The Earth we live on today is a man-made and human-managed project – the world has finally become ahuman artwork, shaped to human needs and values. “The Anthropocene” has been proposed to describ the human-created earth environment since 1950.
This latest era is focused on human activity as the dominant
influence on climate and the environment starting with the Great Acceleration, the
dramatic increase in the effects of our activity on the planet’s viability for
human survival (measured by the sudden spike in radioactive plutonium). The naming is controversial, and only a panel
of geologists--the Anthropocene Working Group--can propose its official use. But in discussions of climate change, the
Anthropocene has been mobilized and continues to be treated as a concept with a
real existence in public debates on human life and its environmental
dynamics. (The Holocene is still the
“present” era, dating from 11,690 years ago and end of the last Ice Age.) The word Holocene was formed from two Ancient Greek words; “Holos,
“the Greek word for “whole,” and “Cene” from the Greek word kainós meaning
“new.” The meaning is that this epoch is "entirely new."
Now at eight billion and counting, it would be surprising if
humankind’s population alone would fail to show environmental impacts. But our own limits draw the lines around our
abilities and potential to manage and reinvent our surroundings and powers.
These include our life expectancy, brain capacity,
linguistic ability (tied to critical thinking), communication skills (as in
sociability), and mobility. These all combine to determine the outer limits of
our collective future. For example, our ability to control fertility (reducing
the birthrate) in the 20th century was assumed to be the first step
to prosperity, whereas traditionally, family size was an economic asset and
children a sign of wealth that also predicted any group’s chances of survival. The new abilities to prevent illness and
forestall death were a major factor.
Body and Brain
Cultural analysis begins with human nature – the physical properties
and dynamics of the body and the brain, the domain of neuroscience. The life sciences study growth and structure
of the body and its biological capacities.
Everything people do starts with the body: its genetics design (DNA),
growth, and change over a lifetime, and corresponding needs, including its tolerances
(limits). Every culture on earth starts
here.
Whatever humans do begins and ends with the limitations of
our body and its controlling brain. Even
with augmentations via bioengineering, such as the robotic third thumb just
invented that may be deployed to make human hands even more manipulative, and
advances in medicine, cognitive science, competitive sports, and space travel, human
factors have limitations that can’t easily be surpassed by average people
(including genetic gender). Since the
coming of homo sapiens nearly 200,000 years ago, every technology has aimed at
the goal of making human beings more effective, faster, smarter, stronger, and
more adaptable to hundreds of different circumstances and scenarios. And power over reproduction, which modified the
adult developmental curve, prolonged adolescence indefinitely by making
parenthood a matter of choice by timing.
Other technologies affect parenting, sexual mores, information
processing, processing speed, memory, mobility, strength, resilience, anesthetics,
hunger and thirst control, addiction, sleep needs, and the ability of groups to
defend and promote their way of life. To
be outside the group was and is to be defenseless and lost. The ancient Greeks
had it that “One man is no man.”
Car design must follow the bulk, flexibility, stamina, and
visual acuity of the average human. Computers are tied into the tolerances of
sight, logic circuits, and attention limits of the brain and body. From family
reunions to business meeting schedules, planners must pencil in restroom
breaks, coffee, lunch periods, and needs for socialization, and the press
(mental burden) of multiple attention channeling to accommodate the main
agenda. We can fiddle with modifications to our
built-in abilities, but we cannot work around the entire issue of the brain and
body. If we could travel to Mars at the speed of light, we would have already
done so. At 186,000 miles per second, the
ride would take just 12.5 minutes – but would require more energy than the
earth can generate, or the body/brain can currently tolerate.
Then there is the brain, starting with body biology and the
2.5-pound mass of tissue, water, and blood that runs it. But the workings of the thinking brain extend
far beyond its physical properties. To
the emergent world of thinking and imagination, it brings the long-running
rational and emotional balance that makes us human. 85 billion brain cells make
for astronomical numbers of connections. Language is only a solo example of the
ability to represent and combine ideas as the semantic platform of creativity
and innovation. And language is largely
responsible for what has been termed the “noosphere” by Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin—the total body of knowledge shared by all mankind across the globe. In the global village, we all have access to
a powerhouse of learning, memory, and cognitive creativity.
Limits
However, our bodies are not designed to handle chronic
stress, the dominant mental state of the 21st century. Constant exposure to conflict, information
overload, and contradictory demands on time and attention promotes heart
disease and a compromised immune system.
Our brains are not designed to engage in the constant multitasking of
technostress brought about by checking social media sources hundreds of times a
day. The American Psychological
Association reports that stress levels generated by the 2020 presidential
election were up 68%—with another barrage building steam for the 2024 edition
coming up.
Behavior
Behavior is far more complex than brainwork because it
includes the social dimension. Humans
are intensely social beings, as are chimps, baboons, and bonobos. It is our social entwinements, those webs of
webs, that give us culture, the shared brain of groups from two to billions, shaping
“reality by common consent.” Behind and
beneath all human behavior are the social goals of family, politics, education,
security, religion, and the social goods made possible by the combined power of
many minds with many talents (the noosphere model). As Kipling said of the individual and society,
“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the
Pack.”
The corresponding symbiosis is the self as unique and the culture
as shared, in a constant dance of reflexive co-evolution. Winston Churchill observed, “We shape our
buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” This is the ongoing symmetry of human beings
and our creations, including culture as the predominant.
Bias
Bias, both positive and negative, is the thinking style that
drives each culture: snowbound, desert, waterside, jungle, mountain, city or country
based. Culture shapes thinking to adapt to environments, local and regional, national,
or company minded. When the environment
changes or the group migrates to a new one, some of its groupthink becomes
mismatched to the new stage-set ecology.
Islam grew up under the draconian demands of the seventh-century desert;
its ethos now looks and acts medieval under the new rules of urban modernity—55%
of the world’s population now lives in urban centers, with more to come. The survivalist bias against other religions
is part of an entrenched history that must now deal with the urban cosmopolitan
present.
The mindset of priorities is that of the group ethos: the
shared ideals that motivate every level of behavior. It is this cultural ethos that makes people
different – not because of customs, language, dress, or foodways—but because of
value bias: for the individual over the group, for example, in the US case,
where our devotion to the individual and self-direction sets us apart from the
tradition of primal bonds as exceptional.
Knowing the priorities of a culture is key to understanding people’s
intentions as the product of their priorities – their bias toward what they are
trying to be, and away from what they are trying not to be or to suppress in
favor of their ideals.
This is the logic behind our highest-income tax laws: if we
believe that anyone (regardless of background) can become rich, then we want to
set up no obstacle, like heavy taxation (as in Great Britian) that would stand
in the way of everyone’s ability to achieve wealth. This can explain the constant back-and-forth
motion of the Wealth Tax for the rich, which has never yet been passed.
We think that higher education—using our brains as capital and
the ability to improve them as an investment—offers a good chance of building
the scaffolding of a successful career, especially a professional path to
achievement and riches. This is the
reason the whole country went into serious student debt that is now blocking
the future for millions of students for whom no price was too high for the best
affordable school—until the career market failed to provide the expected return.
We still believe that the right partner in marriage can make all this happen,
along with romantic success (which doesn’t quite mesh with the rewards of
family values—even though the divorce rate still hovers around 50%. (Note: This does not mean that half of all
couples will divorce. The numbers are significantly skewed by a smaller number
of dedicated serial marriers). Hard work
from agricultural and industrial ages has expanded in the knowledge economy: the
24/7 demands of managers spurred by constant connectivity must now be regulated
away from off-the-clock hours (the agenda of the Fair Labor Standards Act). Humans are constantly navigating between our technological
abilities, our social lives, and the body/brain need for sleep, privacy, and
deep thinking.
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