Monday, July 20, 2020

shared adaptations

Thanks to our evolutionary history over the last million years (and then some), we share:
  • recognition of our family as different from "non-family", although known as "nepotism" when overdone, as "subsystem correlations that look inward from our genetic code pool"  is a key element of our social structure,
  • recognition of our culture as different from "other culture", although known as "discriminant racism" when overdone, as "subsystem correlations that look inward from our idea code pool" is also a key element of our social structure.
  • obsession with organism-centric anecdotes (especially about folks who are either "super bad" or "super good") as distinct from statistically significant data (Zzz...) on processes that are key to our individual and community health in the world around.
Although we share these things, we might also want to recognize the need for balance with the bewildering array of unique tasks that each of faces in buffering correlations that look in and out from our boundaries of self, family, and culture. Electronic media that panders to one or another unbalanced aspect of these paleolithic traits is a fast path to social systems with no community at all, something that I for one would prefer not to hurry.