Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents

Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents

by Adin Kachisi

Even though humanity celebrates its cultural artifacts as evidence of heights of human evolution, we should also take cognisance of the fact that very same cultural evolution responsible for our advanced civilizations is also the abattoir where civilizations meet their demise. Today, probably more than ever, humanity stands at the crossroads where the direction of our current cultural evolution if unperturbed could lead to the existinction not only of the human race but of most species on the planet.

It is of interest to see how the word culture is connected to the word cultivate and the word cult. Cultivation or tillage has connections to theadvent of what might be considered as high or advanced culture with the advent of the agriculture in human history about 10,000 years ago. From this period on we see humans creating permanent settlements, organized into villages, then later towns, cities and states. These organized communities were fertile grounds for the development of cultural aspects like rituals, religions, values, beliefs, art, governments, laws, writing, education and eventually advanced
science and technology.

As for the less positive word ‘cult’, it is usually associated with devotion, often blind following. A link between the word cult and culture would imply a less favorable aspect of culture and cultural
evolution. Characteristic of all cultures are aspects like blind belief without the need for rational explanation or evidence, as well as cultural biases in favor of one’s culture and against other cultures and those who belong to those cultures. I often see how people in America casually make negative jocks about people of other cultures like the Mexicans, the Chinese and the French. At more
serious level, cultural biases with their cult followings of people within those cultures is sometimes used for war, violence and discrimination. I doubt if it was very difficult for a few instigators to exploit political tensions and cultural biases in order to instigate the mass murders between Hutus and Tutsis resulting in about 1 million deaths, and nothing to be gained. The current religious and cultural cold war between the Western world and the Moslem world is basically a conflict between the Western Judeo-Christian cults versus the Moslem cult. The blind followers in each cult will easily swallow any propaganda against the other cult without need for critical thought or meaningful
evidence.

Today we also see how cultural aspects of world cultures in particular the Western world, and more recently the East have become a stumbling block in the ‘Great Transition’ towards creating sustainable societies. The modern world has given birth to a new breed of cross-cultural and
cross-geographical culture called consumerism. The problems of global climatic change and environmental degradation are for most part products of Western, post-industrial, capitalist culture. The Western world and to some degree its loyal disciples, the rest of the world, are deeply embedded in unsustainable lifestyles. This is evident in suburban sprawl with its attendant commercial
distribution channels like shopping malls, fast food outlets and other markets for the mass consumers.

In the global cultural arena of consumerism the main players are the corporations, mass media and the consumers. The corporate cultural role is mass production of goods and profit maximization. The media cultural role is the dissemination of mass propaganda, disinformation, perception management and the promotion of trends and habits conducive for the expansion of consumer culture. The consumer cultural role is to consume as much as possible. These consumers having been cultured or brainwashed by the media to believe that their worth depends on how many toys they have or how much they consume, they helplessly follow the impulse to buy what they do not need despite
the financial and ecological costs of such habits.

The average rate at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like
plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. In its September 2008 issue, the journal Energy Policy found that around 1/3rd of Chinese carbon dioxide emissions were due to the production of exports and that it is mostly the developed world consuming these.

As Jared Diamond puts it in the article ‘What’s Your Consumption Factor’, “...a real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans.”

It will take another cultural evolution to evolve out of our consumption culture. A change in culture is inline with the current environmental theory and American Pragmatism, as stated by Eric Retan that,
“…the contemporary consumerist worldview is largely to blame for our current environmental crisis, and any solution to that crisis must be driven by a change in worldview” (Reitan, 1998, p.2)
However, as Richard Robbins states, such a cultural revolution may be a difficult change to achieve, “…it may be the most difficult to change; our consumption patterns are so much a part of our lives that to change them would require a massive cultural overhaul, not to mention severe economic dislocation.”

The survival imperative of our species needs humanity today to emberace a new zeitgeist or spirit of the times, to evolve us out of the cultural evolution that has led us to the culture of mindless consumption. Only through a new cultural evolution to sustainability can we escape the impending ecological apocalypse.