Cultural Evolution

Ideally, the natural evolution of culture would refine us all for the better. Cities would become better places to live, countries would prosper, and the world would be a better place.  At least that's the evolutionary process we're encouraged to believe, but look beyond to the larger context of civilization.

As a rule, civilizations rise, stagnate, and decline.  That inevitable fall is commonly devastating with displacement of populations and economic collapse.  That which might have been considered social progress can be offset by death and suffering.  A vibrant culture can become insipid.

The Babylonians

In 2000 BC, Babylon was a city-state in ancient Mesopotamia.  It became the largest city in the world, and by the 5th century BC, Babylon had grown into an empire. It was captured by the Assyrians, but the citizens rebelled and established the empire again under Nebuchadnezzar. Later, Babylon was conquered by the Persians and then by the Macedonians. The region flourished under Alexander the Great, but after his death in 323 BC, it collapsed.  In the modern era, nothing remained of Babylon but ruins until Saddam Hussein built the city again. 

What happened to the Phoenicians?
Why did the Ottoman and Persian empires fail?
Why did the Greek and Roman empires disappear?
The Yuan and Qing Dynasties came and went.
The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous empire the world has ever seen, ending after centuries in 1783, but why?

What might they all have in common?           

Most cited, a natural sequence of rise and fall.                 

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long." [Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (London, 1788, ed. 1909)] 

To that immoderate greatness, Arnold Toynbee adds:  The fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats (working class folks, grouped).  I.e., revolution follows.

Joseph Tainter observes:  There are diminishing returns to increased complexity.  After a civilization reaches some maximum level of complexity, further increases produce a negative return and decline.  When there are too many hands between the crop and the table, too many layers between work and the product, and too many rules regarding day to day life and business, perhaps the threshold has been reached.

It raises the question, just how complex (and sustainable) is our civilization?  There are obviously many elements in a civilization's durability, yet one can't help but wonder about our 'parasitic elite' and extraordinary complexity.  If there is such a threshold, we have certainly passed beyond the first risk level.  Well beyond.

Solutions?  Are democracy and a free market economy the solution?

Our second president John Adams warned, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 

How well do we understand the world, the daily life of others and our place in it all?

Perhaps he's got a point. The evolutionary changes our culture has undergone in the last century or so suggest that the wealthy have left common folks behind. The GAP is widening rapidly.  In our country, wages for the bottom 90% have stagnated, opportunity has declined as have mobility, family, and community coherence. Economic inequality plagues a large segment of our population; one in five children lives in poverty.  As for complexity, our subsistence pipelines for food and water, energy and transportation, all are fragile to some degree.  Can we step back and see the larger view?  How might we behave more reasonably? 

And how about that 'parasitic elite' idea?

Civilization's End

Don't bother to go further unless you've got some time and are academically inclined.  The content offers an inquiry into related ecological and economic trends. Follow the issue of inequality through the modeling.  The science is intriguing, to say the least, and the issues are pointedly relevant.

Ecological Economics

Volume 101, May 2014, Pages 90–102

Methodological and Ideological Options

Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies

• Safa Motesharrei^a, , , 
• Jorge Rivas^b, , 
• Eugenia Kalnay^c, 

• ^a School of Public Policy and Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland; and National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)
• ^b Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota; and Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES)
• ^c Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and Institute of Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland

Shared under a Creative Commons license

Abstract

There are widespread concerns that current trends in resource-use are unsustainable, but possibilities of overshoot/collapse remain controversial. Collapses have occurred frequently in history, often followed by centuries of economic, intellectual, and population decline. Many different natural and social phenomena have been invoked to explain specific collapses, but a general explanation remains elusive.

In this paper, we build a human population dynamics model by adding accumulated wealth and economic inequality to a predator–prey model of humans and nature. The model structure, and simulated scenarios that offer significant implications, are explained. Four equations describe the evolution of Elites, Commoners, Nature, and Wealth. The model shows Economic Stratification or Ecological Strain can independently lead to collapse, in agreement with the historical record.

The measure “Carrying Capacity” is developed and its estimation is shown to be a practical means for early detection of a collapse. Mechanisms leading to two types of collapses are discussed. The new dynamics of this model can also reproduce the irreversible collapses found in history. Collapse can be avoided, and population can reach a steady state at maximum carrying capacity if the rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level and if resources are distributed equitably.

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Graphical abstract

Email Timeline

“Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.”

—Hillary Clinton, interview on July 31, 2016

Not true.  The FBI director clearly stated there were classified emails in multiple chains which were classified Secret at the time they were sent by Clinton.  There were hundreds more that were classified after the fact.  The statements she made were not true.  Follow the timeline or jump to the last few paragraphs for the details.

January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001: Democrat Bill Clinton begins as the president of the US for eight years and his wife Hillary Clinton is the first lady.

June 9, 2000: Clinton says she doesn’t want to use email. Home video footage from a private fundraiser shows Senator Clinton talking about how she has deliberately avoided using email so she wouldn’t leave a paper trail. “As much as I’ve been investigated and all of that, you know, why would I? I don’t even want… Why would I ever want to do email? Can you imagine?” By 2006 she will start using a personal and unsecured BlackBerry for email. (ABC News, 3/6/2015)

November 4, 2005: State Department Policy decrees day-to-day operations are to be done on government servers. The State Department decrees that “sensitive but unclassified” information should not be transmitted through personal email accounts. It also states, “It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized [government server], which has the proper level of security control to provide nonrepudiation, authentication, and encryption, to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.” (US Department of State, 1/12/2016) (The Washington Post, 3/10/2015)

March 2007 – 2008: The Bush Administration gets embroiled in a private email scandal. A Congressional oversight committee investigates allegations that the White House fired US attorneys for political reasons. The committee asks Bush officials to turn over relevant emails, only to find that government work had been conducted on private email addresses. Millions of emails are deleted and permanently lost, preventing the committee from continuing their investigation. Bush officials use email accounts associated with a private gwb43.com server owned and controlled by the Republican National Committee, which is a private political entity not covered by government oversight laws. (The Washington Post, 3/27/2007) (Vox, 3/2/2015)

June 20, 2007: Clinton publicly criticizes the Bush administration’s use of non-governmental email accounts. While campaigning for president, Clinton says, “Our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps. We know about secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts. … It’s a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok.” (ABC News, 3/6/2015) (The Hill, 3/5/2015)

2008: The US government publishes rules for email storage. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) issues Bulletin 2008-05, which states that every government email system is supposed to “permit easy and timely retrieval,” and all work emails are supposed to be permanently preserved. Additionally, in the case of a cabinet secretary, permanent records are to be sent to the department’s Records Service Center “at the end of the Secretary’s tenure or sooner if necessary” for safekeeping. (The Washington Post, 3/27/2016)

Problem -- Polarization

Nobody believes.  If you tell the truth in a polarized world, only those who agree will believe you.  If they don't agree, they will assume you're lying.  For example:

True:  Hillary Clinton's foundation received millions, perhaps more than $100M from countries to which her State Department granted extraordinary arms deals despite their human rights violations and internal terrorist funding.
True:  Bill Clinton has a long list of accusers for sexual assault and misconduct.  Also true:  Clinton staffers were assigned to discredit the accusers.
True:  Donald Trump has been sued many times, and his university was generally a waste of money for students.
True:  Donald Trump has repeatedly and emphatically contradicted himself.
True:  Hillary Clinton lied to Congress.
True:  Donald Trump has spawned many businesses that ended in bankruptcy.
True:  Bill Clinton did meet inappropriately with the Attorney General just prior to the FBI announcement that they would not pursue criminal charges against Hillary.

Now notice which of the above you agreed were true and relevant.  That's your bias, perhaps, or is it objectivity, or thoughtful discernment?  Do we want to know the truth, or do we want what we prefer to be the truth?  The latter is the process and product of polarization.

In today's polarized culture, Democrats and Republicans no longer have a middle ground for going forward, the media is no longer fair and balanced, and there's not a reporter we trust to stick to 'just the facts'.

• Obama, apparently, is one step below the antichrist, and Hillary hates everything about America.
• Trump is a maniacal narcissist and incapable of honest interchange for mutual progress.
• There has never been a worse president than Obama ... unless Hillary is elected.
• It's the end of generations of progress and a return to the dark ages if Trump is elected.
• It would be better if a life-terminating event like an asteroid strike killed us all.

That's today's public forum.

Polarization in Congress means they accomplish little of consequence.  Perhaps that's just as well.




It used to be that there were just a few tv channels, just a few news organizations, and a reasonable amount of information we had to assimilate and process. Technology has given us hundreds of channels and news sources, and all of them are competing for a share of the marketplace. The result, they play to their audience, and we wind up with extraordinary polarization. That particular marketplace competition has made us idiots or uninformed or both.

What Roe v. Wade didn't say ...

The Supreme Court did not say abortion was a constitutional right.  Or that it was moral or just. 

In its perhaps most controversial ruling, the court did allow for a "right of privacy" which it "discovered" in so-called "emanations" or "penumbrae" of our constitution.  The consequences have been culturally divisive and deadly.

The court did not declare that abortion itself was a constitutional right, morally acceptable, or ethically appropriate. Instead, the Supreme Court said, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins ... the judiciary at this point ... is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."

They went further with a key admission:  "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case [i.e., "Roe" who sought an abortion], of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment."

If somewhere along the timeline from conception to delivery, 'personhood' begins, then perhaps some abortions have in fact been homicidal.  No surprise.  Life does begin before birth of course, and we do have a problem.

Culturally, we've become accustomed to discarding unwanted babies.  Doing what's right is perhaps going to be a difficult battle. After we've lived with easy answers, it's hard to pry our minds loose from that easier path and move back (or forward) to a more rigid rule. True?  A moral lifestyle isn't necessarily on the bucket list for everyone.

Currently, viability is the threshold for human life according to several court rulings.  So what happens when the fetus becomes viable ex-utero?  Medical science is close to requiring a legal answer to that particular question.

For those who have personal convictions on the issue, you'll be interested to know that the 'Life at Conception Act' is in the queue for Congress.  There are controversial outcomes expected from the fight.  It's a good time for raising the issue with elections pending.

You can join the public discussion and petition Congress at the National Pro-Life Alliance website.  Be careful; there are no simple answers when it comes to law.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supports late term abortion up to and including on the baby's due date.  On “The View”, she was asked: “At what point does someone have constitutional rights, and are you saying that a child, on its due date, just hours before delivery, still has no constitutional rights?”

Hillary responded “Under our law that is the case… I support Roe v. Wade…”  Note: the court did not say the unborn child does not have constitutional rights, only that the court could not (yet) make a determination on when the child's life begins.  Once that determination is made, the child has full status as an individual and protection under the Constitution.

_________________________________________________
Baby Chava was born alive by abortion at around 21 weeks gestation. The child struggled to breathe for ten minutes before clinic staff noticed.  They eventually called 911 for emergency assistance, and baby Chava was transported to a hospital.  The child was pronounced dead upon arrival.

This abortion clinic is the same one exposed in a undercover investigation in 2013. The released video shows the Phoenix, Arizona-based late-term abortion doctor Laura Mercer and an abortion center counselor saying they would leave a newborn, struggling for life after a failed abortion, to die. The abortion industry continues to fight against a federal bill, the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, that would ensure babies who survive abortions receive equal protection under the law.

It has been forty years since Roe v. Wade, and the public conflict continues.  Resolving this issue will not be easy.

3D ultrasound image  

 Ultrasound technology has advanced in recent years to 3D/4D imagery.  Interestingly, about 75% of women who are shown a modern ultrasound of their unborn child will subsequently decline their intended abortion. Dr. Bernard Nathanson quit aborting babies after he had done one while using ultrasound imaging.

Bernard N. Nathanson (July 31, 1926 – February 21, 2011) was an American medical doctor from New York, co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws — NARA. Dr. Bernard Nathanson was also the former director of New York City’s Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, but later became a pro-life activist. He was the narrator for the controversial 1984 anti-abortion film The Silent Scream.

What we teach in school

Our original intent for schools was simpler than today.  For a young America, literacy was first and foremost; we needed an informed citizenry.  We needed to band together as participants in democracy for the principles that mattered.  Today, information overload hinders our maintaining that result.

Today, our children are bombarded with more information in a

year than early Americans would see in a lifetime.

Or ten. It's a flood, an overload, and more than

can be processed.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic - the early curriculum ... today, our children are bombarded with more information in a year than early Americans would see in a lifetime. Or ten.  It's a flood, an overload, too large to consume and process.  There's personal and cultural impact that happens without our consent. Flooding our children's minds, there's a casual worldview that is not constrained by what might be helpful in their personal development.  At an early age, they're fed materialism, consumerism, class & wealth, competition & superiority, violence & discrimination, judgmentalism, and secularism. Is that a problem?

We remember how children behind the iron curtain were educated, the specific worldview they were given. They were told that countries in the free world were wicked and corrupt and immoral. Children in Germany were educated about how immoral and inferior the Jews among them were. Hitler Youth, they were called; sweet kids being warped and misled by an inhuman ideology. Government controlled education has often been bent for political goals.  Today, with the help of a polarized media, is like that but in a hugely chaotic form.

In a child's learning process, they'll note what they see.  You and your kid can sit and discuss some persuasive advertisement or Kardashianesque scene they just saw.  It can be broken down and evaluated, and a child can learn to discern good from trivial, information from persuasion, and values.  

A dozen such exposures in quick succession without thoughtful review, however, can shape a child's thinking about 'normal' before the content is even processed.  Fashion and style can become preeminent personal values, sexual innuendo can become the norm in conversation, possessions and consumerism can become a lifestyle, all before the issues are thoughtfully evaluated.  It's the flood of exposure from media, from friends at school and in the neighborhood.  Much is advertising mixed in their entertainment content.

Traditional schooling, much like traditional church, is having a hard time keeping up.  Today, pretty much everyone has access to pretty much everyone.  We're interconnected in an uncontrolled public plaza.  Haters are still campaigning among us as are anarchists and other oddities. Anti-religionists, religious fundamentalists, and violent extremists spew their polarizing versions of reality as do similarly extreme liberals and conservatives.  And political bullies and biased media.  It's difficult enough as an adult to remain objective and adequately informed in the aggressive flood of information.  It is incomprehensibly difficult for a child; their chance of reaching the ethical and moral clarity of an early American child is small.

Cultural change has removed many of the needed safeguards.  Employed parents working outside the home may reduce the common interchange and safe processing of ideas.  Issues of character are frequently untaught and undemonstrated.  Schools have been tasked with progressively greater responsibility for character formation.  Most things that mom and dad taught their children in early days are now part of the mass production process of public education.

Absent parent situations have changed the message a child receives. Marriage and family have lost the endorsement of the national forum and have been redefined.  Issues of morality and personal integrity have been eroded into obscurity.  Church communities are having a difficult time being relevant.

How then might we make a way for our children that lets them climb up above the easy acquiescence of today's youth?

Opportunities for us and our children:

• Early introduction to difficult decisions and important values - equality, discrimination, generosity, compassion, honesty - with deliberate discussion and practical walk-throughs
• Homeschooling - today, support and inexpensive resources are available everywhere
• Apprenticeship/Internship - one-on-one education (as opposed to classroom)
• Cross-cultural engagement - pursuit of a worldview that reflects real life for all rather than just the wealthy, perhaps including international travel (engagement rather than vacation)
• Practical introduction to faith issues - how to know what's right and good (as opposed to having just an opinion) - life values are honestly built over time, not proffered by others.
• Broad and aggressive academic exposure (by professorial provocateurs rather than hubristic lecturers) that requires thoughtful development of convictions and values; perhaps both inside and outside the traditional educational institutions
• Talk about everything -- do your best to provoke visionary ambition and continual inquiry.

The key -- deliberate action, frequent review, and prioritization.

And where might we go if we want to pursue such a course? From an interview with MIT professor emeritus, Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist:

Q:  Have you considered leaving the United States permanently?

A:  No. This is the best country in the world.