The Dominant Animal at the Long Now Foundation

Around five this evening, I opened an email that read,

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:56:57 -0700
From: Stewart Brand <sb@gbn.org>
Subject: [SALT] Paul Ehrlich TONIGHT June 27 (for forwarding)
To: salt@list.longnow.org

How does cultural evolution work? How should its
dynamics relate to the processes of biological
evolution? The accord or discord between the two
great evolutions determines how the world got
where it is, and where we are going.

“The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the
Environment,” Paul Ehrlich, Cowell Theater, Fort
Mason, San Francisco, 7pm, TONIGHT, June 27. The
talk starts promptly at 7:30pm.

Why not? So I took BART into the City, caught a bus to the Wharf, walked to Ft Mason, and listened to 90 minutes of Paul Ehrlich and Steward Brand. Ehrlich, who looks great for someone who has taught at Stanford for 49 years, was Brand’s ecology professor. Ehrlich came up with the term co-evolution; Brand named his magazine Co-evolution Quarterly.

What made humans the dominant animal on earth? It helped that a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs. Otherwise, said Ehrlich, we’d have a bunch of velocoraptors sitting here. Having eyes in front for binocular vision and fingers for grabbing food were handy. Why did we go bi-pedal? No one knows.

What truly distinguishes us from other creatures in language with syntax. About 2.2 million years ago, culture began evolving. Culture is non-genetic information that is passed from one generation to the next. No cultural Darwin has appeared to explain cultural evolution.

50,000 years ago, humans were using bone needles and stone tools. Our brains haven’t changed much since.

10,000 years ago, the invention of agriculture created surpluses which enabled specialization, and this led to hierarchies, cities, and science.

Writing freed us from reliance on internal memory. The industrial revolution tapped into stored solar energy.

And here we are today, wrecking the climate and toxifying the planet, perhaps already beyond the point of no return.

Climate change spells re-distribution of water, and that means shifts in the food supply. The problem is not the rising sea-level: you will be able to out-walk the advancing tide. The problem is not running out of fossil fuel. The problem is running out of environment.

Sadly, cultural evolution (for example, ethics) has not kept pace with technological advances. If you want to know the state of the earth’s life support systems, walk into your bathroom, turn the handle on the porcelaine device, and watch where the water goes. And there are no silver bullets.

Can you believe that presidential candidates can call for a moratorium on gas taxes that would increase consumption? Americans have a low reputation in the world right now but we still garner respect. Imagine if the president were to say that we’re going to increase the taxes on gasoline until it’s as expensive as bottled water? Cut consumption. But the working poor need to get to work, don’t they? Use the new-found tax revenue to eliminate regressive taxes like FICA.

What accounts for human differences? We don’t understand. The Dionne quintuplets were practically raised in a lab yet all turned out different. Chang and Eng, the “Siamese Twins,” were as different as night and day, one being sober and the other a drunk. It might be that people just don’t want to be the same; Chang and Eng were exerting their individuality. And there’s that nine months in the womb, when the fetus can identify its mother’s voice and hormones are swirling all around.

I told Stewart I was in his debt, for my un-book was modeled on the whole earth catalog, and the meme of “access to tools” was as powerful as ever.

A bunch of us dropped by a reception at the offices of the Long Now Foundation. The components of the 10,000 Year Clock remind me of industrial age looms and steam engine parts.