Why We See Beauty
The Human Condition Explained using Natural Selection
by Roger Bourke White Jr.
Preface: What are we looking at here?
Consider these three very human experiences:
These three phenomena are part of the huge collection of phenomena and experiences that comprise being a human being. I'm going to call this collection of characteristics and experiences The Human Condition. Is The Human Condition simply a collection of random characteristics, or is there some reason or logic connecting them all together?
In this writing I will argue that the collection of phenomena that represent The Human Condition is connected -- there is an underlying logic. The collection represents a suite of interlocking characteristics that solve real world problems that humans face in existing on our Earth.
Because the characteristics interlock -- helping each other mostly, but getting in the way in some circumstances -- the underlying logic of the package is delightfully hard to figure out. But I'm going to make an effort to pick apart a few pieces of that logic in this book.
What I will be discussing in this book are the ways that human characteristics help humans cope with our real world. In the process I will also be discussing how we can expect humans to change in the future. This is the purpose of this book: If we understand better what we are now and how we got to be what we are now, we can understand better how we will react on a day-to-day basis, and how we will change in the future.
The format of this discussion
Mankind faces many problems in his day-to-day existence. This includes such simple things as getting the energy needed for living (by eating food and breathing), maintaining a comfortable environment (by finding shelter when it starts raining), and reproducing (by getting married and having children). It also includes many more complex things such as becoming a good doctor or lawyer.
There are a lot of things people would like to do better than they do. With each generation Mother Nature, Design Engineer (discussed more in the Definitions section) tries a few new things to see if they will help. When Mother comes up with a winner, the change spreads through the population.
In this book I will discuss changes that have made humans human. I will discuss each change in four parts: The problem part, the solution part, the surprises part and the "What can we expect in the future?" part.
Here is what each section will look like:
The Problem Faced by Mankind
In this book I will pick one problem at a time. Each problem is one that Mother Nature has found an improvement for.
Example: Mankind wants to communicate over longer distances because it will help in hunting.
The solution Mankind has come up with
Here I will talk about the solution.
I will also talk about how the suitability of that solution changes as Mankind changes from Stone Age Man to Civilized Man (sometimes I will further break down Civilized Man into the sub steps of Agricultural Man, Industrialized Man and Information Age Man)
Example: Females retain "average" voices while males develop deeper voices. Deeper voices carry better, particularly in daytime. (This is because lower frequency sounds are refracted less by the temperature difference between warm ground air and cooler upper air.)
A straightforward secondary effect of this change is that the deep voice becomes a sign of male sexual maturity.
Surprise results from the solution
Every new solution to an old problem brings surprises with it. The new solution is a new tool, and every new tool opens up new benefits to it's user and allows the user to become subject to new hazards and new abuses.
Example: As mankind develops politics, the deep voice becomes a decided benefit in the political process. A person who is a better orator can be can be understood by more people at one time, so he or she has an advantage moving their ideas. Men's deeper voices give them an advantage in politics.
What changes we can expect in the future
Since mankind is a work in progress, we can expect to see changes. Many will be surprises, but some will be predictable.
Example: Industrial Man has access to public address systems, radio, TV and print media. As a result orator skills no longer give as much advantage as they did in the Agriculture Age. Instead of great orator skills, the person who wishes to convince others is aided by great "media skills" of which good speaking is just one. Women can now move ideas as easily as men, and a historic advantage in politics has been erased.
This an example of the format that I will be using for most topics in this book.
Introduction 2: Definitions
The difference between a good discussion and a bad argument often hinges on the understanding of the words being used. A good discussion starts and ends with well understood terms... or, it starts with time spent defining the terms that will be used in the body of the discussion.
I'm going to take some time at the beginning of this book to define some of the important terms I will be using. These terms are ones that I have used often with my friends as we have had discussions over the years. In the process of having those discussions, these terms have become well defined to us. I will share with you the definitions that we have come up with, not because they are the universally correct definitions, but because they are correct within the context of this book.
[A Roger Editorial: In this book we will also have Roger's Editorials. In Roger's Editorials I will talk about things I strongly believe, even though I don't have strong evidence or logic to support that belief. The editorials cover subjects that are peripheral to the main arguments about the human condition, and they really shouldn't be in this book, but they are in because they are spectacularly important to my heart.]
Some concepts
The concepts I'm dealing with here are sometimes subtle. To make them easier to "wrap arms around", I often build a stereotype that I can use as a foundation for further discussion. Here are some of the stereotypes that I have developed to help my own thinking on these issues, and I will use these in this discussion.
The purpose of these stereotypes is make discussion of a subtle concept easier, not to literally explain what is happening.
This first one, Prisoner's Dilemma, is a long definition, but the concept is important and at the heart of much I write about. The others are much shorter and easier.
Cooperation and Defection: The Prisoner's Dilemma
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a concept that can explain how a person will act when faced with a choice that has social ramifications -- the choice the person makes will affect how the person is perceived by other community members.
This concept originated in the Game Theory branch of mathematics, and it is a way of evaluating what action to take when a person is given a choice between two actions that involve another person.
The Hollywood Version of a Prisoner's Dilemma situation is as follows:
Suppose we are watching a movie. It's a movie with a crime scene.
As we watch the movie, two characters in it are about to make a drug deal. The characters have previously agreed on a price, and what they are going to do now is exchange drugs for money.
The exchange is going to take place in a park. But... this park has a vigilant policeman patrolling it, so neither character can examine what he is getting at the time of the exchange. They can simply walk in, exchange briefcases, and walk out. Once they are out of the park, they can look at what they got from their business associate, but if that business associate has done something wrong, he will be long gone and hard to catch up with.
Person A has two briefcases: one filled with money and the other filled with yesterday's newspaper. Person B has two briefcases: one filled with the promised drugs and the other with worthless cornstarch.
A and B will both take one of their suitcases to exchange. The Prisoner's Dilemma is about: Which one they will take?