Whether it is “just another unproven theory”, or not, there is great benefit in thinking that Evolution explains well what is happening in the real world.
The benefit of thinking evolution is real is that the concept of evolutionary change can be used to predict why humans of today do what they do. It is an alternative to explaining people's actions as things such as: good or evil, greedy or generous, truthful or deceitful.
Using this new way of looking at people -- looking at people as products of evolution -- can help a lot in day-to-day life. For instance, when you are designing a new product, designing a marketing plan, or designing company policies and compensation, keeping The Human Condition in mind will make the results of your choices in these areas less surprising.
Smooth sailing is the advantage of paying attention to The Human Condition, and to understand The Human Condition of today, you should understand where humans have come from -- were they have evolved from.
Here are some examples of where using evolutionary understanding can make a difference:
Example: the old proverb "Sex Sells". There is truth to it, but what is the truth based on? Evolution offers a good answer. Check out the section on Why Humans See Beauty.
Example: Why are parents afraid of strangers, but children are not? Check out the section on Living in a Neolithic Village.
Example: Why are divorces and bankruptcies so often bitter affairs? Check out the section on the Prisoners Dilemma (not in this book).
This story is filled with practical examples such as those above, but above all, this story is about two things:
First, it's about how well adapted the humans are to living on our planet Earth. I will talk about how really neat, surprisingly neat, human adaptations are. In our day-to-day lives we tend to bellyache a lot about being tired, getting hurt, getting sick, not being fast enough, strong enough, enduring long enough. We dream of perfected bodies that overcome all the aches and complaints we have. But, in reality, humans are a tight fit to this world we live in. We are high performance. We are finely tuned. In this story I will talk a lot about what being finely tuned to our environment means.
Second, I will talk about the future. I will talk about how our civilized environment is pushing the human "gene pool" to change in different ways than the non-civilized environment does.
An example of this: some people say that because we now have good health care, people aren't dying of disease as much, and that means that humans no longer are feeling evolutionary pressure. I say that's not true. Good medicine means that our immune systems is no longer being pushed hard by disease germs, but there are still thousands of other ways that humans do better or worse in our modern civilization. For instance, who among us can cell phone and drive at the same time? Some of us can, and it’s a useful skill.
Evolutionary pressure changes in a civilized environment, but it’s not gone, it’s very much alive and well. We are still being pushed hard by the force of selection, but the direction is new. Evolution is now selecting for who can cell phone and drive at the same time, not who can survive Black Plague.
I've talked about selection and the gene pool. Let me define those before we go on.
A definition: the gene pool is humanity's collection of genes. It's what makes humans grow into humans. Genes control a whole lot of stuff, much more than I can spend time on here, so in this book, I will talk specifically about how human thinking is changing -- how the genes that grow human brains are changing. I won't be talking at all about the thousands of other kinds of changes that are happening as well, but they are just as important.
I will talk only about thinking, and I will simplify even that by talking about what kinds of thinking work well in just four different human environments:
The oldest is the Stone Age environment. This is when mankind lives as hunter-gatherers, in small groups, using just a few tools. I call this the Neolithic Village environment. Being the oldest, and around a really long time, this is the environment the gene pool is currently best adapted to survive in, and thinking of solutions that work well for the Neolithic Village environment is the kind of thinking that is quickest and easiest for mankind, even today.
Next oldest is the Agricultural Age environment, which is the environment when mankind makes his living by farming. Larger groups, more tools, mathematics and writing become important in the Agricultural Age. The change from hunter-gatherer thinking to thinking adapted to agriculture has taken thousands of years, and it has taken lots of blood, sweat and tears to make the transition.
The modern environment is the Industrial Age environment, where mankind makes his living in offices, shops and factories. All sorts of tools become important, and so does universal education. Once again, the transition in thinking processes between agriculture and modern environments has been... sorry, is being... accompanied by lots of blood, sweat and tears. This transition is still very much going on today.
And finally, briefly, the Information Age environment, an environment we are currently discovering. A world where cell phoning, texting, and web searching are important. This is so new, we haven't even begun to push the gene pool with this transition.
I will be comparing how people think in these four environments -- what are important ways to think, what are dangerous ways to think (dangerous as in: they don't work well and could get a person killed).
As I make this comparison, I will be talking about two other new and important concepts: adaptive thinking and instinctive thinking.
Instinctive thinking is what comes easily to a person. It's fast, easy and comfortable to think instinctively. Falling in love is a wonderful example of instinctive thinking. The problem with instinctive thinking is, it doesn't work well for everything humans need to accomplish in their day-to-day lives. Falling in love feels good, but it doesn't help you count cows. Arithmetic helps you count cows.
Learning arithmetic is adaptive thinking. It's hard to do, and there's little pleasure in doing it. But, even though learning arithmetic is nowhere near as fun as falling in love, it's a valuable way of thinking.
Falling in love is instinctive thinking, learning how to do arithmetic is adaptive thinking. In our day-to-day lives, we do a mix of both. Just what that mix is, is part of the Human Condition.
As this discussion goes on, it's going to sound like there's one right way to do things. This is not true, there are many right ways. Ask any mother who has had more than one child: each child is different, each is unique. In sum, Mother Nature supports many right ways to solving the challenge of living on Earth.
So, there are two things to keep in mind all through this discussion:
The first thing is, modern humans live in all four of these environments I have talked about, and many variations on them. There are many places on Earth today that still harbor hunter-gatherers... and some of those hunter-gatherers like wearing industrial age T-shirts with fancy four-color pictures on them. There are many more areas which harbor farmers... and those farms range from the tropics to tundra. And nowadays, there are a whole lot of cities, as well, which harbor industry- and cyber-workers. The lifestyles of those cities range from slums to penthouses.
In sum, there is enormous variation in how people live.
But, humans as a whole are rapidly getting more urban civilized. In fact, in 2008, urban living became the lifestyle for half of humanity. What this means is that while the diversity of the human condition has grown over the centuries -- a new standard way of life is gaining ground.
The second thing to note is that each of these environments pushes the human gene pool in a different direction. This is most noticeable in the genes that control human thinking. Some thinking skills that serve well when humans are hunting and gathering are not good to have when one spends a lifetime farming, or being a factory worker, or walking around with your nose in a PDA.
These differences in thinking will be the center of this story.
Mother Nature, Design Engineer, is satisfied with quick and dirty fixes. Elegant is better, but that can come with time and more experimentation. In the meantime, if a fix works, it works.
What this means is, many of the solutions to the “making lots of grandchildren”-problem look positively klugey. They look that way because they come from making simple changes to existing conditions.
Here's an example of a klugey fix.
The problem:
Human children growing up acquire fertility, and sex interest, when they reach puberty. But most of the time, the start of child raising should wait a few years. So, how do you keep sexually interested adolescents from getting started on child raising too early?
The solution(s):
One way is for parents to yell at them, and this works, sometimes.
Another way is to make them look seriously diseased so that they don't look so sexually attractive.
Hmm... when a teenager has a seriously pocked face, but is otherwise healthy, what's that called?
You got it! ACNE!
We don't often think of acne is a birth control device. It's a pretty klugey solution.
But, like parents yelling, it works, sometimes.
And, as Mother Nature says, "If it works, it works."
The moral of this little tale is: If something looks like a problem, see if it also looks like a solution. That may explain why it endures.
All that said, and whew!, there was a lot, let us begin the story...