Genes vs Ideas

One of the most common shapes to appear in History textbooks is the pyramid. I'm not referring to the mud or limestone monuments from Mesopotamia or Egypt but the social hierarchy diagrams that consistently appear in the introductory pages about each culture.  This constant social pattern followed by humans over time is more likely why real Communism has never succeeded, the ideal of equality in economy and status just doesn't suit the majority.  Perhaps this is also the reason humans have always sought God. In modern times celebrity takes the place for those who worship at the mall. We seem to need someone on top.

An evolutionary biologist, Mark Pagel, has suggested that this tendency for the majority of humans (base of the pyramid) to be followers and copiers rather than innovators and creators has most likely contributed to the survival and development of our race. Perhaps the Tall Poppy syndrome so abhorred by Gifted and Talented educators is really a societal trigger to ensure that the only 'big ideas' that get through are those that society needs in spite of the nerd that proposes it.  Could TED Talks be the gong sounding the end of our species by giving a world wide stage to too many innovators and creators? Will scattered groups following many different intellectual enthusiasts destroy the cohesion of the masses by eating away at the base of the human pyramid? Nazis and Witch hunters certainly thought so.

Perhaps though another explanation for the pyramid is the cooperative nature of humanity, the ability to work together, to specialise and to share.  The plight of consumerism and greedy financiers certainly appear as if our society has become self gratifying to the point of destruction but the steady growth in the amount of charities listed for tax benefits could be looked at with an optimistic eye.  'Mark Pagel and his team's study into the proto-Eurasiatic language, as the mother for over 700 living languages, have identified a group of words in use today that have survived from this ancestral language. "I was really delighted to see 'to give' there," Pagel said. "Human society is characterised by a degree of co-operation and reciprocity that you simply don't see in any other animal. Verbs tend to change fairly quickly but that one hasn't." '(Read in David Brown, Washington Post article in smh.com.au, May 7 2013) 

The day after Human's arrived in God's creative application of His natural laws (Day 6, as Moses recorded for a society that had to be given a book of health laws because they didn't have enough science to stop dying from trichinosis and dysentery) He rested. This act introduced the cultural evolution to Earth. The Sabbath was designed for relationships and contemplation. In Genesis 2 the world's first language lesson is recorded, like all good language teachers God started with nouns. This gift of language gave power to the cultural evolution because thinking is useless without communication. This was given within an environment of free choice and stuff happened. Genes had done their job and now ideas flourished. Some good and many so bad that God had to ensure humanity's future opportunities with a flood. Generations later the idea to beat an imagined wrathful God, with all remembrance of the rainbow and its promise laughed at, a mighty tower was built.  

This earliest pyramid recorded in the Bible was accomplished  by a large group of cooperative humans, specialised in a variety of skills and lead by a charismatic innovator at Babel.  Humans had been told to go forth and multiply but had only fulfilled the second part so God scrambled their tongues, the original language perhaps lost. As those who understood each other formed new tribes and dispersed to look for their own place, the ideas of flood, God and language went with them.

Truly new ideas are rare and precious.  Hopefully these gems by scientists, philosophers and artists add beauty and strength to the cultural evolution began by the one who's laws guide natural selection.

Jesus about his disciples in Matthew 26:41 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'
Paul talks of a similar battle between ideas and selfish disposition in Romans 7.

Hoping to read:
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Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel.

A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history.  A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why?

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.