NOV 12

23: NOV 12.

Assigned

• Henrich C14 -- "The Dark Matter of History"

In-Class

• How does Cultural Evolution help us critique our culture? How does this critique help us solve problems better?

Critiquing Cultural Values

• We tend to think of our cultural histories as events that happened to other people a long time age. But in light of cultural evolution, we might add that these events and histories also shape our thinking and assumptions. Sometimes we might think we are arguing about an issue when we are really just showing our cultural commitment to some norms. By learning to see cultural norms in terms of their adaptive or non-adaptive effects, we might change the way we argue about values that are really embedded in our culture.

• A critical cultural narrative might start with something you notice about your culture that you really like or don’t like. Then maybe you notice that this thing you like about your culture is also involved in a dysfunctional aspect of your culture. You could also start a critical cultural narrative by travelling or having an identity in two very different cultures. When you switch between cultures, you inevitably find things about each that you like and maybe even see as adaptive and promoting of flourishing.

• By engaging in critical cultural narratives, you gain a deeper appreciation of the things that you “own” about your culture, but also some critical distance to see how cultural adaptations are often connected to positive and negative outcomes. In stead of arguing that your cultural norms are “the right ones”, you might come to seem them in terms of their differential effects, positive and negative.

• Here are a couple of prompts to help you generate your own critical cultural narratives.

• A. A good thing in my culture that is connected to a bad thing about my culture.

• Template: I like value-X about my culture, but X also seems involved in disfunction-Y.

• Examples:

• I like the individualism in my society, but that also seems to be one of the reasons we don’t take care of each other.
• I like the idea of “self-responsibility” in our culture, but it seems involved in blaming the homeless and justifying their neglect.
• I like the way US culture promotes college education, but we don’t show much respect or concern about people who do trades or very physically demanding work.
• I like the way US culture places low barriers to economic development, but, compared to cultures that practice more zoning and planning, many of our cities and towns are ugly and shapeless.

• B. A cultural problem and a conjecture about the cultural causes.

• Template: My culture has a problem with Y, probably because Z.

Examples:

• My culture has a problem with racism, probably because we enslaved people for 400 years.
• My culture has high incarceration rates, probably because we focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation.
• My culture has a problems with “deaths from despair” (suicide, drug overdoses, etc.),probably because we are so individualistic and that involves leaving people on their own.
• My culture has a problem with mass shootings, probably because we don’t address mental health very well.

• C. Using knowledge of other cultures to assess your own.

• Template: When I learn about other cultures, it makes me wish my culture could….

• Examples:

• When I learned how Italians value food, it makes me wish my culture could.
• When I see people in another culture joking about politics and having thoughtful political discussion, it makes me wish my culture could.

Henrich C14 -- "The Dark Matter of History"

• Cultural changes bodies. Cooking culture, for example.

• ”The cultural evolution of psychology is the dark matter that flows behind the scenes throughout history.” 470.

• Recapping the argument of the book:

• Kinship and religion have been the focus - two big forms of culture that have mattered.
• Evolution of universalizing religions. Competition among religions.
• The Church’s Marriage and Family Plan.
• Further implications for the “emergence of rights, personal accountability, abstract principles, universal laws, and the centrality of mental states.” “Growth of representative governments, constitutional legitimacy,…”

• Biogeographic explanations: Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Explaining global inequality. The “lucky latitudes”. Agrees with Diamond, but argues that these effects diminished by 1000-1200ce.

• CE help us understand why cultures with long agrarian traditions don’t modernize easily (even if their people want it). 477-478.

• CE helps us see that it wasn’t wealth that fueled market behavior in Europe. Nobles held the wealth but weren’t the innovators in markets.

• Gene-culture interactions in emergence of lactose tolerance. Cultures’ that focused on dairying techniques that didn’t require lactase-alleles (yogurt and some cheeses) didn’t change their populations gene pools, but other dairying cultures did. Prevalence of alleles that continue lactase production beyond weaning flipped from 20% yes / 80% no to opposite.

• Evidence that cultural effects overpower genetic effects in educational attainment within a culture. Frequency of genes influencing formal education declining even as formal education grows. Shows that it’s a cultural effect.