify. While I
can see that culture might be analogous to the environment in
which memes compete, I can't see that you've provided any extrinsic
environment within which your subgroups within a global species
compete. What's left of the analogy?
Extinction of one population caused by another population of
the same species is not comparable to an asteroid impact.
As Mal points out below, and as I know you know, natural selection
works by probability. If every member of a tribe is wiped out
in its first interaction with another, then selection cannot operate.
Only repeated interactions can give rise to selective pressure
and adaptations. I think Rah's point is well taken.
As I pointed out below, I'm not sure I even know what a "culture"
is. I know it as a concept, but it's not a "thing" that
can be seen or touched in the real world. It's just a way of organizing
groups that our brain likes to do. As fresne well says above,
it's hard even to identify "American" culture. I can't
see how a category I created in my brain (different from the category
fresne has, even though I was born nearby in Iowa), can be seen
as "competing" with French culture and German culture
in the real world. Competition within my mind, maybe, but not
in the world at large.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: A few more thoughts in reply -- Darby, 15:16:23
09/18/02 Wed
Wow, we see evolutionary processes very differently.
If evolution only works on packages, then only elephants with
entirely mammoth characteristics would have been able to evolve
in the last Ice Ages. That's not what happened - climate change
favored hairiness, and size, and curled tusks, but only after
changes of allele frequencies in the population increased the
frquency of each variant would you start to get offspring with
mixes, would you start to see individuals starting to look like
mammoths. You have to look at it over a much more extended time
frame - what you describe works on a single generation, while
evolution of truly new types takes multiple generations just so
that separate adaptive alleles can be mixed and matched. The package
is an end product in a multiple vector system, not a starting
point.
Memes are tricky in some instances because they can't be completely
compared to alleles, but they don't have to be - they just have
to be elements that a) produce a trait, in this case an aspect
of societal behavior; b) can be passed on; c) show variation within
a population; d) can affect the success of an individual or a
group (see, this is tricky too - social animals evolve through
group selection as well as individual selection, or there would
be no such thing as social animals); e) can change characteristics
over time. Those are all the traits you need for selection theory
to work in the pattern through time that the memecollections follow.
If a culture is analogous to a species, it only has to be analogous
in these areas - the interbreeding restrictions (which species
in the wild, being illiterate, rarely pay much attention to anyway)
are irrelevant to the comparisons. But that's why I prefer the
analogy to populations of the same species, so as to keep the
comparison clearer.
This world has lots of social species. We're talking about the
evolution of one. It just turns out that the most important selection
pressures come at present from competition among the various factions.
I could probably do a classic memetic evolutionary analysis of
older cultures and bring in more classic selections tied to the
environment - for instance, the meme variant for resource use
that could be termed, "Respect for the land - try not to
take too much, or give back," can commonly be linked to resource-poor
locales, whereas "Use it up, move on" is a meme evolved
where such a strategy is viable - lots of resources, lots of room.
On a more modern front, the memes everyone sees in the Middle
East - enmity and conflict - have always had a variant in the
area of water rights (Israel has had agreements with its neighbors
for many decades), because only such a variant supported survival
in all the cultural groups. But sometimes the greatest impact
on a beehive comes from the other beehives - if we investigate
this aspect, we aren't saying that the rest of the environment
doesn't exist, which seems to be what you're hearing, but that
it doesn't seem relevant in this context. Cultures compete with
each other - the rest of the world exists and influences patterns,
but the selection pressure from those sources is much weaker than
that produced by intergroup competition.
If an invading group wipes out a resident group - something that
seems to have happened when North America bumped into South America
and raised a land bridge - the extinct resident group may not
have evolved, but selection absolutely worked on them. Against
them. An asteroid event changes selection pressures in a similar
way - why did some groups largely survive while others disappeared?
Their features, including all present variation, couldn't assure
their survival in the changed environment. From a selection standpoint
these are all comparable events - but so is the slow collision
of two colonies of sea anemones, which battle using different
techniques and eventually either one wins or they settle into
a kind of biological detente. That's much more analogous to cultural
evolution.
What describes the human species? Is it our genome alone? Does
a genome properly describe a chimp, or a whale, or an elephant,
or an ant, all of which need descriptions of their societal structures
to finish the picture? But what is human societal structure? Why
aren't all groups following the same basic approach? What are
the variants, and if they change, why do they change? Why does
genocide appear occasionally as a variant, and what happens when
it does? What about weapons technology? Agricultural techniques?
Artistic styles? Organizational schemes? Blind luck, right place,
wrong time? Nothing affects the path at all? That's the alternative
here you seem to be offering. What I'm seeing is the evolution
of the human species, played out against a global environment
of competing strategies, some of which work and spread (maybe
if only for a while) and some of which seem very narrowly adaptive
for a locale but no more, with most traits falling into a middle
ground, moving along as selection from various sources, mostly
internal (think sexual selection - that's all internal to the
group as well), pokes and prods it into different collections,
different packages.
And finally, are human emotions adaptive? Are they biological?
Can they be reduced to genes and proteins? Are they "things"
if they can't be seen or touched? How do we receive them - all
from our parental alleles or spread through some other inheritive
system too? How different is a group dynamic, culture, from this
individual one, and how does one shape the other? I can discuss
"humor," but isn't it something that really is a creation
of my brain - surely it differs too much among people to have
any biological roots at all.
Lastly, from the first day of my classes, I tell my students that
biology at its root is the science of labeling things that won't
conform to labels, an attempt to derive rules that will always
have exceptions, and then dealing with the mess - that also seems
to fit into people's ideas of culture, and maybe that's why I'm
less constrained by the labels than everyone else seems to be.
I expect them to be variant. I'm interested in the patterns that
help me see why things do what they do, in all its maddening complexity.
[> [> [> Re: One more
try. -- redcat, 14:49:39 09/17/02 Tue
Just as I'm posting this, I see that Sophist and matching
mole have also written replies. I've not yet read them, so I
apologize in advance if this post is redundant ñ but wanted
to get it posted anyway, since it took me so long to think
through and write it...am slow today... painters are painting
the outside of my house and the paint and mold inhibitor
are giving me a headache..sorry if this is a ramble...just my
piece of contribution to what is still, after all these days,
a
fabulous thread. **Thanks to all who have continued to contribute!**
Aloha e Darby,
I don't think my problem with your argument is that I don't understand
it. I, too, find Darwinian explanations for the
patterns of evolutionary processes forcefully compelling and endlessly
fascinating. And I understand the attraction
of the elegance of natural selection's explanatory power when
applied to seemingly analogous non-biological
systems. My problem with your argument (and certainly with Mal's)
is what I continue to perceive as your easy shift
from a view that would say (as my own would probably be more likely
to), "hey, look at the interesting parallels
between human cultural development and biological evolution, what
might we learn from them?", to a view that
argues that since "A culture *can* stand in for the populations"
[emphasis added] that culture *does* stand in for
populations. IOW, I see you as making what to me is an unsupported
leap from arguing that cultures *can be
usefully analyzed* within a certain intellectual framework, from
a particular paradigmatic perspective, and for a
narrow but specific (and specified) exegetical goal, to arguing
that the underlying principles that sustain biological,
organic life -- the drive for survival of individual genes through
the survival of the individual entities that carry them --
can be absolutely and equally applied to non-organic, non- biological
processes and systems. Although I find that
leap intuitively interesting, easy and attractive, I also think
it's worthy of assessment and some sort of rational
explanation before I can accept your conclusions about the correspondent
nature of genes and memes, since the
latter fundamentally relies on accepting the former.
Or do you wish to argue that you are not, in fact, necessarily
claiming that the principles underlying biological and
non-biological systems *must* be the same, only that cultures,
like biological species, evolve in the same patterned
ways based only on the principles of natural selection? Is this
a more accurate assessment of your view? Do you
feel that you are only arguing is that the abstract concept "human
culture," as well as examples from individual
cultures and bi-cultural contact events, CAN be described using
Darwinian principles of identification and
assessment of developmental patterns, but not that culture and
the body ARE THE SAME AS each other in
fundamental ways?
This conversation over the last few days has made me think very
hard about these things, because I DO empathize
with what you are saying about the rapid globalizing spread of
proto-capitalist, neo-democratic, English-based
pseudo-"American" cultural traits, including some of
the worst from those available trait-pools . At the same time,
I
almost bristle at the underlying historical implications of memetic
cultural theory, especially as extended through
Mal's set of posts, and find myself cheering on Rah and Sophist
as they counter your (collective) arguments for
understanding cultures as though they were species. And although
I am deeply fascinated by the power of the
biological analogy, I keep coming back to my main problem with
extending it as far as you seem to want to do, and
as Mal certainly does. Memes are not the same as genes. Adaptively
successful biological characteristics (white
fur for arctic rabbits, language capacity and the drive to create/use
language for humans) are simply NOT analogous
to specific identifiable cultural differences embodied in individual
languages or economic systems or religious
narratives or systems of social hierarchy. Your (and others) difficulty
with defining the term "meme" is, at least in my
view, evidence of the foundational failure of the analogy as a
grand theory of cultural development. The type of
things that you have identified as memes, i.e., individual languages,
economic systems, etc., seem to me to be
highly fluid, always transformational, *processes,* but are not
actually individual entities in the same way that genes
or their alleles are.
Underlying that set of identificatory and analytical principles
we term Darwinian natural selection is the understanding
that biological life is embodied in individual entities -- be
it humans, rabbits or genes ñ who are collected in
biologically-linked populations ñ species, isolated groups
ñ and that each individual in those groups carries specific
sets of inheritable genes that are replicated (along a relative
spectrum) throughout the members of those
populations. Although individual genes carried by those individual
group members can mutate from one generation
to the next, and those mutations can, over time, spread throughout
the descendants of the members of a particular
group, genes are most usually spread over time through their replication
as unchanged whole gene units (both the
DNA-carrying allele and its locus on the chromosome) in succeeding
generations of individuals. Adaptations and
recombinations of those inherited whole gene units, as well as
adaptive mutations of them, function primarily to
assure or maximize the survival of individual gene carriers until
their genes units can be passed on to a new
generation of gene-carrying individuals through reproduction.
While it is absolutely clear to me that humans may have a biological
gene that leads to the development of a certain
part of the brain in the fetus in a certain way, and which both
allows and drives the individual carrying that gene to
learn (or even create, if in an otherwise-silent environment)
a specific language, the leap to arguing that a particular
language is THE SAME AS a gene's allele is huge, and to my mind,
still unresolved in your argument.
To me, the components of culture that you have called memes and
treated as if they were alleles, things like the
English language, capitalism, patriarchal monotheism, etc., are
processes, not things, they are constantly changing,
relatively fluid processes in which individuals engage to greater
or lesser extents, and that individual humans have at
least some modicum of free will about whether or how far they
will engage in them. This is why I can choose to buy
my vegetarian groceries at a non-profit, member-run, cop-op grocery
store/farmer's market rather than at Safeway,
and still live in a "capitalist culture." But as an
historian, I could not even begin to think of cultures as fixed
enough,
as "things" enough, to make their components comparable
to alleles. As I understand it (please correct me if I'm
wrong), a gene unit (allele plus chromosomal locus) can be absolutely
and concretely identified, and specific
mutations of the gene unit, either in its allele or locus, can
be specifically identified, and then absolutely and
concretely tracked across time and between individual carriers
of the gene unit. Once one is born with a particular
gene unit, however, except under extreme circumstances of high
radiation, that gene will not change throughout the
individual's lifetime. The same cannot be said for culture, or
for any component of culture as carried by any
individual member-participant in a culture, unless you are willing
to argue, as Mal has, that contemporary Japanese
businessmen, who *of course* are not culturally exactly the same
as their samurai grandfathers (since culture is a
process, not a thing), must then ergo be **exactly the same**
as their "more fit" Yankee conquerors (or perhaps their
Yankee conquerors' actually-conquering grandfathers??) if they
are now "capitalists."
Hmmm, I wonder how my Japanese step-mother would respond to this
claim? Her grandfather started the first
Japanese tin and copper mines in Manchuria at the turn of the
20thC, which her father ran until his death in 1945,
during the first few weeks of the Occupation while he was being
held in an American military jail in Tokyo. Clearly,
both her father and her grandfather ran their businesses along
capitalist lines. But long before "western industrial
capitalism" made its way to Japan in the late 19thC, her
great-greatñgreat-grandfather was a samurai (Ono clan)
in
the 18thC who inherited (from his wife's samurai father) and then
spent his life running a rather large and extremely
successful metal-working business that was by that point already
over two hundred years old. (As far as she knows,
he never killed anybody and I'm honored to have a practice katana
that he made hanging on my bedroom wall....)
Although the family lost all of its money in WWII, her (distant,
unfortunately... :-)) cousins, also his direct
descendants, now own Sapporo Beer and are almost as wealthy as
the emperor. But they are distinctly NOT
Yankee capitalists. It's not Bill Gates' picture that hangs on
walls of their Tokyo corporate headquarters, but a
calligraphy painting supposedly made by her and their common samurai
ancestor. (I know this, because she's
thinking of suing them to get it "back" -- her lineage
claims to it are more direct than theirs...)
I would end only by suggesting a couple of titles that might be
of interest to the general group here, as an extension
of d'Horrible's list (Diamond, et al) at the end of d'Herblay's
last post (now archived):
An old standard of feminist-oriented primatology but still an
excellent contribution to the argument (IMO) is Sarah
Blaffer Hrdy's "The Woman that Never Evolved." The 1999
2nd edition has a new preface by the author and
updates some of the research presented in the original 1981 text.
Read at an obllique angle to Diamond, et al, I find
Hrdy's take on socio-biological primatology quite interesting.
Also wonderful is anthropologist (and former Jesuit)
Gregg Dennings "Islands and Beaches, Discourse on a Silent
Land" which expands Rah's points about the nature of
cultural contact. I'll think of more once my head stops pounding...
redcat, who's own cultural identity is always in flux and who
has been made terribly cognizant that saying "mold
inhibitor" in Hawai'i pidgen (like I tried to do an hour
ago while talking to the painters about the smell) sounds really
funny....
[> [> [> [> Re:
One more try. -- Darby, 16:20:51 09/17/02 Tue
It all comes down to imagery, I guess...
Culture is to me, absolutely, a biological entity. To treat it
as anything else seems linked to a Victorian viewpoint. It also,
absolutely, is a changeable entity. Its meme aspects change faster
and propagate differently than a typical allele, but I see no
reason why it wouldn't be subject to the same selection pressures
as any other biological system. That's the funny thing - the more
I think about it, the more sure I am that the basic patterns are
mathematically comparable, needing just a translation of terms.
I don't understand why people don't see that when they describe
their idea of culture, they are continually describing a living
system here.
Maybe it's that an exact biological simile doesn't quite work.
This is almost like several great colonial organisms, able to
mutate and pass altered alleles between them and then play out
the effects in their not-so-comfy little ecosystem. Is this how
living things typically reproduce? No. Does Darwinian (Neodarwinian,
once you start talking alleles) evolution require any particular
type of reproduction? No. If you can propagate an inheritable
unit, if the traits derived from such units can be compared on
a basis of fitness for a circumstance / set place and time, then
the way they persist and/or spread should follow a selection pattern.
Why wouldn't it? If cultures are so very changeable, what drives
the changes, what changes the nature of a given culture? Why do
certain memes spread easily and others become rarer? Why aren't
the exact details of change identical? Like allele evolution,
it's a circumstance-driven crapshoot.
Part of this may be that my specific background is in parasite
biology and evolution, so the concept of continual change and
fluidly changing attributes seems quite the norm to me. Alleles
are only trackable over a few limited reproductive cycles - what
you wind up taking is a snapshot, a still frame from a film. They
seem permanent because your typical biological playing field is
itself quite static - that doesn't mean that change can't be quite
rapid and complex or that the rules change when the rates speed
up.
Lastly, it is much more pertinent to explore how your step- mother's
Japan resembles American culture, what aspects have shifted toward
an American meme-type, how the cultural contacts have driven mutation
of the indigenous culture, than focus on what hasn't changed.
Unless modern Japan has not changed culturally, or its present
culture can be said to absolutely not be a product of the inflow
of memes over the last half century. Your imagery is comparable
to saying that because your cousin is hairy and can climb a tree,
there has been no significant change in humans, they still are
essentially chimps. Well, not really, but you get the idea.
- Darby, who knows nothing about you cousin and wishes him well,
but who knew that the image would be all wrong for a step-mother.
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: And yet another try.... -- redcat, 17:57:33 09/17/02
Tue
Darby: "Culture is to me, absolutely, a biological
entity. To treat it as anything else seems linked to a Victorian
viewpoint."
Could you expand on this, please? I'm not quite getting the connection.
How is seeing culture as "process" rather
than "thing" linked to a Victorian viewpoint?
Darby: "I don't understand why people don't see that when
they describe their idea of culture, they are continually
describing a living system here."
I am exactly aware, and have been pretty specifically arguing,
that "cultures" are systems, constantly changing and
ineffably fluid ones, but that applying the term "living"
to them OR to the conceptual template "human culture"
is
central to my problem with your argument. I don't see that your
simply asserting that cultures are "alive" or
describing them as such actually makes them so in the biological
sense from which you then extrapolate a grand
theory of development for them.
Also, in the statements above, what do you mean by a "living
system"? Is this just another way of saying "biological
entity," or is it more like saying "eco-system"?
Because in other parts of your argument over the last few days,
it
seems to me that you've been arguing that cultures are like species
and groups within species, and at other times
you've been suggesting that cultures are like eco-systems that
are made up of lots of things including the individual
members of the biological species that inhabit them. So this leads
me to ask if you're arguing that such "living
systems" and their inhabitants (for the sake of consistency,
let's say, the arctic and arctic rabbits) are the same, or
perhaps that, analytically, they're the same *types* of things,
because an individual rabbit can also be described as a
"system" of bones, muscles, veins, cells, proteins and
the chromosomes that direct their development, and/or
because an eco-system like the arctic can "act as if"
it were alive, especially in the sense that it can also "die"
(cease
to exist in that form)? Neither of these propositions is convincing
to me in any way other than metaphorically when I
think about trying to describe cultural (much less cross- cultural)
developments across time.
I think I understand, and am certainly sympathetic to, your frustration
with my seeming obtuseness about "getting"
your argument. But again, I don't think the problem is that I
don't see what you see when you look at cultural
development from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist
who studies parasitic colonies of non-sentient
organisms. It's just that I see a fundamental error in the reasoning
of your theory as applied to cultures, and I
suspect that I see a somewhat more complex environment (historically,
socially, cross-culturally) when I look at the
"field" (culture) to which the theory is being applied.
Darby, I'm really not trying to be snarky here. I think we agree
on a great many levels, but I also think we
fundamentally disagree about some things that are more than just
a matter of semantics or vocabulary. In fact, the
more I think about cultural memetism, the more I'm convinced it's
a historical by-product of late capitalist
rationalization not all that far removed from its Social Darwinist
roots (although, like d'Herb, I cannot apply such a
whole-hearted critique to the entire field of sociobiology).
And I very much appreciate your not applying the "hairy ancestor"
analogy to my step-mother (grin!), but I also think
you've misread the intention of my musing about her family history
and contemporary Japanese culture. If anything,
what I was trying to suggest is what Rah said much more elegantly
(and without my paint-smell-induced rambling) a
day or so ago, that cultures are ALWAYS changing, adapting, fluid.
In my view, they are never fixed but always
**systems undergoing constant change.** I was trying to say that
a Japanese businessman today is neither like his
own grandfather, like an American businessman of his grandfather's
generation, or like an American businessman of
his own generation. He's a contemporary Japanese businessman who
acts in ways that are absolutely part of
contemporary Japanese culture, just as an American businessman
is no less "American" if he goes to a karaoke bar
after work, even as he mispronounces the name and calls it "kar
-ee-o-kee." [pet peeve there, folks, sorry...]
Watching Japanese television, which plays here in Honolulu on
several channels and to which I've unfortunately
recently become rather addicted (Buffy-less summers lead to all
sorts of bad adaptations, or would this be a
mutation?), has convinced me that while the Japanese television
industry may make shows that *seem* to be like
their American counterparts (cop shows, musical variety shows,
soap operas, historical dramas, sit-coms), the
similarity is only a millimeter deep and the stories told through
those genres are indelibly *modern Japanese* ones,
not modern American ones. Sorry that my prior musings on the subject
were so unclear. Still, while I think it's pretty
obvious from reading across my posts in this set of threads that
I don't think ANY culture stands still, I also don't
agree with your notion that any change in Japanese culture that
comes about as a result of contact with American
culture, and which results in Japanese people doing things that
are linked in specific ways to things that Americans
also do is prima facie evidence that one set of cultural "memes"
is environmentally, evolutionarily "more fit" than the
practices it replaces.
malama pono a hui hou!!
redcat, who really has to go take some aspirin and lay down now....
the paint smell is inhibiting my ability to think at
all, much less coherently....
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: And yet another try.... -- Darby, 20:41:38
09/17/02 Tue
The Victorian comment connects to our very human tendency to see
much of what we do as being quite separate from biological processes.
"They" are not "we."
But say, and I think that the evidence is compelling, that other
animals that pass information on to their young by learning -
elephants, whales, chimpanzees, even crows - develop differing
behaviors in different groups, different cultures. This is a reasonable
extension of a learning- based social system, although there's
great resistence to the idea even among modern biologists. Would
the processes I've suggested make more sense during the blending
and subsequent evolution of two elephant herds, or chimp troops?
Field researchers think they've seen it happening. The inheritance
here is still nonmendelian and somewhat lamarkian, the communication
undoubtedly simpler, but should that matter? One has a particular
feeding strategy, the other an economic system - a fundamental
difference or just a variation in approach? I get the feeling
that folks have an overwhelming need to see human endeavor as
special and immune from some basic rules that would absolutely
be applicable if it weren't us we were talking about.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: And yet another try.... -- redcat, 09:45:54
09/18/02 Wed
Well, Darby, I'm pretty sure I'm not a speciesist, since
I haven't eaten the flesh of a sentient being for almost 25
years exactly because I "recognize their faces," I see
animals as fundamentally the same as humans in the most
important ethical sense. And it was, in fact, elephant "speech"
and other animal communication systems that led me
to write the phrase (in a now-archived response to Sarah in the
thread that started this conversation), "speech in all
its forms is a human/animal function and the last time I checked,
paper and ink were only metaphorically ëalive'."
I'm also pretty sure that I've made clear that the crux of my
argument lies in its absolute acknowledgment of the
biological basis of certain functional aspects of human culture
and social structure, but that my understanding of
culture and cultural interaction lead me to disagree that natural
selection is the only or even the primary principle
driving cultural development. Although I think this is clear throughout
my work in this set of threads, it is particularly
evident in my statement from a post two spaces above, to wit:
"[w]hile it is absolutely clear to me that humans may
have a biological gene that leads to the development of a certain
part of the brain in the fetus in a certain way, and
which both allows and drives the individual carrying that gene
to learn (or even create, if in an otherwise-silent
environment) a specific language, the leap to arguing that a particular
language is THE SAME AS a gene's allele is
huge, and to my mind, still unresolved in your argument."
You have not yet answered the critical statement of that's sentence's
independent clause, nor have you addressed
anywhere, and certainly not in the response directly above, my
actual objections to memetic theory or to the
argument that natural selection is the fundamental principle driving
the development of the fundamentally inorganic,
non-biological set of processes and complex interactions we call
"human culture." But to suggest that the reasoning
I've forwarded in explanation for my difficulty with your application
of neo-Darwinian natural selection principles to
human cultures is flawed because it depends on seeing human culture
as somehow discrete from biological
processes is absurd.
And it's hard not to see the following statement of yours, coming
in a second direct response to posts of mine, as
directed at me: Darby: "I get the feeling that folks have
an overwhelming need to see human endeavor as special
and immune from some basic rules that would absolutely be applicable
if it weren't us we were talking about." To
suggest that my disagreement with you is based on an "overwhelming
need" to see humans as some sort of special
species, or human cultures as some sort of special endeavor with
a special set of rules, just because it is "us we
were taking about," is at the very least disingenuous, and
unfortunately also feels discourteous and quite shallow,
especially given the care and seriousness of thought with which
I have, in fact, taken your argument about the
correspondence of "memes" to genes or alleles and the
applicability of natural selection as a fundamental
explanatory model for understanding the development of human cultures.
So I'm quite sorry to have to say this, since up to now this thread
has been interesting and informative, but after such
a thoughtful discussion, I had expected better. Perhaps you were
tired? I have always liked and respected you on
the board and so would like to give you the benefit of the doubt.
But even after sitting with this overnight, and
reading it again in the most compassionate early morning light
that I can find, I still don't understand where you are
coming from (or going to, for that matter) with this response.
redcat, really hoping she read your post wrong and that our intellectual
disagreements haven't degenerated into
name calling, but wishing that if they have, you would have used
a more appropriate one than speciesist
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Re: And yet another try.... -- Darby,
15:38:34 09/18/02 Wed
It was a general feeling I was getting, but I guess it comes down
to a feeling of seeing, in various subthreads, that it can't
work this way, with not a clear idea of why. Is cultural interaction
totally random, following no pattern? Ideas and strategies don't
compete? What determines what "catches on," and what
fades into a historical footnote? Luck? Is that all that changes
people's local cultures? If there is a pattern, what are the rules?
A genetic allele, to be evolutionarily important, is a variation
of a trait upon which selection pressure can work. Languages are
variations on a trait, communications methods, and can seriously
impact understanding when cultures collide (just see the subthread
above). Like an allele, language both influences other traits
of culture and is influenced by them - for instance, a cultural
difference is often illustrated by a language comparison - there
is no word for this in their language, or the language pertaining
to this is much more complex, or whatever.
As for my feelings about where people's misgivings are coming
from, I absolutely might be disingenuous, and I may be disrespectful,
and I apologize. I needed to make the suggestion because I know
the inclinations exist in me and this was a possibility I wanted
people to hear. I really don't know enough about everyone here
to know if it was something that could be affecting their attitudes.
This is an odd aspect of humans - everybody treats it like its
some magical piece of our nature, it's difficult for me not to
get that feeling. I am no longer being accusatory (and I didn't
accuse, I just wondered), I'm just trying to explain where the
suggestion came from.
- Darby, who's feeling sheepish but can't say I didn't feel the
way that I felt.
[> [> a few random thoughts
-- matching mole, 12:58:04 09/17/02 Tue
I missed the earlier debate but I'm going to rashly stick a couple
of comments in here with regards to Biological and Cultural Evolution.
First of all I want to emphasize what Darby says - fitness in
biological evolution is completely context specific. Evolution
has no foresight. A good analogy is walking on a path in a dark
forest where you can only see one step ahead of you. When you
choose between two paths you have no way of knowing where the
path might lead you.
An outcome of this lack of foresight is that extinction is often
pretty unpredictable based on past success. Passenger Pigeons
were the most abundant birds in North America and now they are
gone.
So when you talk about a population or a species being fit you
are discussing it within a very particular concept. I think the
same thing is true of cultures (or ideas). There is no absolute
measure of how fit or good something is, just how well it does
in a particular situation.
Secondly there are important differences between biological and
cultural evolution that can lead to confusion. Specifically cultural
evolution is Lamarkian and it doesn't seem to have any process
analogous to the formation of species (speciation). I'll explain
what each of these means. Lamarkian evolution refers to the inheritance
of acquired characteristics rather than mutations. Instead of
new traits coming about by accident they are taken up deliberately
by conscious entities (i.e. people).
Speciation is the formation of separate evolutionary units - species
A splits in two and becomes species B and C. Although cultures
certainly can subdivide they do not tend to become evolutionarily
isolated from one another in the same way that species do. Ideas
(memes) constantly flow between cultures. Genes don't flow between
species (or at least not as much). As Rahael said cultures end
up containing traits that are the results of their interactions
with other cultures.
There are cases where genes behave kind of like ideas in transfering
laterally (rather than in an ancestor-descendant way), especially
in bacteria but overall it seems that biological evolution is
more dependent on the transfer of information from ancestors than
cultural evolution is. In cultures (especially nowadays) the lateral
transfer of ideas between cultures seems very important.
For this reason thinking of cultures as evolving entities makes
my head hurt (I'm not saying it is a wrong thing to do, just that
it makes my head hurt). I prefer to think of ideas as evolving
and cultures as the environment in which they evolve.
[> [> [> If you have
the time -- Sophist, 13:34:56 09/17/02 Tue
check archive 1. It's a long discussion, but I think you'd find
it interesting and I'd find your response interesting as well.
[> [> [> [> Re:
If you have the time -- aliera, 15:03:15 09/17/02 Tue
...and since I'm sure you have nothing better to do (very dry
non-humour) where is the Neanderthal extinction debate at? Is
there a agreement or solution as to why? The books I'm going through
right now (written mid 1990s) present it as a mystery with quite
a few possibilities for cause(s). There was also disagreement
at that time about their(neanderthal) capability for language.
Sophist: thanks for the follow-up. Googling yielded substantial
rich lovely reading material for Pinker so I'm going to look closer
at his work; but, I do appreciate the elaboration. My gut says
that neither side has it right but; that,s just feeling based,
so pretty worthless.;-)
[> [> [> [> [>
Neanderthals -- Darby, 16:28:25 09/17/02 Tue
If you want real, WWE-type entertainment, lock a few Neanderthal
experts in a room and watch from a safe distance. There are many
ideas, no consensus, and the "leading" theory changes
about once every two weeks.
Has anyone seen Ice Age? That's very instructive in the
debate - the humans in the movie were recognizably Neanderthal
but absolutely human. Anthropologists (an amazing number of whom
don't really believe in evolution!!) get very focused on differences
and often absolutely, positively convinced that the differences
they see in a few bones are incredibly significant. I think that
if you saw a Neanderthal on a bus tomorrow, you'd find yourself
wondering where the interesting person had come from, not who
had released an apeman. I used them as an example because I see
their history as a culture clash.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: Neanderthals -- aliera, 19:15:57 09/17/02
Tue
I know (mucho LOL). It makes our little discussions seem very
sedate...tea anyone? (no disrepect to any tea drinkers...lovely
beverage.) The question wasn't based on any of your posts, no
worries...one of the books I'm almost finished with is "The
Neanderthal Enigma" and although it's obviously much about
the enigma, no answers. So of course I was curious about what
had happened since it was drafted. Also, D'H had made an offhand
remark in a completely OT thread about his Neanderthal side (the
mind boggles) around the time I was starting the book. This is
somewhat like showing up to work one morning finding everyone
else in pale violet too, a trifle disconcerting (but also very
typical since I started visiting ATPo.) It is one of those small
tiny feelings thinking about the Neanderthals, like looking at
the stars. I know it's further off topic but any thoughts on The
Eve Theory? We could possibly tie it into origins of the slayer...I
also read "Genome" which D'H mentions below...another
disconcerting experience...the book, not the mention.
"The first rule of anthropology is that if everyone believes
what you've said, you've probably got it wrong."--Owen Lovejoy
"So maybe reality is untestable." --Erik Trinkhaus
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Eve -- Darby, 20:29:25 09/17/02 Tue
Another great backstory -
These anthropological geneticists want to compare mitochondrial
DNA, passed (theoretically but not actually) only down maternal
lines, from a whole bunch of ethnic groups around the world, then
compare and extrapolate backward (can you do that?) to determine
the time and location of a common ancestral woman - that's the
"Eve." Unfortunately, they didn't have the statistical
backgrounds to do it, so they bought a computer program to do
it for them. Then, being good guy researchers, they didn't really
read the instructions. The program reads out - I've forgotten
the details - a date and a place in Africs, and they publish,
and it's the cover of Time, Newsweek and the like. They
get a call from the software developers..."Um, why did you
select only one possibility?" Because of the nature of the
numbers, the first ten (it might have been eight or twelve) readouts
would be lumped as equally likely. In those other readouts, there
were several different dates, and other locations from the Middle
East to South (and I think Central) Asia. Of course, the world
got the first news but only a few people read the retraction.
It's a great story about the human aspect of science.
And there's still great disagreement about all this stuff. Most
of the time the DNA results absolutely disagree with the fossil
results. Do we all derive from a single human group to emerge
late from Africa, or did the earlier emergent groups give rise
separately to us all (and if they did, how different could they
really have been from us and each other)? Throw a dart. And I'll
bet you that none of them are completely right - or probably completely
wrong. But I don't think anthropologists would be happy if they
weren't disagreeing with some colleague or other.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Re: Eventually... -- aliera, 10:12:54
09/18/02 Wed
"Everybody is anomalous."--Hilary Deacon
James Shreeve (The Neanderthal Enigma) has some wonderful descriptions
of his frustrations in trying to come to a conclusion on the issues.
I'm loving it truthfully (of course, I have no stake in it other
than curiosity.) It certainly puts some of our "discussions"
here perspective, we're pretty sedate compared to some of what
I 've read! Last night after posting, I got to a section on the
mtDNA issue (p253-256). Apparently two other groups redid the
work of Stoneking and others (boy to me the sample groups look
awfully small but I'll admit I'm clueless as to the relevance
of that)and came up with somewhat different results. Trees terminating
in Africa primarily; but also Asia and Europe. It doesn't rule
out the mitochondrial Eve theory, just points out the perhaps
impossibility of locating a definative origination. The author
mentions that the fossil trail of Africa seems to indicate the
most continuous development and that there are linguistic connections
too. Another amusing thing, "fossil record" well it
certainly sounds weighty and important and authoritative! I gather
there's quite a bit of interpretation involved. Thanks to both
you and Sophist for the recommendations and updates. I am having
little time for the board for the next couple of weeks; moments
stolen away from lots of overtime as we prepare for our annual
convention which is next week in Montreal. I hope to have time
to locate some of the materials and read Pinker and others for
myself while I'm away. Thanks again!
"I swear, he said the following year, I see what is better
than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold." Indeed!
WW, LoG 1856 (2nd ed), p.329
[> [> [> [> [>
Suggested reading -- Sophist, 08:47:30 09/18/02 Wed
Here are 2 more books I suggest:
In Search of the Neandertals, Stringer and Gamble
The Neandertals, Trinkaus and Shipman
Between these 2 and Shreeve's book, you should have a good idea
of the parameters of the dispute.
The current DNA evidence (and see Darby's caveats about that)
supports the claim that Neandertals are not human ancestors. Most
of the work has been done by Svante Paabo, but I believe there
are other studies as well.
There are also evolutionary theory reasons for rejecting Neandertals
as human ancestors. This is basically the Gould/Dawkins dispute,
and I don't want to get into it here. If you agree with Gould,
Neandertal genes are unlikely to appear in modern humans (though
it's not impossible).
[> [> [> If you have
the time -- Sophist, 13:36:11 09/17/02 Tue
check archive 1. It's a long discussion, but I think you'd find
it interesting and I'd find your response interesting as well.
[> [> [> [> Since
you asked for it... -- matching mole, 13:18:53 09/18/02
Wed
How could I have missed such an interesting debate! My newly busy
job, that's how. I'm kind of scared to jump in now but I do have
a few thoughts that possibly might clarify matters (or maybe not).
I have read a bunch of the posts but not all them so my apologies
if I am repetitious or seeming to ignore someone's brilliant comment.
First of all, I'd like to thank d'Herb for his very clear distinctions
of social Darwinism, sociobiology, and meme evolution which I
can see very easily getting mixed up even though they are very
different animals.
And I'd like to state my admiration of Darby for his apparently
tireless energy in discussing this matter.
My opinion, I think (given that I probably haven't fully absorbed
all the arguments) lies somewhere in between that of Darby and
that of Sophist, Rahael, redcat, etc. I freely confess to being
quite ignorant about anthropology and about the details of memetic
theory (my knowledge of memes comes from reading one chapter in
one of Dawkins books). Part of the problem in this conversation
is a too strict attempt to make an analogy between neo-Darwinian
ideas of populations and genes and cultures and ideas. Another
problem in discussing cultural evolution is the idea that somehow
keeps creeping in that evolution necessarily involves the rise
of one culture (or idea) at the expense of another. An enormous
amount of biological evolution occurs without this sort of competitive
supplanting.
I'm going to start by making a distinction between a strictly
biological Darwinian process of natural selection and a more general
model of selective evolution. Biological evolution by natural
selection occurs within a specific framework of genes, individuals,
populations, and species. Although each of these entities can
be somewhat amorphous they are recognized by biologists as real
and important in understanding evolutionary processes. For various
reasons that have been thoroughly discussed it is not really possible
to draw direct analogies between these entities and entities in
cultural evolution.
In my original post I made a different analogy, one that I later
discovered that Darby had alluded to in the earlier, archived
thread. Cultures are more like ecosystems than populations in
that the lateral transfer of individuals and of information is
much more open. Therefore the composition of the entity itself
has more possibilities. You can introduce prickly pear cactus
into Australia and they become part of the ecosystem. Or geckos
in Hawaii. However you cannot introduce a robin (either North
American or European) into a population of I'iwi. However this
analogy breaks down too, if you take it any farther than this.
Ecosystems are made of us many different species of organisms
each with a bunch of individuals. The concepts within cultures
don't seem nearly that organized.
What I suggest is that cultural evolution is probably influenced
by a much vaguer and more general version of Darwinian selection.
Simply put, entities that have properties that tend to allow the
entity to persist and/or reproduce itself tend to be more prevalent
than entities that don't have such properties. As a non-social
scientist I'm not going to make any attempt to define what those
entities might be in any precise way. Below is a list of caveats
(or whatever you want to call them)
1. The benefits of attributes are highly condition dependent.
A good idea at one time and place is not necessarily a good idea
anywhere else.
2. Accidents are an important part of evolution. Gould wrote a
whole book about the extinction of many kinds of animals shortly
after animals themselves appeared on the scene ('Wonderful Life').
In it he argues that chance extinctions largely determined the
kinds of animals we see on earth today. As usual I think he both
set up a straw man (although maybe not from the general public's
perspective so perhaps I'm being too harsh) and overstated his
case (without any real knowledge of these extinctions and the
extreme paucity of the fossil record at those dates it seems difficult
to come to one conclusion or another). However the point is well
taken. Most extinctions are probably due to bad luck. Colonization
of a new environment and the production of new species is partly
good luck.
3. Natural selection tends to reduce genetic variation. Despite
this fact, genetic variation is rampant in the natural world (my
wife's research program is dedicated to these seemingly paradoxical
statements). There is no reason to suspect that any other kind
of evolution would be any different.
4. Lateral transfer and fusion transform ideas. As redcat points
out they are not very analogous to genes (although the discrete
model of genetic transfer is a simplification of the real world).
However this doesn't mean that these sorts of entities can't evolve.
Lateral transfer of genetic material is very common in bacteria
(the real rulers of the earth) and this merely increases the speed
at which evolution can happen.
5. Success doesn't necessarily meaning spreading all over the
place and replacing others. Success can be treading water, persisting.
Success is very hard to define over the long term. Suppose an
old idea is put in a new environment. The idea is changed and
then becomes wildly popular in a new and unrecognizable form.
Was the old idea successful or not? A hard question to answer.
In summary I think that concepts and ideas can evolve in generally
Darwinian fashion but not in a way that is strictly analagous
to biological processes. And with the caveats that progress and
success in a Darwinian process are local, short-term concepts.
[> [> [> [> [>
Thanks -- Sophist, 13:37:37 09/18/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Once more, with feeling -- Sophist, 16:07:26 09/18/02
Wed
That "Thanks" sounded much more effusive in my head
than it appears to me now on the Board.
What I meant to say was that I really appreciate that you took
the time to read through these dense threads and sort them out.
I found your comments both judicious and helpful. Thanks (swelling
chords).
[> [> [> [> [>
Very well written, mm. Thanks! -- redcat, 14:44:31 09/18/02
Wed
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Since you asked for it... -- Someone who looks like
Darby, 06:12:18 09/19/02 Thu
Sneaking in after Sara said, "No more postings on evolution,
okay?"...
Thanks, mole. I should remember another biological fact - when
two sides get entrenched on an issue, the truth is usually somewhere
between the two positions. Man, they would hate you at some of
these conferences...
- Darby, who is fleeing before his, "But don't you think
-?" questions wriggle their way out of his brain and into
the keyboard...
[> [> [> [> [>
[> You know who looks somewhat like Darby? -- d'Herblay,
07:48:17 09/19/02 Thu
Appropriately.
Compare. Separated at birth? Or does epistemology
recapitulate physiognomy?
[> [> Advanced doesn't
mean moral -- Malandanza, 15:11:26 09/17/02 Tue
Well, at the risk of sounding like Darby, I think most of your
problems with what I've said are the different connotations you
attach to some of the words I use. For example, I agree with Darby
that "fittest" has little to do with which culture is
better, nor do I used the word "advanced," at which
you take such umbrage, to imply any sort or moral superiority
-- merely technical advantage. You might argue that the New World
cultures were more advanced than, say, the invading Spaniards
in some areas -- the calendar of the Mayans or the brain surgery
of the Incans (if you call carving holes in a person's head to
let out the evil spirits advanced), but this is a quibble and
it is easy enough to find examples where a clearly technologically
superior "civilized" nation massacred a primitive people
(think of the machine gun carrying Italians under Mussolini butchering
spear wielding Ethiopians or the Tasmanians hunted into extinction
by the British).
"Are we talking about 'cultures' going extinct or the
people practicing the cultures becoming extinct?"
Cultures going extinct -- in some cases a culture will survive
conquest (like the Greeks under Roman conquest -- the Roman culture
became a carrier for many Greek memes). And a people can survive
the destruction of their culture -- like the Plains Indians in
America or even the more advanced city dwelling tribes that were
rounded up during the Trail of Tears. Their cultures are gone
-- supplanted -- but the people are not. I'd also point out that
I didn't say the surviving cultures were necessarily the most
fit, only that there was a strong correlation between extinction
and a lack of fitness.
"If a peaceful country were fell upon by a determined
military, yes, they would die. However, I will not agree that
the attacking force had an 'advanced' and 'fit' culture. To think
that is to fall into a certain vision of human societies that
I actually find scary."
If the peaceful country's memes were adopted by the invading country,
we might even say that the culture was more fit than the people
who practiced it. But put your mind at ease about the warlike
cultures: aggression does not seem to be a survival trait these
days -- which was my point about the pre-WWII Japanese and Germans.
Their strong warrior cultures did not survive the war. Unprovoked
aggression invites destruction.
"Some parts of the British Empire attempted to educate
us."
What is this if not an attempt to supplant parts of your culture
with their own? To make your culture a carrier of their memes?
You give the colonizers too much credit. My view of the colonizers
is the same as Mark Twain's in "To the Person Sitting in
Darkness."
"I'm going to leave the Soviet Union to CW if he wants
to comment - but I'd say that the sheer landmass meant that totalitarianism
never managed to impose its will on everyone."
If the Soviets had merely "failed to impose its will on everyone",
I might agree that landmass was a factor --but they failed to
impose their will on anyone -- not even the Baltic states in spite
of forced emigration and resettlement. Had they succeded in unifying
the Balkans they might even have done the rest of the world a
favor.
"I'd be interested in you pointing out to me what exactly
constitutes an 'advanced' culture, and what a 'backward' one is.
Because if the answer is that no successful culture shares any
characteristic with another *other* than success, I'd have to
be extremely skeptical. I mean, is European culture backward?
since the birthrate in Europe is falling dramatically? Would it
be more 'advanced' if European culture encouraged its participants
to reproduce enthusiastically?"
I speak technologically. The U.S. is more advanced than the Dominican
Republic -- I don't recall using the word "backward,"
but I would say that conversely the Dominican Republic is backward.
Technologically. But what does birthrate have to do with culture?
The American cultures spreads quite nicely without us having to
out-reproduce the rest of the world. McDonald's, Coca Cola and
Baywatch are pretty widespread.
I think you talked of the advantages of being bilingual (or multi-lingual)
in a previous posting. I'd say the monolingualism of the U.S.
has helped us preserve our memes intact -- that bilingualism is
hardly a survival trait. We receive some influence from other
English speaking countries (but they've been so thoroughly compromised
by American memes that they cannot influence us too much), but
cultures relying on other languages have little influence -- when
is the last time any of us watched a French sitcom or a German
soap opera (assuming such things exist)?
Sophist compared the extinction of cultures to the death of the
dinosaurs, but I don't believe that that comparison is valid in
most cases. Perhaps the analogy holds for the Aztec and Incan
cultures, where small pox filled the role of the meteor that destroyed
the dinosaurs, but I like to think that these two cultures carried
in them the germ of their own destruction. The Spanish succeeded
so well because both cultures were so hated by other native people
that allies flocked to the Spanish. The genocide meme carried
by Aztec society helped bring about its downfall -- as bad as
the Spanish were, the Aztecs were worse.
[> [> [> Re: Advanced
doesn't mean moral -- leslie,
15:37:55 09/17/02 Tue
"...a French sitcom or a German soap opera (assuming such
things exist)?"
How can you make this argument if you don't even know the answer
to this question?
--an avid watcher of Welsh soap operas, when available
[> [> [> [> French
Sitcoms and German Soap Operas -- Malandanza, 17:19:43
09/17/02 Tue
"How can you make this argument if you don't even know
the answer to this question?"
Actually, that's kind of the point. I assume French sit- coms
and German Soap Operas exist because of the success of American
pop-culture memes -- it makes sense to me that French and German
culture would be influenced by our culture. They understand English
and like American culture (at least some parts of it). By contrast,
French and German memes have been so unsuccessful in influencing
our culture that I don't know for sure if there is such a thing
as French Sitcoms or German Soap Operas. Our monolingual society
has kept that information out. I have seen a handful of French
film and, I think, one German film (plus an Opera), but my knowledge
of current French popular culture is pretty much restricted to
what I've seen portrayed on PBS British sitcoms (and I suspect
the BBC presents a somewhat skewed vision of the French and Germans).
Now I do know that that Spanish language Soap Operas and sitcoms
exist -- I used to watch them to practice my Spanish listening
skills (and I liked the Spanish Soap Operas better than the American
versions) but I am one of the few people in America that can understand
a smattering of another language -- and by learning Spanish, I
inadvertently opened myself up to the influence of other cultures.
I got very different perspective of the Spanish conquest of the
New World from my Spanish professors from Spain and Mexico, I
have been able to read about the "Invasion Yanqui" (the
Mexican-American War) from the perspective of Mexican historians
and so forth. Personally, I view bilingualism as a good thing
-- I do believe that I am a better person for it, but at the same
time, from a memetic standpoint, I think that xenophobic cultures
are more likely to be able to perpetuate their memes uncorrupted
by outside sources. The U.S. seems to have the best of both worlds
-- we freely export our memes while greatly restricting the influx
of other cultures' memes.
[> [> [> [> [>
Bed glad you've never watched a french sitcom, really.
-- shuddering Ete in horror at the memory, 03:09:46 09/18/02
Wed
[> [> [> Crossover
-- Darby, 16:37:48 09/17/02 Tue
The smallpox mention reminded me of how fuzzy the barrier really
is here between allele effects and meme effects...
In a very real way, part of the fitness of European culture was
that its pattern of cities connected by trade routes fostered
the development of disease organisms particularly adapted to the
chemistry of European children. Mesoamerican culture, with its
different city types and varying trade practices, never themselves
developed comparable diseases. Really, outside of Europe, only
China did, in that case aided by their domestication practices.
That's why the colonial era is example after example of European
diseases reducing the populations of indigenous peoples (and contributing
to the fitness reduction of the cultures) but virtually no similarly
devastating diseases came back to Europe.
Well, even if it didn't contribute to the discussion, it's a neat
story...
[> [> [> Terminology
-- Rahael, 04:41:04 09/18/02 Wed
Well, I have a number of problems with the way you describe culture
and it's operation.
Yes, I can see how you deny the implication of 'moral superiority'
in the word 'advanced' but I have a different objection to that
word. It seems to imply a teleological and progressivist view
of culture, which I've attempted again and again to argue against.
I don't think you and Darby are quite understanding my objections.
I don't think culture 'moves forward'. As Mole puts it, culture
moves laterally. It's ephemeral - it might be codified in books,
but we'll never understand how an oral work functioned in the
society that produced it. We only have our own reading of it.
Darby has stated that 'memes' move around the world, but I've
pointed out that symbols are not interpreted in the same way even
by two people in the same family.
Now I understand what Darby says about culture being a 'living
thing' but a living thing has a coherency, and all its parts combine
together to form a functioning whole. BUT CULTURE DOES NOT DO
THAT! It does not 'work together'. It isn't coherent. It doesn't
have a 'function'. It doesn't fulfil deep psychological needs.
It is simply the interaction of peoples. And subcultures can be
at deep variance with the society they live within. They can rupture
it. They can destroy. They can live at complete lava boiling points
of intensity, always threatening the system. A culture, when it
meets another doesn't have a single purpose or outlook. A whole
culture doesn't meet a whole culture. A part of British culture,
and a part of the Asian subcontinent interacted. Not two monolithic
cultures. What emerged was a subculture, a distinctive experience.
That was woven into different parts of different subcultures.
So how can these meme spread whole? It can't.
Furthermore, a person can be a part of a number of subcultures.
I can be a Christian, a member of an ethnic minority, a well read
person, a watcher of Buffy etc etc. And I carry all these subcultures
with me all the time. I do not suddenly stop being an ethnic minority
because I enter the Christian subculture on a Sunday morning.
I have an even more unique experience because I am a part of both.
Different from my Muslim friend, different from my English Christian
friend. So how are memes at work here? You could say I've imbibed
of the 'Christian' meme, but that's not quite true. I was brought
up by a devout Grandmother, taught to critique it by a radical
Christian mother, went through a period of intense atheism, rediscovered
a unique perspective through the poetry of George Herbert, and
some deep soul searching. So what Christian meme have I got? Now
consider that I spent three years studying Calvinism, and some
more extreme Christian sects. So how many memes have I got? For
just this one tiny part of my life?
I can't spread the 'subcontinental colonial experience' because
it is bound up, inextricably with deeply personal feelings and
experiences. It's different from my Grandmother's more direct
experience, and that of her father and her father;s father. The
meme hasn't been passed down the generations. A story, a self
image, a self definition has been passed down. And it hasn't been
swallowed whole by each generation. My mother didn't agree with
my grandmother's views, and I don't necessarily agree with everything
about my mother's world view. So if a meme can't pass down whole
from parent to child, how else can it pass down, or forward or
laterally? Communication happens. But we can't guarantee how someone
else will read what we say. Look at how much trouble, you have
been having Darby, in communicating this particular 'meme'. You
have had to spell out again and again what you've meant. You've
met resistance, argument, comprension, and misunderstanding. How
is this convincing me that a meme just passes from person to person
or culture to culture??
Mal, you suggest tentatively that there might be a correlation
between surviving cultures, and their relative fitness. How would
you define fitness? I ask this question again, because I'm not
really clear on what you're arguing.
I mentioned the example of the European reproduction rate because
you seem to point to a correlation between culture and the survival
of the peoples of that culture. If a culture encourages people
to not reproduce, not to spend money on costly children, but instead
to marry late, have children even later, have even fewer children
than the previous generation, is that going to ensure the survival
of the population that participates in that culture? Doesn't it
encourage a diminuation of that culture?
Ahh, but I see you argue against this:
"The American cultures spreads quite nicely without us having
to out-reproduce the rest of the world. McDonald's, Coca Cola
and Baywatch are pretty widespread."
But here again, you give 'culture' an independent existence and
consciousness aside from the people who practice it. McDonalds
does indeed have a cultural significance. But that significance
is only invested with meaning by the people who look at it. By
itself, it's just a cheap diner. If the American economy nose
dived tomorrow, do you think McDonalds would have the same glitter
or significance? It's a symbol, that is all. And if the context
that gives meaning to that symbol disappears, its power and resonance
would vanish. You'd have a meaningless symbol, denuded of cultural
significance, tossed into the dustbin of history. So how is that
a 'meme'? And what does it tell us about the 'fitness' of American
culture apart from the fact that American companies can go all
over the globe because of the present condition of the world economy?
Is 'American' culture 'fit' or 'attractive' or is it American
economic success which is 'attractive'? Now you'd argue that American
economic success is a kind of cultural meme - a certain way of
doing things. That seems to say that American economic theory
and activity exists in a vacuum, unaffected by European practice
and thinking, let alone the rest of the world. You know, because
America is capitalist, and capitalism is a monolithic cultural
structure. Apparently. Colour me highly sceptical.
But by identifying Coke or McD's as 'culture', you seem to be
confusing the signifier and the sign, so to speak. It's simply
a product invested with cultural meaning. And yes, they are enormously
resonant. Hated by some, loved by others. So, the local McDonald's
is loathed by my aunt and loved by her children. Well, what does
this say? Has it entered their cultural world, or is it simply
a cultural product that they are predisposed to viewing in a certain
way because of their world view?
Do any readers of the board view the cultural resonance of the
word 'Enron' in the same way as they did last year? The meaning
of symbols change. Just the widespread nature of the symbols is
no guarantee as to how its regarded, or its meaning. You cannot
control how I view a picture. Nor can your family, or your town,
or your country or your continent, even considering that any of
you have the same attitude toward the picture.
Yes, culture could be likened to an ecosystem. But not a living,
biological being. Because we accord the second a kind of sentience,
a purpose, a drive. Culture doesn't have that. The picture of
the Coke bottle isn't filled with an irresistable urge to go out
and propagate. It's just a picture. And it'll arouse different
meanings in different contexts.
Mal Said:
"Some parts of the British Empire attempted to educate us."
What is this if not an attempt to supplant parts of your culture
with their own? To make your culture a carrier of their memes?
You give the colonizers too much credit. "
You're making culture monolithic: 'your culture' 'their own'.
Well, that's assuming that the invaded had a uniform culture,
and that the invaders had a uniform culture. Neither is true.
The colonisers, the missionaries, the civil servants, these are
self selected people. Can you possibly think that they represented
the cultural outlook of everyone in England?
Mal went on to say:
"I think you talked of the advantages of being bilingual
(or multi-lingual) in a previous posting. I'd say the monolingualism
of the U.S. has helped us preserve our memes intact -- that bilingualism
is hardly a survival trait. We receive some influence from other
English speaking countries (but they've been so thoroughly compromised
by American memes that they cannot influence us too much), but
cultures relying on other languages have little influence -- when
is the last time any of us watched a French sitcom or a German
soap opera (assuming such things exist)?"
Well, what I tried to say about bilingualism is that there have
been studies done in the US, of children who speak two languages
at home. They are advantaged by this in their educational record,
and their language ability as a whole.
I'm mystified as to your statement that the US has maintained
it's 'cultural meme' intact. Huh? to quote Sophist. What evidence
do you have for this? A nation of immigrants has preserved it's
intactness? The America I've visited seemed chock ful of diverse
cultural influences. You've been less good at preserving your
'cultural meme' than England has.
So, yes your average American may not be able to speak French
or German, but what does this have to do with anything? Surely,
for bilingualism to give a cultural advantage to some, it must
be against the fact that most other people don't have that advantage.
Hence, my friend Phoebe with a double first from Oxford in French
and German can get jobs ahead of me because she posseses a cultural
advantage that I don't have. It's about circumstance, as Mole
put it, not about an essential quality of 'fitness'. I would love
to read French, so I can read Proust and Verlaine in the original,
therefore according myself greater benefits. Not everyone might
think that reading A La Recherche in the original is a must have
skill, but according to my cultural world view, it is.
"The Spanish succeeded so well because both cultures were
so hated by other native people that allies flocked to the Spanish.
The genocide meme carried by Aztec society helped bring about
its downfall -- as bad as the Spanish were, the Aztecs were worse."
Hang on so there's a 'genocide meme'? Do you think it arose out
of a specific cultural and historical context and died in a specific
cultural and historical? Or did they 'catch' it from someone?
If memes keep being born and dying within the same culture, how
can we say it 'travels'? Because where did the Aztecs get it from?
And did this meme hang around in the air for Nazi Germany to catch?
Or did it remerge spontaneously? Did the Germans catch it from
someone else? Or did it arise from a specific historical and cultural
context?
After the last days postings, I remain more unconvinced than I
did at the start.
[> [> [> [> Re:
Definitions -- Malandanza, 09:36:23 09/18/02 Wed
"After the last days postings, I remain more unconvinced
than I did at the start."
I entered this debate will little belief in the meme theory, but
as the debate has progresses, I find natural selection a pretty
good analogy for the changes that take place in cultures -- not
perfect, of course, but then analogies are rarely perfect. So
if I have not convinced you, at least I find my own arguments
persuasive (and Darby's, of course).
"Mal, you suggest tentatively that there might be a correlation
between surviving cultures, and their relative fitness. How would
you define fitness? I ask this question again, because I'm not
really clear on what you're arguing."
Even in Biology, fitness doesn't guarantee survival. "Only
the strong survive" is a misinterpretation of Darwinism.
Think of evolution as a poker game -- if one player is skilled
and the other is a novice, who is more likely to win? There is
enough chance that the novice could win, so if we play just one
hand it's hard to say with a degree of certainty that the winner
was the better (more fit) player. However, if we look at a series
of 1000 hands of poker and see that one player ended up with all
the chips, we can argue with a fair degree of certainty that he
was the more skilled player. Things can change -- suppose in the
middle of the poker game, the rules were changed so dramatically
that neither player had any idea what was going on -- now who
has the advantage? With culture, I'd say the degree of certainty
is somewhat lower than for a hard science, so while their is a
correlation between survivability and fitness, there is no rule
set in stone saying that "Only the strong cultures survive."
"You're making culture monolithic: 'your culture' 'their
own.' Well, that's assuming that the invaded had a uniform culture,
and that the invaders had a uniform culture."
Well, I don't think I ever claimed cultures were monolithic any
more than I claimed that populations are monolithic (except, perhaps,
the cheetahs). Diversity is a good thing -- if the environment
changes in such a way that it is untenable for the dominant culture/population,
the subcultures/subspecies are there to carry on -- still recognizably
part of the original group, but with a slightly different set
of genes/memes.
"Hang on so there's a 'genocide meme'? Do you think it
arose out of a specific cultural and historical context and died
in a specific cultural and historical? Or did they 'catch' it
from someone? If memes keep being born and dying within the same
culture, how can we say it 'travels'? Because where did the Aztecs
get it from?"
"And did this meme hang around in the air for Nazi Germany
to catch? Or did it remerge spontaneously? Did the Germans catch
it from someone else? Or did it arise from a specific historical
and cultural context?"
First, let me address the notion that the Nazis had to catch the
meme for genocide from the Aztecs in order to develop genocide
as part of their culture. Bees, birds and bats all have wings,
yet no one believes that they evolved from each other or shared
a common winged ancestor. The same trait can develop independently.
The Nazis didn't need to catch genocide -- they were able to develop
it all on their own.
Now, I divide big picture human activity into behavior determined
by 1) genetics 2) culture and 3) interaction of either or both
of these two factors with the environment. So, if we take your
premise that genocide was not part of the culture of the Aztecs
and Nazis, what exactly are you saying? That Germans and Aztecs
are genetically predisposed towards genocide? Or that environmental
conditions forced genocide upon them? I find these possibilities
to be less than compelling. No, genocide is a cultural development.
If you have an alternate, non-cultural explanation for genocide,
I'd love to hear it.
"So, yes your average American may not be able to speak
French or German, but what does this have to do with anything?"
A moment ago you were lecturing poor, embattled Darby about his
inability to communicate in his native tongue -- resulting in
a difficulty in transferring his memes to you via the written
word, yet you profess amazement that I would link foreign languages
to difficulty in transmitting memes? If I can't understand French,
it's difficult for a French speaking person to convince me of
the superiority of his culture. Even if he speaks in English,
there is often something lost in the translation (and as ete once
pointed out by calling Masq and the rest of us anti-redemptionistas
"fundies" it is more difficult to transmit ideas in
a second language than a first).
I also distinguished between the personal benefit of being bilingual
and the societal benefits. I agree with you that I am a better
person for being bilingual and all people should be so, but I
think it inevitably opens up the culture to outside influences.
I'm afraid my jingoism memes have been inevitably lost since I
took up Spanish and began reading South American and Mexican history
from the perspective of the South Americans and Mexicans.
"But by identifying Coke or McD's as 'culture', you seem
to be confusing the signifier and the sign, so to speak. It's
simply a product invested with cultural meaning. And yes, they
are enormously resonant. Hated by some, loved by others. So, the
local McDonald's is loathed by my aunt and loved by her children.
Well, what does this say? Has it entered their cultural world,
or is it simply a cultural product that they are predisposed to
viewing in a certain way because of their world view?"
Gosh, Rah, I was speaking symbolically when mentioned McDonald's,
Coca Cola and Baywatch. Symbolic of the spread of American culture
to all parts of the globe. And I think what your Aunt's distaste
and your nieces' and nephews' love for McDonald's demonstrates
is how successfully the American memes have penetrated -- in the
next generation, how many people will hate the symbols of America?
People who watch their culture being replaced tend to be angry
at the invading culture, people whose culture has been supplanted
don't always miss what they've lost. I can recall an old Mohave
talking to a young man from his grandchildren's generation --
he asked if the young man (in his 20's) could count to ten in
Mohave -- the young man got as far as three, then switched to
Spanish. The old man was disgusted but the young man didn't see
what the fuss was about.
And I don't think Britain has been as resistant to outside influences
as you seem to think. I can remember an Angry British punk rocker
from the 80's howling about how Britain had become the "51st
state of America."
Finally, I would say that there is no "capitalism meme"
or "Christian meme" any more than there is a tiger gene
-- capitalism is a collection of memes. American capitalism shares
many common memes with Japanese capitalism, for instance, but
there are also differences. Like gorillas and humans sharing much
of the basic genetic material, but both are primates. Similarly
the Christian memes can be found not only in divergent Protestant
sects, but shared by Catholics, Muslims, Jews, etc.
[> [> [> [> [>
You misunderstand me -- Rahael, the lecturing harridan,
09:59:34 09/18/02 Wed
On many levels.
I debated with you vigorously because you debate vigorously with
others - I seem to have given offence to the point where you totally
misread my points.
You say:
"First, let me address the notion that the Nazis had to catch
the meme for genocide from the Aztecs in order to develop genocide
as part of their culture. Bees, birds and bats all have wings,
yet no one believes that they evolved from each other or shared
a common winged ancestor. The same trait can develop independently.
The Nazis didn't need to catch genocide -- they were able to develop
it all on their own."
I didn't say that the Naz