Evolution - where have we got to and what has been the impact – Part 3

We are driven by a need to have purpose

It might be stating the obvious, but we are driven by the need to have purpose, including the feeling (even if it goes against our own instinct) that we must compete with our peers, friends, family and colleagues in order to achieve. There is plenty of evidence to support this:

- we have been induced [or is it seduced] ….to accept a vicious ideology of extreme competition, a case of winner takes all[i]

- most of us are wired to want continually to level up, to score higher than others[ii]

- we’ve been conditioned to believe in the myth that evolution is about competition[iii]

- a moral and spiritual vacuum is yet again filled with anarchic expressions of individuality, and mad quests for substituted religions and modes of transcendence[iv], i.e., everybody is creating new things or ways of working or living or surviving or fixing yourself)

- we communicate through our purchases, the facades on our homes, or the numbers in our bank accounts[v], i.e., ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ (and when we don’t have the money to do this way, we do it through our Social Media posts)

- our whole society is set on “transmit” and “compete” all the time, seldom on “receive” or “cooperate”

- there is a reason that feedback and recognition are so highly prized by the new power set….their lives are punctuated (perhaps even defined) by the validation and engagement of others. Every text, every image, every post is a call designed for a response: the drip-drip-drip of dopamine-reward they receive from every heart-shaped like[vi]

- it seems that despite all the inclinations towards being sociable and friendly our brain is so concerned with preserving a sense of identity and peace of mind that it makes us willing to screen anyone and anything that could endanger this[vii]

- the belief that competition and individualism are humanity’s defining features did not arise spontaneously…it was refined in the 20th century by neoliberalism….It defines us as competitors guided above all other impulses by the urge to get ahead of our fellows[viii]

- the just-world fallacy helps you to build a false sense of security. You want to feel in control, so you assume as long as you avoid bad behaviour, you won’t be harmed….Deep down, you want to believe hard work and virtue will lead to success, and evil and manipulation will lead to ruin, so you go ahead and edit the world to match those expectations[ix]

- all the progress that the human race has achieved in the last few hundred years has been due to people trading and cooperating with one another[x]

As a community, we are not immune from this. I would suggest that because we occupy a sector which is laden with values, values that are seen to be positive, some of which I have referenced above, we tend to think of ourselves as co-operative, open-minded and non-judgemental, but our thinking has become a little bit infected by this sense of always having to prove ourselves, and thus inevitably competition creeps in and this has inadvertently been nurtured somewhat by Erasmus+.

We are now so focused on creating, developing, innovating, changing, amending, re-creating, re-imagining so as to have purpose that whether or not we are fulfilling our main role as practitioners is open to question. I offer evidence of this overleaf.

Thinking about the future

The planet we occupy is beset with challenges, and as a community we need to think more sharply about the priorities we choose to focus on rather than our need to produce tools, especially if as it seems so few of us are accessing them, and so few are being accessed, and if as is seems likely, those accessing the tools only do so because they were party to their development. Here are some thoughts to consider about what we really need to be focusing our minds on. You will note that producing tools and methodologies is not one of them!

PROJECTIONS:

POPULATION: out of the 9 billion people expected to be alive when the Earth’s population peaks in 2050, the World Health Organization expects 2 billion - more than one person in five-to suffer from dementia.[xi]

URBANISATION: A stunning half of all the projected population growth between now and 2050 will take place in just eight countries, six of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. To find jobs, people from the population-boom countries will migrate to the cities.[xii]

AUTOMATION: because semi-skilled jobs will become automated, leaving only high- and low-paid ones, it is estimated global inequality will rise by 40 per cent[xiii] Robots and artificial intelligence will render many of the jobs we do today redundant, changes that are only hinted at with the automated answering services and supermarket auto-checkout machines that have already become part of everyday life. [xiv]

CARBON: global oil and gas companies have declared the existence of 2.8 trillion tonnes of carbon reserves, and their shares are valued as if those as if those reserves are burnable.[xv]

ATMOSPHERE: industrial capitalism has, in the space of 200 years, made the climate 0.8 degrees Celsius hotter, and is certain to push it two degrees higher than the pre-industrial average by 2050.[xvi]

LIVING LONGER: health specialists discuss the expected huge increases in cases of “grey” diseases – chronic noncommunicable ailments like heart and lung problems, stroke, diabetes, and kidney failure….[xvii]

BIRTHRATE: each generation produces fewer offspring….the picture for the latter half of this century will look this: Increasing technology, cool stuff that extends human life, more older people who will live longer, millions of robots, but few young people.[xviii]

ACCESS TO EDUCATION: according the UNICEF, 40 per cent of the world’s teenagers have no access to secondary-school education. The percentage of teenage girls who lack this access is much higher, yet there is strong evidence that the education of girls in developing countries has many significant benefits for family health, population growth rates, child mortality rates, and HIV rates, as well as for women’s self-esteem and quality of life.[xix]

‘SOCIAL EVALUATIVE THREAT’: At the core of our interactions with strangers is our concern at the social judgements and evaluations….this vulnerability is part of the modern psychological condition and feeds directly into consumerism.[xx]

GAMING: The problem with the new gaming technology is that it has become so realistic that with enough time and with little competition from the child’s environment (which tends to be safe, boring, and predictable), it can erase the distinction between virtual and real….[xxi]

SPEED: We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.[xxii]

EXPERIENCES

PLAY: Kids not only need to play more but need more time for unrestricted play (without adult supervision) andwithout screens – this will help to better equip them to deal with life, i.e., address anxiety and stress which will lessen the potential for depression and suicide.

NATURE: The average American youth now spends seven to ten hours per day staring at screens, compared to a mere handful of minutes in any “natural” setting - the result of this indoor migration is a runaway health crisis, both for children (obesity, ADHD, stress, etc) and the places where they live. We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well-for we will not fight to save what we do not love.[xxiii]

STORY TELLING: We do not know what we are capable of until we hear other people’s stories.[xxiv] We need to focus on experiences – studies prove it makes people happier (To do or to have? 2003, Gilarich, T. & Van Boven, L.). Every person has a story but all too often we dismiss people without really hearing their story. If we approached every person from the perspective that they have a story we would be more inclined to accept them.

LEARNING

ANTI-FRAGILITY: Most psychologists believe that the ability to blend uncertainties, and our emotions, so that we our flexible and multi-faceted is key to our well-being….[xxv] There is seemingly a growing fragility among our populations, particularly our children and young people, that everyone has become sensitive, whilst ironically on the flipside we have become desensitised. There is a need for us to encourage and support children and young people’s developing their anti-fragility.

COMPETENCES: Success is no longer just about learning facts, it’s about more human skills like empathy, self-regulation, conscientiousness, teamwork, resilience, problem-solving, innovation and critical thinking-skills that will give children a platform on which to build a successful happy life.[xxvi] We really need to move away from the idea what has been traditionally viewed as making us successful, especially in Western culture, and put more emphasis on skills that allows us to engage and interact successfully with people.

CRITICAL THIKING: We have to ensure young people are fit to evaluate the hordes of information that are out there, to discern what is true and what is not. We need to possess the ability to change, to know it’s ok to change and be resilient in the face of criticism that comes with it.

FORMATIVE YEARS: By the time we are adults and doing adult things our ability to change our behaviour is weakened. Therefore, the importance of possessing the capacity to change and be ok with it from an early age is absolutely vital. The skills we need to set up us to be able to function successfully as adults cannot be underestimated. Having positive influential adults in our lives from an early age is fundamental to our sense of being and having a sense of balance in our lives.

ATTITUDE

CONTENTMENT: once a certain level of prosperity had been achieved, additional income furnished no further joy…. more than 10, 000 academic papers have been written on the subject….[xxvii]

HAPPINESS: The determinants of happiness are not what we have been led to believe, i.e., the cars, the holidays, the homes, etc. Using data from the World Values Survey, which has been carried out since 1981, he [Layard] singles out seven main determinants of happiness. These are: family relationships, financial situation, work, friends, health, personal freedom and personal values.’[xxviii]

MUSIC, LAUGHTER & DANCE: We need to listen to more music, laugh more and get up and move more. ’[xxix] The evidence that the benefits that all three bring to us is overwhelming. This of course has taken a major hit during covid but rather than just viewing these often as leisure pursuits, i.e., going to concerts or gigs involving musicians and comedians for example, we need to encourage this more in settings such as formal education or even through approaches such as Social Prescribing, where GPs recommend partaking in these rather than just resorting to medication.

INTERDEPENDENCE: human success depends on cooperation. We enter trade agreements, build collective works, form treaties, establish enduring social bonds, farm together and raise kids together.[xxx] We now live in an era where it is not really possible to live alone and independent of others even if we wanted to. We are connected in so many ways – from the mobile phone in our pocket to the food we buy which, more often than not has been imported from abroad. Many of us believe we can say and do things with impunity, even if it is just offering a comment on-line, but people say this and that, and it leaves an impression and can influence the decisions of others. It really is very difficult these days to say or do much without having some form of impact on another person.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: This is the personality trait that helps longevity.[xxxi] According to research the more conscientious you are the better it is for your health and the longer you live. It often feels like people are less conscientious - whether it’s a deliberate act of not caring or just simply not being aware of those around you enough or not really thinking through the impact of actions or words on others, there is most certainly a need to make more of an effort to consider others. Conscientiousness is something that could be taught in schools, not as a mere thought or just about how anyone interacts with others, but as a module in the curriculum.

POLITICAL

POLITICAL: We need to challenge anti-science ideologies – the end result could be disastrous if we don’t. Because we believe in the idea that people should make informed decisions based on their needs and information presented to them, ‘fundamentalists’ of all hue can take advantage of our impartiality, and therefore we need to be more pro-active in opposing that.[xxxii]

ADDRESS CONSUMPTION: if everyone alive today were to adopt the current lifestyles of North Americans, Western Europeans, Japanese and Australians, global resource consumption would rise eleven-fold. It would be as if the world population suddenly rose from 7 billion to 72 billion[xxxiii]

DEMOCRACY: we need to protect democracy – democracy whilst not perfect has proven beneficial in that disputes between nations – these are shown to decrease by half if they are fully democratic[xxxiv]

WEALTH GAP: the globalized wealth gap is widening dangerously, and looks set to continue to do so due to increased automation, which puts the already low paid out of work[xxxv]

FIND THE OTHERS: Find the others. Restore the social connections that make us fully functioning humans, and oppose all conventions, institutions, technologies, and mindsets that keep us apart. Challenging the overt methods of separation is straightforward: reject the hate speech of racists, the zero-sum economics of oppression, and the warmongering of both tyrants and neoliberal hawks. Our internalised obstacles to connection, however, are more embedded and pernicious. And they all tend to have something to do with shame.[xxxvi].

WE NEED TO BECOME KIND(ER) AGAIN: There is a growing need for us to renew what I would describe as our ‘contract’ with kindness. As Charlie Chaplin describes in his final speech from The Great Dictator (1940), our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness. Whilst of course the film is fictional, the sentiments expressed in the speech are uncannily eerie and echo the thoughts of many writers in the modern era and feel somehow as relevant today as they were then, almost 100 years ago.

SITUATIONISM: Although it seems obvious that there is a single “you” inside your head, research from several sub-disciplines of psychology suggests that this is an illusion. The “You” who makes a seemingly rational and self-interested decision….is not the same as “You” who makes very different calculations about, a son, a lover, or a business partner.[xxxvii] This is often referred to as situationism, i.e., responses vary from situation to situation. We need a greater appreciation and acceptance of this concept. We are guilty of thinking that we (and others) are or should be consistent and thus often end up being surprised, disappointed and angry at others when they behave in a way not in accordance with how we imagine or expect people to behave. If we accept situationism, we will of course be less inclined to be surprised and perhaps can become more understanding of the situation we find ourselves in (or others for that matter), and this will most likely influence our behaviour more positively.

[i] Out of the Wreckage, A New Politics For An Age of Crisis, George Monbiot, Verso, 2017 [ii] Who can you trust? How Technology Brought Us Together and Why it Could Drive Us Apart, Rachel Botsman, Penguin Business, 2018 [iii] Team Human, Douglas Ruskhoff, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019 [iv] Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra, Penguin, 2018 [v] Team Human, Douglas Ruskhoff, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019 [vi] #newpower, Why outsiders are winning, institutions are failing, and how the rest of us can keep up in the age of mass participation, Henry Timms & Jeremy Heimans, Picador , 2019 [vii] The Idiot Brain, A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head Is Really Up To, Dean Burnett, Guardian Books, 2016 [viii] Out of the Wreckage, A New Politics For An Age of Crisis, George Monbiot, Verso, 2017 [ix] You Are Not So Smart, Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook and 46 Other Ways You are Deluding Yourself, David Mc Rainey, One World, 2012 [x] Total Rethink, Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries, David Mc Court, Red Door, 2018 [xi] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; Global Graying (David Berreby) [xii] Post Capitalism, A Guide To Our Future, Paul Mason, Penguin Books, 2016 [xiii] Post Capitalism, A Guide To Our Future, Paul Mason, Penguin Books, 2016 [xiv] The Growth Delusion, The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, David Pilling, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019 [xv] Post Capitalism, A Guide To Our Future, Paul Mason, Penguin Books, 2016 [xvi] Post Capitalism, A Guide To Our Future, Paul Mason, Penguin Books, 2016 [xvii] The greatest worry about this shift turns on the social safety net….. That promise depends on the pyramid structure of a 20th-century society, in which working-age people outnumber the retirees…. [xviii] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The Underpopulation Bomb (Kevin Kelly) [xix] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The Teenage Brain (Sarah-Jayne Blakemore) [xx] The Spirit Level, Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Penguisn Books, 2010 [xxi] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The Triumph of the Virtual (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) [xxii] Charlie Chaplin, Final Speech from the Great Dictator, 1940 [xxiii] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The human/nature divide (Scott Sampson) [xxiv] Not Knowing, The Art of Turning Uncertainty Into Opportunity, Steven D’Souza, Dianna Renner, LID Publishing Ltd, 2016 [xxv] The Stupidity Paradox, The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work, Mats Alvesson & Andre Spicer, Profile Books, 2016 [xxvi] More Human, Designing a World Where People Come First, Steve Hilton, W H Allen, 2015 [xxvii] The Growth Delusion, The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, David Pilling, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019 [xxviii] ‘According to the authors of the report, three-quarters of the variation between happy and less happy nations can be explained by six variables. These are income (GDP per capita), healthy years of life expectancy, having people to turn to, trust in others (roughly equated to lack of corruption), perceived freedom to make life decisions (what is sometimes called agency) and generosity (the propensity to donate to charity). Layard’s work focuses less on cross-country comparisons and more on what dictates levels of happiness within countries. Using data from the World Values Survey, which has been carried out since 1981, he singles out seven main determinants of happiness. These are: family relationships, financial situation, work, friends, health, personal freedom and personal values. [xxix] Rising Strong, Brown B., Penguin, 2015 [xxx] Beyond Human Nature, Jesse J. Prinz, W.W.Norton Company, 2012 [xxxi] On the basis of a famous long-running longitudinal study of 1, 178 high-IQ boys and girls initiated by Lewis Terman in 1921, Howard Friedman and colleagues found that conscientiousness was the personality trait that helped longevity. Contrary to expectation, cheerfulness (optimism and sense of humour) was inversely related to longevity [xxxii] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; Armageddon (Timothy Taylor). The end result could be disastrous - Boko Haram (Nigeria) maintains we inhabit a flat, 6, 000-year-old Earth and that the disk-shaped sun, which is smaller, passes over it daily. Should the defenders of science and rationality mount a more nakedly political defence of their procedures and values, as occurred with the 2017 March for Science, for example?..... The reality is that experts have no choice, given how their monopoly over the means of representation has been disintegrating over time. [xxxiii] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; Human population, prosperity growth: One I fear, one I don’t (Laurence C. Smith) [xxxiv] What should we be worried about? Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night, John Brockman, Harper Perennial, 2014; The Is-Ought fallacy of science and morality (Michael Shermer) Russett and Oneal found that when two countries are fully democratic, disputes between them decrease by 50 percent, (multiple logistic regression model on data from the Correlates of War Project that recorded 2, 300 militarized interstate disputes between 1816 and 2001) but when the less member of a country pair is a full autocracy, it doubles the change of a quarrel between them [xxxv] Total Rethink, Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries, David Mc Court, Red Door, 2018 [xxxvi] Team Human, Douglas Ruskhoff, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019 [xxxvii] This will make you smarter, New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, John Brockman, Transworld Publishers, 2012 – ‘Subsets & The Modular Mind’ (Douglas T. Kendrick)