Jay Hanson:
>I go further than that Ed, capitalism fits OUR KIND OF ANIMAL.
>
>The key to solving our collective problem lies in understanding
>human behavior. The best "scientific" explanations of human behavior
>are to be found in the discipline of Evolutionary Psychology.
Jay,
Thank you for your essay on evolutionary psychology. There is no question
that much of human and animal behaviour is strategic, and that a primary
motive for strategizing is survival both of the present generation and of
the species. However, beyond accepting this point, I found that much of
what you say about evolutionary psychology crude and mechanistic. A very
major difference between human beings and other species is that we not only
adapt to our environment, we adapt the environment to ourselves. We do so
well and badly, but always with considerable ingenuity and imagination. But
in adapting the environment, we do so not only because we believe that this
makes it easier to for us to procreate and survive biologically, we also do
it because our needs and aspirations as individuals alive here and today are
highly complex. Because of our complexity as creatures and social beings,
we demand an environment which mirrors our many-faceted minds and responds
to us in a holistic and satisfying way. Our needs are partly rooted in
biological survival, but largely, I would say, based on who and what we have
become spiritually, socially, and culturally.
I have just come back from a month in the slums of one of the largest cities
in the world, Sao Paulo, which has a population of 18 to 20 million. The
slums of Sao Paulo are home to many people who, very recently, lived in much
more thinly populated rural areas in the Brazilian north. What amazed me
was how well many of these people have adapted to the wholly different
environment of the megalopolis. Why could they adapt? My guess is that
they were not only equipped with intelligence (at bottom a biological
inheritance) but also with a firm set of values (a socio-cultural
inheritance). Their intelligence helped them to strategize about biological
survival in their new situation, while their values gave them a sense of who
they were socially and spiritually, and what their obligations were to their
families and to others. Without both intelligence and values, they could
not have done what they did.
Many of these people have become small-time capitalists, opening little
shops, renting a few rooms, or doing whatever else, legal or illegal, would
bring them some money. However, most have also done things that greatly
transcend simple survival. For example, many small churches, places of
which fulfill both spiritual and temporal needs, have been opened in the
slums. The church-based community centre on which I worked runs several
well-attended programs, including day care, remedial education, English
classes and women's programs.
I would not agree that capitalism in some unique way fits our kind of
animal. The ingenious human mind has given rise to many types of economic
systems, some of which differed profoundly from capitalism as it is now
practiced. Feudalism, for example, was not based on market transactions,
but on systems of mutual obligations and loyalties. However, I would
reiterate that capitalism is now so firmly entrenched in the culture of our
society that only very radical social and economic change could expurgate
it. It probably isn't worth it. The pain of such change would likely far
outweigh its value.
As I suggested in my previous posting, I don't believe that it is capitalism
that needs to be changed. I believe it is us. We need to shift our values
away from what I called "emulative and competitive conspicuous consumption"
to something that is more broadly based on the common good and the plight of
our fellow men. How we produce goods and services will then not matter,
except that we will still need to be efficient in how we go about it. How
we consume and distribute them will matter a great deal.
Ed Weick
