Another articles in the Nature Institute newsletter had the following passage [which the newsletter did not agree with].
“Similarly reaching across disparate domains, the influential philosopher Daniel Dennett asks why trees in the forest expend so much energy growing tall. He answers: “for the very same reason that huge arrays of garish signs compete for our attention along commercial strips….Each tree is looking out for itself and trying to get as much sunlight as possible.”
Invoking the Prisoner’s Dilemma, he goes on:
“If only those redwoods could get together and agree on some sensible zoning restrictions and stop competing with each other for sunlight, they could avoid the trouble of building those ridiculous and expensive trunks, stay low and thrifty shrubs, and get just as much sunlight as before! But, like the prisoners, the trees cannot get together, and therefore “defection from any cooperative ‘agreement’ is bound to pay off if ever or whenever it occurs.” Such agreements would be ‘evolutionarily unenforceable’.”
This quote brought me up short; the guy can’t see the forest for the trees. The massive trees that Dennett sees as a “defection from any cooperative agreement”, I see as a massive creation of surface area, one of the most important leverage point for changing a whole host of rates underlying biological processes. Creation of massive surface areas is one of the most important “ecological services” created by life. (This is why paving parking lots saddens me so much; our destroying of the ecological service seva work offered by all the other species.)
Dennett’s quote made me realize how unconsciously far I’ve evolved away from the “selfish gene” sort of reductionism. I have absolutely no doubt that the gene is not the only level at which natural selection happens. I am absolutely sure that natural selection also happens at the ecosystem level. Natural selection will favor “looping” in which a species uses some of the energy it has harvested from its environment to create structures or do work that alters flows through the ecosystem in ways that accumulate “possibilities” within the ecosystem. If some species within that ecosystem can then evolve some way to use some of those possibilities in a way that eventually benefits the original species, a feedback loop is formed connecting the well-being of the two species. The original species acquires an ally which, in its own, probably unconscious, way, will help the original species to thrive and continue its work.
This flows into a letter Dolores LaChappelle sent me in which she recommended an article by Ruth Benedict, “Synergy: Patterns of a Good Culture”. The article was based post-humously on lecture notes from the mid-1940’s. I have no idea of whether later anthropological research has corroborated or refuted Benedict’s point in the article but her idea resonates with my analogies of water, erosion and Gaia.
The article begins by acknowledging the diversity of cultures. As an example of this diversity, Benedict says it is almost impossible to find any behavior (she uses the example of suicide) or cultural institution that manifests in the same way in every culture that has that institution or behavior. However, Benedict believed that underlying all this diversity were certain general patterns. The article concentrates on “synergy” by which Benedict meant the degree to which the actions of individuals synergize with the actions of others. She saw two basic cultural/economic models into which most cultures could be grouped. The first model she calls the funnel system in which cultural resources tend to get funneled to a few. Though these systems possess an accumulating feedback loop of the rich getting richer (the heart of my criticism of corporate globalization), the important point from Benedict’s point of view is that the gain of one person is at the expense of others. It’s what some call a zero sum game. Many of the games our children are raised on are zero sum gains. One person wins means another person loses; the two events are simultaneous. Benedict characterizes these cultures as low synergy because the efforts of individuals are at odds with others in the culture.
Benedict calls the other model the syphon system because the accumulations of resources, wherever they accumulate within the culture, get syphoned by the culture to the needs of everyone in the culture. The important point Benedict makes about this model is that the culture is set up so that whoever has the accumulated resources get status, power, etc. when the syphoning happens (psychologically completely different than our culture’s system of welfare). She says that the culture has created ways in which the needs of the culture and the needs of the individual synergize. The individual wins when the culture wins and the culture wins when the individual wins. Not a zero sum game. Here’s a quote:
“From all comparative material the conclusion that emerges is that societies where nonaggression is conspicuous have social orders in which the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own advantage and that of the group. The problem is one of social engineering and depends upon how large the areas of mutual advantage are in any society. Nonaggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put social obligations above personal desires but because social arrangements make these two identical. Considered just logically, production – whether raising yams or catching fish – is a general benefit, and if no man-made institutions distort the fact that every harvest, every catch, adds to the village food supply, a man can be a good gardener and be also a social benefactor. He is advantaged, and his fellows are advantaged.”
She then goes on to generalize that the funnel model tends to create cultural atmospheres of fears of scarcity, fears of the intentions of others, and aggression. She generalizes that the syphon model tends to create atmospheres of “we’re all in it together” cooperation and security (because if circumstances take you down temporarily, then the resources of the culture become available to you). One of the implications of the article for me is that evolving cultures are sensitive to and are being shaped by the same system dynamics that shape ecosystems towards looping behaviors. I sense that the biological/cultural challenge of life is that the “funnelling” approach is very powerful in the short term but unsustainable in the long-term.
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