We do less of what replicates us and more of what replicates information (culture), and its carriers (technology and entertainment). The symbiosis between humans and culture is beginning to work against us. https://www.jurajkarpis.com/moneyisstatusmemory/
That's my favored explanation of the childlessness epidemic: memes are out-evolving human nuclear genes. As a result, there is more horizontal meme transmission - which encourages meme interests and gene interests to diverge.
when two systems co-evolve in symbiosis, the one that evolves faster domesticates the other one - that is why we see so many domestiaction transfers in people in all domains - food, mating, status wars. heading for endo-symbiosis
We experience the world less, but think we know more about it through the outpourings of ‘experts’ and the media. We have forgotten the wisom of the past that recognised that understanding is more important than knowledge.. We have replaced what we are taught is magical or supernatural by a new mythology, which we deceive ourselves into believing is rational and ‘scientific’, We have changed our religion to a new one, the priesthood of which is the ‘expert’, a religion which is no less intolerant of heterodoxy than the old religions’ Replacing the demons of old with a new demon, the germ, we destroy the rich ecosystems inside, on and around us and are oblivious to the harm this does to our health, harms for which that false god, Medicine, has no curese, only ever more expensive ‘management’ while prevention and cure would be accomplished by eating real food, but not too much, being more active, being dirty, having contact with humans, animals, soil. We have changed that to which we are intoleran, but are no less intolerant.
2. Econ/tech - We find more tech, and grow our economies.
We are ever more dependent on technology and the stae, less self reliant. Lawnmowers make us incapable of mowing a lawn with a scythe, calculators make us incapable of adding two numbers together. AI will soon abolish the ability to think.
Schools no longer produce school-leavers capable of a long read, of writing coherently, or even of preparing a nutritious meal, let alone growing the ingredients.
The school-leavers of the post-industrial world are fit only for the b***s**t jobs of corporate or government bureaucracies, or being dangerously narrow technocratic ‘experts’ writing brainless regulations. Real work- actually growing or making things, becomes the preserve of migrants from parts of the world which still live in reality.
3. Egalitarian - We more avoid creating or accepting inequality.
We have replaced the idea of equal opportunity by one of equal outcome, regardless of ability or effort. Believe that we are egalitarian while accepting an identity ideology to which is intrinsic that persons are entitled to special treatment by virtue of ethnicity, religion, self-assigned gender, etc. We think that diversity on the basis of these superficial identities is more important than differences in thinking. We disparage, cancel, shu, those who dare to express heterodox views..We delude ourselves into thinking that we have repudiated slavery, while many, are still in wage, debt or tax slavery; colonialism, while most of the Global South is still in poverty due to an extractive neocolonialism without any of the benefits such as good governance peace and law which accrued unde the old regime. We have replaced the rule of Law in either monarchies or republics by bureaucratic oligarchies acting under the guise of democracy.
4. Lazy/selfish/myopic - We more do what takes less effort or discipline. [Agree]
We work less, leisure more, wait longer to marry, and have fewer kids then, using contraception as desired. We have fewer norms and rules that limit words, clothes, and interactions, and we less celebrate self-control. We are more sexually promiscuous, and more accepting of diverse sexual practices and recreational drugs. We less push individuals to sacrifice for communities, are more pacifist and less war-like, and we choose more privacy and personal space. We seek comfort and happiness, over honor and achievement.
5. Signal - We do more than is otherwise cost-effective, to look better. [Agree]
We over-insure, do way too much medicine, make stuff too safe, punish too little, and avoid punishing physically, all to show that we care. We do too much school, and over-clean, to seem smart, conscientious and conformist. We over-consume, to show off wealth and identities. We follow fashion, and see too much art and news, to seem smart and well-connected. We invest more in each kid, for better looking kids. We seek variety, and avoid sameness, to show authenticity, creativity, wealth, curiosity, and courage. We make overly-complex rules and regulations, to seem smart.
6. Enjoy - We do what we enjoy, even if that isn’t adaptive.
We do what we are told will be enjoyable, even if it isn’t, and are under pressure to pretend to enjoyment. A majority are trapped in b***s**t jobs without meaning, but under great social pressure to be part of the ‘team’ and pretend that it is meaningful. We consume far more fiction (but mostly of the passive visual type, rather than the written word, which requires more active engagement) and music. We let our personalities get more gendered (whatever that means). With fewer huge disasters (really!), we less seek the comfort of religion. Even as absolute poverty decreases, the wealth gap increases, and many who are not in absolute poverty still feel unjustly poor.
One more suggestion: perhaps it is not in fact egalitarianism as you describe it that is maladaptive.
Perhaps it is envy that is maladaptive.
Or perhaps it is simply the relatively recent rejection of MLK’s call to judge people “by the content of their character not the color of their skin” that is maladaptive.
Or perhaps both. I can’t think how to combine them in the precise fashion of “drivers” that you seem to be seeking, especially as the drive for power/control over others was noteworthy in its absence from your list.
With a partial exception for 3 egalitarianism, is it not the case that our enormous wealth, and the free time it enables, drives all of your other drivers?
I realize you are creating this list with the intention of best figuring out what to do about the maladaptive pressures, but as at least one of your comments below indicates (to me at least), it seem you risk having your end goal pollute your descriptions.
That said, 3 egalitarianism as you’ve worded it sounds adaptive and wonderful, and yet I’m pretty sure - and agree - that as a driver you believe it is maladaptive.
So perhaps this is the rare place where education can address the maladaptive (socialism doesn’t work at scale) pressure.
I’d submit that there was quite a long time where western culture successfully understood this, including at the end of the Cold War.
As a mostly but not entirely joking suggestion, perhaps mandatory inhabiting of a virtual world under communism might cure folks of the maladaptive aspects of egalitarianism at scale while keeping the adaptive aspects in interpersonal relationships and trade intact.
With your framing, then the enormous wealth and the free time that allows are the drivers of almost all, with only a partial exception re: egalitarianism.
My understanding is that if you compare versus historical or tribal societies, then the salience of the first two is what actually makes us WEIRD and different. In this sense, cultural drift is not something that is caused by our current circumstances, but more of a regression to the mean. Maybe implying that if we want to maintain our unusual culture, we need to figure out the original conditions that caused them to first develop.
Yes, most cultural drift is plausibly our returning to 'natural' human styles after selection pressures weakened. But how can we make such pressures strong again?
What I mean is that it's not clear to me that lack of selection pressure is the cause of the decline. Presumably, there have been other points in history when people were poor and cultural selection pressure was high, but they did not necessarily lead to industrial revolutions.
Selection pressure is a force, but there are other things which are determining the orientation of the vector. Factors could include things like the Black Death destroying entrenched power structures and raising the cost of labour, coal providing easily accessible energy, and the mechanical technology of the time being relatively low hanging. The optimistic outlook is that with population decline, solar and nuclear, and AI and robotics, plausibly we are already on course to replicate similar conditions. But there are probably other pressures as well that I'm not aware of which are also required.
You've hit on some distinct patterns in the processes of a social psychology dynamic that centers on a quest for meaning to unify an explanation of a general pattern. I'm thinking of one thing in response, which is that the process of evolution in biology must rely upon long-term as a system dynamic. You can't zip-file the information process for expedience, sending it forward faster. So then, what is the factor that means sustainability alongside all the rest of these six patterns? The reason is that almost certainly it will take more time to actually fully evolve to a better, more long-term term sustained placement existentially for yourselves and living our lives toward that more advanced capability of goals and purposes. How can we notice ways to refine what we are doing, so that we can expand upon it in ways that stabilize a process more likely to be "sustainable," allowing us enough time to, in a biologically cohesive way, just live it forward, steady as it goes toward the loftier goals that seem to be envisioned?
Interesting contradictions: 1) safety/care/health focused items versus sexual promiscuity / drug use. 2) signal conformism versus signal authenticity and avoiding sameness.
The contradiction is resolved by the abdication of personal responsibility. Doesn't matter how careless a person is of what they eat, with whom they have sex, what addictive drugs they smoke or drink, whether they bother to learn a useful skill,.. Big Brother will provide. Conformism in terms of the big issues is compatible with following the fashion of superficial difference in things like dress and popular culture preferences.
People used to be fine with money being used to buy things like indulgences. Now that we are wealthy, we are more wary of profane money interfering with such sacred things.
We do less of what replicates us and more of what replicates information (culture), and its carriers (technology and entertainment). The symbiosis between humans and culture is beginning to work against us. https://www.jurajkarpis.com/moneyisstatusmemory/
That's my favored explanation of the childlessness epidemic: memes are out-evolving human nuclear genes. As a result, there is more horizontal meme transmission - which encourages meme interests and gene interests to diverge.
when two systems co-evolve in symbiosis, the one that evolves faster domesticates the other one - that is why we see so many domestiaction transfers in people in all domains - food, mating, status wars. heading for endo-symbiosis
A slight rewrite of the trends you identify:
1. Learn - We learn more about our world.
We experience the world less, but think we know more about it through the outpourings of ‘experts’ and the media. We have forgotten the wisom of the past that recognised that understanding is more important than knowledge.. We have replaced what we are taught is magical or supernatural by a new mythology, which we deceive ourselves into believing is rational and ‘scientific’, We have changed our religion to a new one, the priesthood of which is the ‘expert’, a religion which is no less intolerant of heterodoxy than the old religions’ Replacing the demons of old with a new demon, the germ, we destroy the rich ecosystems inside, on and around us and are oblivious to the harm this does to our health, harms for which that false god, Medicine, has no curese, only ever more expensive ‘management’ while prevention and cure would be accomplished by eating real food, but not too much, being more active, being dirty, having contact with humans, animals, soil. We have changed that to which we are intoleran, but are no less intolerant.
2. Econ/tech - We find more tech, and grow our economies.
We are ever more dependent on technology and the stae, less self reliant. Lawnmowers make us incapable of mowing a lawn with a scythe, calculators make us incapable of adding two numbers together. AI will soon abolish the ability to think.
Schools no longer produce school-leavers capable of a long read, of writing coherently, or even of preparing a nutritious meal, let alone growing the ingredients.
The school-leavers of the post-industrial world are fit only for the b***s**t jobs of corporate or government bureaucracies, or being dangerously narrow technocratic ‘experts’ writing brainless regulations. Real work- actually growing or making things, becomes the preserve of migrants from parts of the world which still live in reality.
3. Egalitarian - We more avoid creating or accepting inequality.
We have replaced the idea of equal opportunity by one of equal outcome, regardless of ability or effort. Believe that we are egalitarian while accepting an identity ideology to which is intrinsic that persons are entitled to special treatment by virtue of ethnicity, religion, self-assigned gender, etc. We think that diversity on the basis of these superficial identities is more important than differences in thinking. We disparage, cancel, shu, those who dare to express heterodox views..We delude ourselves into thinking that we have repudiated slavery, while many, are still in wage, debt or tax slavery; colonialism, while most of the Global South is still in poverty due to an extractive neocolonialism without any of the benefits such as good governance peace and law which accrued unde the old regime. We have replaced the rule of Law in either monarchies or republics by bureaucratic oligarchies acting under the guise of democracy.
4. Lazy/selfish/myopic - We more do what takes less effort or discipline. [Agree]
We work less, leisure more, wait longer to marry, and have fewer kids then, using contraception as desired. We have fewer norms and rules that limit words, clothes, and interactions, and we less celebrate self-control. We are more sexually promiscuous, and more accepting of diverse sexual practices and recreational drugs. We less push individuals to sacrifice for communities, are more pacifist and less war-like, and we choose more privacy and personal space. We seek comfort and happiness, over honor and achievement.
5. Signal - We do more than is otherwise cost-effective, to look better. [Agree]
We over-insure, do way too much medicine, make stuff too safe, punish too little, and avoid punishing physically, all to show that we care. We do too much school, and over-clean, to seem smart, conscientious and conformist. We over-consume, to show off wealth and identities. We follow fashion, and see too much art and news, to seem smart and well-connected. We invest more in each kid, for better looking kids. We seek variety, and avoid sameness, to show authenticity, creativity, wealth, curiosity, and courage. We make overly-complex rules and regulations, to seem smart.
6. Enjoy - We do what we enjoy, even if that isn’t adaptive.
We do what we are told will be enjoyable, even if it isn’t, and are under pressure to pretend to enjoyment. A majority are trapped in b***s**t jobs without meaning, but under great social pressure to be part of the ‘team’ and pretend that it is meaningful. We consume far more fiction (but mostly of the passive visual type, rather than the written word, which requires more active engagement) and music. We let our personalities get more gendered (whatever that means). With fewer huge disasters (really!), we less seek the comfort of religion. Even as absolute poverty decreases, the wealth gap increases, and many who are not in absolute poverty still feel unjustly poor.
I encourage you to post your version as your separate essay; it is too opinionated to be in my style.
There is a note of safety-ism running through all of these points. It might make sense to explicitly call that out as its own trend.
Does safety-ism correlate with loss of self-reliance, of agency? Strikes me that the biggest single trend is one of increased dependency on the State
One more suggestion: perhaps it is not in fact egalitarianism as you describe it that is maladaptive.
Perhaps it is envy that is maladaptive.
Or perhaps it is simply the relatively recent rejection of MLK’s call to judge people “by the content of their character not the color of their skin” that is maladaptive.
Or perhaps both. I can’t think how to combine them in the precise fashion of “drivers” that you seem to be seeking, especially as the drive for power/control over others was noteworthy in its absence from your list.
With a partial exception for 3 egalitarianism, is it not the case that our enormous wealth, and the free time it enables, drives all of your other drivers?
I realize you are creating this list with the intention of best figuring out what to do about the maladaptive pressures, but as at least one of your comments below indicates (to me at least), it seem you risk having your end goal pollute your descriptions.
That said, 3 egalitarianism as you’ve worded it sounds adaptive and wonderful, and yet I’m pretty sure - and agree - that as a driver you believe it is maladaptive.
So perhaps this is the rare place where education can address the maladaptive (socialism doesn’t work at scale) pressure.
I’d submit that there was quite a long time where western culture successfully understood this, including at the end of the Cold War.
As a mostly but not entirely joking suggestion, perhaps mandatory inhabiting of a virtual world under communism might cure folks of the maladaptive aspects of egalitarianism at scale while keeping the adaptive aspects in interpersonal relationships and trade intact.
Most of these are cultural effects, not causes. At best they are reinforcements of prior drivers, with the exception of egalitarianism possibly.
Idk. Tomato, tomahto here.
With your framing, then the enormous wealth and the free time that allows are the drivers of almost all, with only a partial exception re: egalitarianism.
My understanding is that if you compare versus historical or tribal societies, then the salience of the first two is what actually makes us WEIRD and different. In this sense, cultural drift is not something that is caused by our current circumstances, but more of a regression to the mean. Maybe implying that if we want to maintain our unusual culture, we need to figure out the original conditions that caused them to first develop.
Yes, most cultural drift is plausibly our returning to 'natural' human styles after selection pressures weakened. But how can we make such pressures strong again?
What I mean is that it's not clear to me that lack of selection pressure is the cause of the decline. Presumably, there have been other points in history when people were poor and cultural selection pressure was high, but they did not necessarily lead to industrial revolutions.
Selection pressure is a force, but there are other things which are determining the orientation of the vector. Factors could include things like the Black Death destroying entrenched power structures and raising the cost of labour, coal providing easily accessible energy, and the mechanical technology of the time being relatively low hanging. The optimistic outlook is that with population decline, solar and nuclear, and AI and robotics, plausibly we are already on course to replicate similar conditions. But there are probably other pressures as well that I'm not aware of which are also required.
Can you be more specific about what you mean by 'we' here?
The dominant world cultures
You've hit on some distinct patterns in the processes of a social psychology dynamic that centers on a quest for meaning to unify an explanation of a general pattern. I'm thinking of one thing in response, which is that the process of evolution in biology must rely upon long-term as a system dynamic. You can't zip-file the information process for expedience, sending it forward faster. So then, what is the factor that means sustainability alongside all the rest of these six patterns? The reason is that almost certainly it will take more time to actually fully evolve to a better, more long-term term sustained placement existentially for yourselves and living our lives toward that more advanced capability of goals and purposes. How can we notice ways to refine what we are doing, so that we can expand upon it in ways that stabilize a process more likely to be "sustainable," allowing us enough time to, in a biologically cohesive way, just live it forward, steady as it goes toward the loftier goals that seem to be envisioned?
Interesting contradictions: 1) safety/care/health focused items versus sexual promiscuity / drug use. 2) signal conformism versus signal authenticity and avoiding sameness.
The contradiction is resolved by the abdication of personal responsibility. Doesn't matter how careless a person is of what they eat, with whom they have sex, what addictive drugs they smoke or drink, whether they bother to learn a useful skill,.. Big Brother will provide. Conformism in terms of the big issues is compatible with following the fashion of superficial difference in things like dress and popular culture preferences.
> We are less wary of money, private property, interest, finance, and market prices.
George Simmel disagrees https://cameronharwick.com/writing/simmel-hypothesis/
That's a good relevant essay, but I don't see how it contradicts my sentence.
People used to be fine with money being used to buy things like indulgences. Now that we are wealthy, we are more wary of profane money interfering with such sacred things.
OK, I took "money" off of that list.