The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

When it comes to empires these days, it’s “easy come, easy go.” Only a few years ago, around the time of our cake-walk invasion of Iraq (and before the “oops” part), our media was full of self-congratulatory and, as it turns out, delusive claims that America, for better or worse, was now an empire – like Rome and Great Britain in their heyday. (Our pundits tended to overlook the darker examples of the Japanese and Soviet empires in the 20th century, for some reason.) We were told that now the United States was the “hegemon” – meaning that it was undisputed as the dominant military power – and the keeper of a stable international order.

Of course, past empires occupied and controlled “colonies” that they blatantly exploited for their own advantage. Also, a few historical details were overlooked by the pundits: Rome was undisputed in its power only for a (relatively) brief period in the middle of its thousand-year history; it remained a republic during much of its ascendancy and fought an unending series of wars against the “barbarians” in its latter stages. And British power was never uncontested. Indeed, the 18th and 19th century race for colonies among the British, French, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, Spanish, Italians, and Americans, was intense and contributed to the cataclysm of World Wars One and Two. Moreover, the voluntary dismantling of their empires by both the British and the Americans after World War Two (and somewhat more reluctantly by the French and then the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall) seemed to bring an end to the imperialist era. Self-determination became the new mantra of a more democratic world order, or so the optimists proclaimed.

To be sure, America still guards the gates in various places – Germany, South Korea and the Middle East. And our military machine is still formidable, despite the costly humbling we have suffered in Iraq. Our annual military budget is greater than those of all the rest of the industrialized nations combined (but watch out for China). Equally important, the economic order that we have sponsored and supported – most significantly through the World Bank and the World Trade Organization – have been instrumentalities for advancing American economic interests (namely, capitalism and “free” trade -- with a few obvious exceptions like farm products). Our cultural exports have also been influential in the global community.

But there the analogy ends, and the disanalogies are growing stronger by the day – it seems. In fact, free trade has been hollowing out the underlying source of our power –our industrial capacity and trade surpluses. At the end of World War Two, the United States produced 50% of the world’s total Gross Domestic Product and was undisputed leader in just about every industrial sector. We had a favorable balance of trade for more than half a century. Now 70% of our GDP consists of consumer spending, much of it with borrowed money and much of it spent on goods (and oil) imported from China and everywhere else. More important, we have gone from being the world’s banker after World War Two to being world’s biggest debtor nation. Control over our own fiscal and economic destiny is rapidly slipping from our hands, as even some of the biggest of Wall Street’s banking and investment houses are being auctioned off to recoup from the sub-prime mortgage calamity.

Equally significant, what was once the world’s highest standard of living and most modern infrastructure has slipped badly; we now rank closer to some developing countries. To maintain our humongous military machine, we have also been starving the underpinnings of our society – our educational system, our public works, and more. (And this is not just an ideological stance; just look at the comparative statistics.) And, where once we were leaders in the world community, now our representatives (at the recent Bali climate change conference) are booed and we are asked please to “get out of the way.” Finally, a resurgent Russia and an emergent China are subtly resisting and challenging our “leadership.”

So the truth is that our imperial period never existed. It amount to a passing whiff of hubris -- followed by nemesis, of course. Now we ache to be out of Iraq. And we watch with baited breath as our economy struggles with the latest wasteful and destructive “bubble” (the sub-prime mortgage debacle), and with all the other sins of a spendthrift society. We will be hard-pressed to prevent further economic decline and, indeed, poverty and hardship on a scale that we have not experienced in this country for many years. The reality isn’t pretty, but facing up to it honestly is the first step toward coping with it. I keep waiting for candid leadership from our present crop of Presidential candidates. So far, no good.

Thought for the day: Sic transit Gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world), or fame is fleeting. It’s a lesson that each new generation seems to re-learn the hard way. Among the many variations on this theme (some humorous) was this headline in the New York Daily News some years back about the hospitalization of the prominent New York heiress Gloria Vanderbilt: “Sick Gloria in Transit Monday.”

Emergence and Evolution

“Emergence” seems to be the latest buzzword among a new generation of holistic/systems-oriented theorists. I say a “new” generation because emergence theory is not new. It can be traced back to a similar movement in the latter 19th century. (The history of this earlier movement is described in a recent article of mine in the journal Complexity called “The Re-emergence of Emergence: A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory.”)

Among the many problems with the current reincarnation of emergence is the fact that there is no agreement on how to define the term in such a way that you can recognize emergence when you see it. One theorist who has done a creditable job, however, is biologist Robert Reid in his new book, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment (MIT Press 2007). Reid focuses on increases in biological complexity that produce qualitatively new functional properties, and he identifies three broad categories of emergent phenomena: (1) symbiosis and associations, (2) physiological and behavioral innovations, and (3) developmental and epigenetic influences. Reid also makes a compelling case for the thesis that emergence as he defines it has played a major creative role in evolution.

So far, so good. But Reid also attacks neo-Darwinism and claims that natural selection has had little to do with “progressive” evolution – meaning the evolution of complexity over time. Its role is primarily confined to “stabilizing” the innovations that have arisen autonomously, he asserts. Here, I’m afraid, we part company.

I certainly agree with Reid’s critique of the neo-Darwinists. And I certainly agree with his basic argument that emergence has played a fundamental creative role in evolution. How could I disagree. My own “Synergism Hypothesis” is really about emergent complexity -- though my theory emphasizes the functional (bioeconomic) effects – and their evolutionary consequences -- rather than the causes of emergence and embraces other, non-emergent forms of synergy as well. And yet, there remains a huge difference in our views about the role of natural selection, and I suspect it is traceable to differences in our "ground-zero" assumptions (as I call them) about the nature of life.

When all of Darwin's rhetorical flourishes, and his gradualism, and other problems with his theory are stripped away, the heart of his vision, I believe, is his assumption that life is at bottom a contingent, often precarious phenomenon (a "struggle for existence") and that "earning a living" in "the economy of nature" is the fundamental challenge for all life forms. I like to call it a "survival enterprise." In other words, failure is always an option. And, given the fact that life is predominately pursued in collectivities (emergent systems), the evolutionary process is -- at every level of complexity -- quintessentially a "collective survival enterprise." Moreover, economic criteria are crucially important; there are always costs for emergent novelties, and the benefits must outweigh the costs. (That is why the functional synergies associated with emergence are so significant.)

When this assumption is put together with Darwin's other basic assumption, that functionally important variability is a rule in the natural world, this means that natural selection (broadly defined) is inescapable. That is, the variants in every generation are subject to "differential survival and reproduction" based on their functional differences. It may be that some, or all, or none, of these variants can "make the cut" in any generation, but being subjected to the test of fitness is unavoidable. And this applies to any emergent novelty as well. Reid himself speaks of "natural experiments," and "adaptation," and "adaptability," and "functionality" (physiology is all about functions, he points out), and "workability," and "does it work?" The question is, adaptable/functional/workable for what? The answer, of course, is for ensuring/furthering/enhancing the "collective survival enterprise" in a given environmental context. I like biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky's characterization (or was it Julian Huxley's?) of evolution as a process of "trial-and-success."

So, while I wholeheartedly endorse Reid’s critique of the gene-centered, neo-Darwinian (mutation/competition/selection) paradigm, with its emphasis on ecological competition and its abstract "gene pool" model of the evolutionary process, and while I think emergence is of fundamental causal importance in evolution, I think natural selection (broadly defined) is also a party to the process at every step. I like evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr's short-hand description of evolution as a "two-step tandem process" -- meaning (1) functional innovations, from whatever source, coupled with (2) differential success/failure over time. To assume otherwise is to assume away the basic survival problem, I believe. (Much of this is discussed further in my most recent book: Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics and the Bioeconomics of Evolution.)

Thought for the day: To quote again the great 20th century evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: "No theory of evolution that leaves the phenomenon of adaptation an unexplained mystery can be acceptable."

How Holistic Darwinism Trumps Neo-Conservatism

In his book, The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi produced a classic critique of the liberal (conservative) ideal of free market capitalism that still resonates today.

According to liberal economic doctrine, if various impediments are removed so that a market economy can operate free of constraints and imperfections, it would not only be self-regulating and self-equilibrating but would lead to the most “efficient” utilization of capital, resources and labor. Indeed, for the most fervent of free market advocates, this ideal is an end in itself.

Polanyi’s argument was that this model is utopian. It can never work in the real world, and the history of the great 19th century “transformation” to industrial market capitalism (not to mention the history of the 20th century) proves it. As Polanyi put it, markets are “embedded” in human societies, and the needs and wants of a society and its members cannot in the long run be subordinated to market efficiency. This is not simply a normative statement, or a moral claim, moreover. It is an empirical reality. Ultimately, people will rebel and governments will either need to intervene or they will be replaced. Indeed, even capitalists do not, as a rule, want complete freedom from government interference. They want laws, and regulations, and property rights and, very often, government support in the form of protections and subsidies.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, in a commentary on Polanyi’s book, also points out that advanced industrial economies like ours are even more constrained by the fact that the vast majority of the population depends on the marketplace for their livelihoods (see my blog entry on the “paradox of dependency”). So “labor” is not simply an “input” that can lie idle or find other uses if no jobs are available. Unemployment has inescapably destructive consequences.

What Holistic Darwinism adds to this critique is a theoretical foundation. From an evolutionary/biological perspective, our basic vocation as individuals and families is survival and reproduction – and specifically the meeting of some 14 domains of “basic needs” (according to the Survival Indicators Project). These are biological imperatives. We are all implicitly engaged in a “survival enterprise.” Moreover, in a modern market economy, our individual needs have been aggregated into an extraordinarily complex, interdependent system – a “collective survival enterprise.” We are joint participants in a “biological contract.” Accordingly, economic markets represent a system -- a strategy -- for meeting our basic biological needs. And if the markets fail to do so, for whatever reason, corrective actions are entirely justified. Markets exist to serve our needs, not the other way around.

Neo-Darwinians and social Darwinists might object that, to the contrary, capitalism is natural because it embodies our innately selfish and competitive natures – as Adam Smith himself suggested. The problem with this model is that it overlooks our fundamental dependence on cooperation and the fact that we evolved over several million years in closely cooperating social groups. Equally important, modern societies remain deeply dependent on cooperation; we live in highly interdependent economic systems. Competition may also be natural and inevitable, reflecting the duality of human nature, but it must also be subordinated to our collective needs. And if capitalist markets fail to meet our needs, we have every right to cooperate in an effort to redress our grievances – whether it be through labor unions, or governments, or political movements or even revolution if necessary. To borrow a phrase, revolutions are politics by other means.

Thought for the day: As the American Declaration of Independence puts it, governments are “instituted among men” to secure our “inalienable rights,” and derive their “just powers” from “the consent of the governed.” Furthermore, whenever any form of government “becomes destructive of those ends,” the people have the right “to alter or abolish it.”

The Paradox of Dependency

What I call the “paradox of dependency” represents one of the great, often unanticipated traps in life, it seems. The more valuable is some resource (or person) – the greater its “utility” to use the economists’ jargon – the greater may be the cost of losing it. In other words, our vulnerability increases in direct proportion to its value.

An obvious example these days is the Internet. In just a few short years, a great many people, and businesses, have come to depend on it. And when Internet services occasionally go down, for various reasons, the consequences can be severe or even catastrophic. Indeed, complex technological societies are dependent upon an immensely intricate web of activities and processes, and we only become of aware of this, it seems, when something goes wrong – say a power outage, or a trucking strike, or a prolonged regional drought. And the same may be true with people. If there is only one really competent plumber in your community and he moves away, your pipes may no longer hold water.

Indeed, our vulnerability further increases when we do not have options or contingency plans -- in other words when our dependency is monogamous. Thus, if we prepare for a power outage with a backup generator and a wood stove, we effectively reduce our dependency. Or, if we have a mail-order business that uses both the Internet and phone orders, we might be able to continue taking orders if the Internet goes down.

On other other hand, some of the megatrends in our society have left us increasingly vulnerable. For instance, back in 1900, half of the American population still lived (mostly) on small farms. As a society our agricultural dependency was highly diversified. And when the dust bowl drought hit the American southwest in the 1920s and 30s, we were able to fallow one-quarter of our farmland and still feed our people. But in the past 80 years, our food production system has become highly concentrated, both regionally and in terms of ownership, even as the population has multiplied. Thus, today about one-quarter of all the fruits and vegetables produced in the United States are grown in California. Unfortunately, we now know that California has been subject to recurrent, severe “megadroughts” over the past 10,000 years or so. In other words, we have achieved much higher productivity and efficiency (and reduced food costs) while at the same time increasing our dependency on a system that is also highly vulnerable. Food for thought -- you might say!

Thought for the day: In a long-term study by biologist Kwang Jeon in the 1980s, a strain of Amoeba proteus was initially infected with bacterial parasites that were resistant to the hosts' digestive enzymes. But after 200 generations, or 18 months, a beneficial (mutualistic) relationship had become established, and after 10 years the symbionts had developed complete interdependence; they could no longer survive independently. So, if you are going to become a dependent, do it wisely.

A Reply to David Sloan Wilson

After receiving uniformly favorable – even glowing – reviews of my 2003 book, Nature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (Cambridge University Press), including high praise for the underlying theory from one of the most outstanding evolutionary biologists of the 20th century (John Maynard Smith), I was surprised, to put it mildly, when biologist David Sloan Wilson gave me a nasty, dismissive review in the on-line journal Evolutionary Psychology.

Wilson assured his readers that he was my friend (you know the old saying, “with friends like these…”) and that he only wanted to rescue me from my misguided ambitions. Indeed, I had just recently published an enthusiastic review of Wilson’s own book, Darwin’s Cathedral, in the Skeptic magazine. So it was puzzling and inexplicable for someone of his caliber and accomplishments in evolutionary theory to so completely misunderstand and misrepresent my theory, whether he agreed with it or not. He warned everyone to “beware” of it as “a theory of everything” and belittled the ways in which I had suggested that the theory could be tested.

Of course, it is not a theory of everything. The “Synergism Hypothesis” is a theory specifically about the “progressive” evolution of complexity in nature, and in human societies, a theory first proposed in 1983 as an explicit, Darwinian (bioeconomic) alternative to the various proposed “laws” of evolution that have been advanced over the years by the so-called complexity school – from Herbert Spencer to Ilya Prigogine to Stuart Kauffman and beyond. The theory explains this important evolutionary trend in terms of a common underlying principle – the principle of functional synergy.

In fact this theory is very similar in character to Darwin’s theory. Natural selection, after all, is not a “mechanism” but an “umbrella term” that is used to characterize a certain distinctive property of the evolutionary process, namely the differential survival and reproduction (or “selection”) of different forms as a result of their functional interactions (adaptations) both internally and with their environments. It is really a theory about the trans-generational consequences of these functional interactions, though the precise causes are in every case situation-specific and infinitely varied.

In the same manner, the Synergism Hypothesis is an umbrella term that singles out a subset of the relationships that are ubiquitous in nature, namely those that produce functional synergies which have consequences for differential survival and reproduction. The thesis, then, is that synergies of various kinds have been the underlying causes of the “progressive” trend in evolution toward more complex systems, in the same sense that natural selection is a causal theory of evolution more generally. Moreover, this dynamic can also be applied to the uniquely “progressive” aspect of cultural evolution in humankind. (Needless to say, I define “progressive” in strictly functional, not normative terms.)

Among the various implications of this theory is a directive that we must focus our attention, not on genes pursuing their individual agendas in isolation from one another but on “wholes” (systems) and the relationships among them, which are inescapable features of the living world. The theory also sensitizes us to the interdependencies that are everywhere in evidence, and it helps us to identify the commonalities and differences, as well as the advantages and vulnerabilities, that are associated with these relationships. In various recent writings I have also discussed the many different kinds of synergy, as well as various qualitative aspects of synergistic phenomena, along with describing various ways of testing for synergy in any given relationship.

So, I can only hope that David Sloan Wilson will ultimately come to recognize that this theory has its uses. But then, I’m also mindful of the fact that, almost 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s theory is still hotly debated. Alas.

Thought for the day: “The tipping point;” the “perfect storm;” “the straw that broke the camel’s back;” the “bingo effect.” All are variations on the synergy theme – when more (or less) is radically different. In other words, the whole is very often not “greater than the sum of its parts,” just different.

“Corporate Goods”

It is curious that both in economic theory and in classical neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory (both of which utilize game theory models), there has been little attention and even less theoretical work done on what I refer to as “corporate goods.” In the corporate goods model (which can include any number of players), the participants may contribute in many different ways to a joint product (say the capture of a large game animal or the manufacture and sale of an automobile). I like to call it a “combination of labor.” However, unlike “collective goods,” or “public goods” that are indivisible and must be equally shared (even possibly with non-participants and cheaters), corporate goods can be divided in accordance with various principles, or “rules” or “contracts”. The division of the spoils is thus not preordained, as is the case with the payoffs in most game theory models. In other words, the payoff matrix can be manipulated at will. Indeed, the question of how the goods are divided up may be crucially important in determining if the “game” will be played at all. If this sounds familiar, even commonplace, it is because corporate goods “games” are, in fact, ubiquitous in human societies, and are fairly common in nature as well. It is the predominant form of economic organization in a complex society.

Thought for the day: Back when America had a predominately middle-class society and one-income families were the rule (hard to believe today), the disparities in wealth were not so great. Nowadays, as a friend put it (with only a bit of hyperbole), either you have three houses or three jobs. There’s nothing in between.

“Synergistic Selection”

The term was coined by biologist John Maynard Smith at about the time I was publishing my first book, The Synergism Hypothesis (1983), on the role of synergy as a causal explanation for the broad evolutionary trend over time toward increased complexity. The idea of synergistic selection was similar in character to David Sloan Wilson’s formulation of a “shared fate” among genes that might be jointly selected in the context of “group selection.”

Early on, both Maynard Smith and Wilson focused their efforts on explaining altruistic behaviors, in keeping with the then-common (but incorrect) assumption in evolutionary biology that cooperation implied (and necessitated) altruism. In contrast, I called it “functional group selection” in my 1983 book and emphasized that cooperation in nature (and, indeed, in human societies as well) is largely, but not always, dependent on the “bioeconomic” payoffs – the synergies that are produced, and that the degree of biological relatedness between the cooperators is not, for the most part, a decisive factor. To emphasize this point, I suggested that we should differentiate between “egoistic cooperation” and “altruistic cooperation.”

As time went on, this broader, non-altruistic understanding of cooperation came to prevail in evolutionary biology. (It was helped along by the important work in game theory, the emergence of symbiogenesis theory, and a growing body of field research on cooperative behaviors.) And so, today “synergistic selection” refers to any context in which two or more genes, or genomes (or individuals) are jointly selected as a result of the synergies that they jointly produce. In other words, there must be a functional interdependence between the cooperators, as distinct from the many so-called groups that are statistical artifacts, or are so-named because they share the same genes, or traits, and are subject to the same selection pressures.

There are innumerable examples, of course: The now obligate federation of once-independent organelles in each of our eukaryotic cells; the vitally important gut symbionts that go along for the ride in ruminant animals; the eight oarsmen that compete together in a varsity eight rowing shell. (Many more examples can be found in my recent books.) And it is now blindingly obvious that genetic relatedness may be a facilitator but is neither necessary nor sufficient for cooperation to occur in the natural world. Gerald Wilkinson’s classic study of blood sharing in unrelated vampire bats provides a stunning case in point.

The implications of the synergistic selection model for human evolution and contemporary human societies are profound. We evolved in closely cooperating groups in which, from a very early date, there was most likely a high degree of interdependence among both kin and non-kin. And the synergies that were produced by their various forms of cooperation were of decisive importance in our ancestors’ success over several million years (see the detailed scenario in my book, Nature’s Magic). Today, we continue to thrive by deploying an incredibly elaborate division of labor (though I prefer the term a “combination of labor”), even in competitive, capitalist markets, as Adam Smith and many other economists have stressed, that goes far beyond anything in nature. Indeed, we are quintessentially the synergistic ape. And our intense cooperative activities adhere to the same underlying principle of interdependent, synergistic selection. Where it will all lead remains to be seen.

Thought for the day: “In natural selection, genes are always selected for their capacity to flourish in the environment in which they find themselves….But from each gene’s point of view, perhaps the most important part of its environment is all the other genes that it encounters... Doing well in such environments will turn out to be equivalent to “collaborating’ with these other genes” [emphasis in the original]. Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker)

Re-thinking the Foundations of Sociobiology

When biologist Edward O. Wilson published his landmark megabook, Sociobiology, in 1975, it was at once a catalyst for a new discipline focused on the study of social behavior, including human behavior, from an evolutionary perspective and a challenge (a thrown gauntlet) which sparked a raging debate among social scientists (and some other biologists).

The heart of the matter was Wilson’s claim that we should “biologize” the study of human behavior and recognize that “human nature” is tightly controlled by an “epigenetic leash” that, he implied, had a neo-Darwinian foundation. Humans, like all other species, are fundamentally driven by reproductive competition, and cooperation is an exception that arises only in contexts where there is genetic relatedness (and thus inclusive fitness, or “kin selection”), or where there are opportunities for “reciprocal altruism” (in Robert Trivers’ formulation).

Wilson was faithfully reflecting the state-of-the-art in evolutionary theory at that time, but as I and others soon pointed out, this theoretical formulation was seriously deficient. In fact, cooperative behaviors are widespread in the natural world and are not at all confined to genetically-related actors. To the contrary, the primary driver for cooperation – at all levels in living systems – is the functional synergies (the adaptive benefits) that are produced. It is the “bioeconomic” payoffs from cooperation which explain why unrelated birds nest jointly, or collectively mob potential predators, and why unrelated humans engage in a myriad of cooperative activities. (This crucial point is discussed at length in my recent books, Nature’s Magic and Holistic Darwinism.)

Among other implications, this shifts the locus of causation from the “ultimate” genetic level – and the machinations of selfish genes -- to the economic calculus of the phenotypes at the “proximate” level. It also makes what the social sciences have been learning about human behavior relevant to an understanding of our mode of adaptation as a species – our “survival strategy.” As I discuss in detail in various writings, close cooperation and synergies of various kinds have been of central importance in our evolutionary trajectory, perhaps for several million years. We are quintessentially “the synergistic ape.”

However, this important element of our human nature does not negate the competitive aspect that is inescapable in nature, and evolution. Rather, cooperation and competition form a complex duality in humankind. Both of these behavioral modalities have played a vitally important role in our evolutionary success as a species and in our ongoing survival enterprise. Often, in fact, they are inextricably linked. Call it competition via cooperation. (Indeed, our many team sports represent a microcosm of this distinctive, though hardly unique, behavioral pattern.)

So, rather than having sociobiology “reformulate the foundations of the social sciences,” as Wilson put it in the preface to his 1975 volume, it may well be that the social sciences will reformulate the foundations of sociobiology.

Thought for the day: I see that the loan sharks are back, only now they’re called credit card companies. And so are the pool hall hustlers, though we now refer to them as sub-prime mortgage lenders. Funny how words like “usury” and “fraud” have all-but vanished from our political dialogue.

Red States and Blue States? Come On

Whoever came up with our 21st century political color code was obviously ignorant of history and our own political culture. Red has long been the color of revolution and left-wing politics, from the French Revolution in 1798 to the Russian and Chinese revolutions in the 20th century, while the color blue (as in “blue bloods”) has traditionally been associated with conservatism and right-wing politics. Red is also associated with anger and aggression (“seeing red”), or at least excitement and passion, while blue suggests coolness, calmness and reserve. Advertisers routinely play on these color associations. If that’s not enough, how can we forget that little girls are traditionally dressed in pink while boys are dressed in (manly) blue. (I can still hear in my mind the “red-baiting” Senator Joe McCarthy attacking “Commie pinkos.”)

So what to make of the Republican Party’s recent partiality for red. Maybe it isn’t the Republicans’ idea after all but a machination of the media, which needs a colorful way to display the election-night results on your television screen (not a concern before color television). The problem is, in the coming election year the results may be one-sided and the election-night map could be almost monochromatic, unless some media color-consultant comes up with a brainstorm like changing blue states to pale blue to suggest only a tentative, temporary change so that the remaining red states will stand out like beacons of hope to the red-eyed party faithful. Watch for it on the Fox news channel on election night!

Thought for the day: The “green” parties that champion environmental causes in various countries have certainly found their rightful place on the color chart. Green also suggests life, and fertility and the presence of water, so our partiality to it probably has very deep evolutionary roots. Unfortunately, in politics symbolism is important but not enough.

The Science of Human Nature

“Human nature” is one of the most revered, and reviled, concepts in the history of Western social and political thought. From Plato to the latest generation of political ideologues, a variety of conflicting views of the human “essence” have been advanced as a way to justify radically different prescriptions for how a society should be organized and how its members should be treated. Thus, Thomas Hobbes posited that the state of nature is an unconstrained “war of every man against everyman,” and that peace is only possible within an authoritarian police state. On the other hand, Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed that “man is born free but everywhere he is in chains” – in the thrall of corrupting, destructive, inequitable institutions, and that society must be reconstituted to conform with his naturally “noble” nature (though many theorists have noted that Rousseau’s concept of an overarching “general will” was an invitation to dictatorship).

To this day, the divisive issue of our true “nature” as a species remains unresolved, even as the modern social, economic, and even biological sciences have intruded into the debate. At one extreme are the Behaviorist psychologists of the mid-twentieth century, who championed a tabula rasa view of the human psyche that was (supposedly) confirmed by learning experiments in pigeons and rats, while recent generations of neo-conservative economists, backed by mathematical models and selected market economic data, have defined humankind as rational, calculating, and self-interested – an assumption that has been seconded by neo-Darwinism in evolutionary biology, where the “selfish gene” image says it all. In between are humanists like psychologist Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human “needs” culminating in an ill-defined psychological need for “self-actualization.”

Though the debate about human nature continues unabated among economic and political theorists to this day, there is also quietly emerging a more sophisticated (empirical) science of human nature, one that is grounded in (a) what we have learned about humans as products of a very long and rigorous evolutionary process, (b) what various human sciences have been learning about human behavior, and, not least (c) a dispassionate approach to the evidence all around us, from the beginnings of recorded history to the latest outrages in Bosnia, or Darfur, or Iraq.

The emerging science of human nature is still young, but there are a number of tentative guideposts and “place-holders” that can be singled out at this point. Here are just a few of them:

•The “core” of human nature is a set of some 14 “domains” of biologically-based needs (according to the Survival Indicators Project) – imperatives for survival and reproduction that are ongoing and inescapable and prime “motivators” for our behavior. And if these needs are not satisfied, there will be more or less serious, even life-threatening harm. These needs vary somewhat in relation to age, sex, physical differences and activity levels. Nevertheless, they define our fundamental “vocation” in life. Indeed, most of the world’s six billion plus people devote most of their lives to “earning a living” and reproducing. Whether we are aware of it, or care about it, or not, we are inescapably involved in a “survival enterprise,” and an organized (interdependent) society is, fundamentally, a collective survival enterprise.
•The age-old debate about whether humans are basically cooperative or competitive by nature can be answered definitively. We are both. The accumulating evidence about our evolution as a species indicates that we evolved in closely cooperative, interdependent small groups. And yet, both internal (interpersonal) competition and external competition (and zenophobia) between groups were also endemic. Like many other species, our ancestors, perhaps for several million years, exploited the survival strategy of competition via cooperation. (For a much more detailed, and documented discussion of this point, see my 2003 book Nature’s Magic, or my website: www.complexsystems.org)
•There is no single, uniform human personality-type. Variation is a fundamental characteristic of the natural world, as Darwin himself stressed, and the same is true of human personalities. In other words, human nature comes in many different colors. And the human sciences, from behavior genetics to developmental psychology to the highly-sophisticated personality profiles that are now used in the career development field, have shown that the variations we observe in our everyday experience are a function of both nature and nurture.
•Our behavior is labile and highly susceptible to the particular cultural environment we inhabit. But this is also a two-way street. Societies adapt to human nature(s) just as human nature can be channeled, shaped and constrained by cultural influences.
•We are also, by nature, ethical animals (by and large). We are much affected by social norms and expectations and by what Darwin referred to as “the praise and blame” of our fellows. However, in this as in every other respect, there are broad individual variations, and societies everywhere must take account of them and learn how to deal with the outliers. (Again, this subject is discussed in depth in my 2005 book, Holistic Darwinism.)

So what can we conclude? Radical, utopian schemes for re-engineering society in accordance with some one-dimensional caricature of human nature, often from the top down, are doomed to fail. Most likely they will never be tried, or if they are imposed by force will end in disappointment. As for anarchism, this option is terminally naïve. All but a very few remote societies are dependent upon highly organized, interdependent economic and political systems.

On the other hand, if our existing institutions and political systems lead to such distortions of wealth and well-being that large numbers of the citizens are seriously harmed in terms of meeting their “basic needs,” there will be large-scale “defections” (to borrow a term from game theory). We should always be mindful of Aristotle’s warning – based on his empirical study of 158 Greek city-states – that the greatest source of political turmoil and revolution is an extreme disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor. The guiding principle for a stable society, Aristotle argued must be “social justice” – equity, fairness (giving every person his or her due), and participation in the common life and the common problems of the community. Many contemporary societies could do a whole lot better job of it, but to quote a famous line from a classic “snafu” at Omaha Beach on D-Day, in World War Two, we’ll just have to start the war from here.

Thought for the day: Charlie Allnut: “What ya bein so mean for, miss? Man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s only human nature.” Rose Sayer: “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” (From The African Queen by C.S. Forester.)

Bundling in Animals

Animals cooperate in various ways to condition their environments and thereby achieve jointly beneficial economies or efficiencies. One example is heat-sharing. As Ecclesiates noted (in the biblical quote that was cited in the introduction to this blog), humans are only one among many animals that huddle together in cold weather, thereby reducing each individual’s energy expenditures. One of the most famous examples is the emperor penguins (recently made famous in the movie “The March of the Penguins”). Many years ago a French scientist, Yvonne LeMaho, documented that, when these animals huddle together in large colonies (sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands) during the bitterly cold Antarctic winters, they are able to reduce their energy expenditures by 20-50 percent – literally a life-saving advantage. Likewise, humans have been sharing beds for warmth in cold weather for as long as records have been kept. In colonial America, for instance, “bundling beds” were a common practice. With a board down the middle, they were intended to protect the chastity of young females (at least in theory).

Of course, animals huddle together for other reasons as well. For instance, there is a species of Mexican desert spiders that huddle together during the summer heat to prevent dehydration. And honeybee workers cooperate either by sharing body heat in winter or engaging in fanning activities with their wings during the summer to maintain the internal temperature of their hives within about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

What these and many other examples illustrate is the fact that cooperation in animals, as in humans, is commonplace but also highly situational; it is most likely to occur when there are mutual advantages. Thus, heat sharing in animals is generally avoided in warm weather; desert spiders disperse during the rainy winter season; and honeybee workers busy themselves with other tasks when the internal temperature of the hive is satisfactory. As always, synergy can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the context. (I’ll talk about negative synergy in a future blog entry.)

Thought for the day: If our teachers were paid as much as our lawyers, or professional athletes, we’d have the best school system in the world. Imagine the result.

“Bundling” in Political Fundraising

We’ve heard quite a bit recently about the political fundraising practice referred to as “bundling”. The idea behind it is that the Federal law prohibiting large individual donations to any one candidate (the cap is set at $2300) can be skirted by aggregating many small donations into a large “bundle” – sometimes amounting to several hundred thousand dollars. As a result, enterprising fund-raisers and their like-minded contributors are able to gain collective political clout with the recipient. (The most notorious recent example is the indicted fund-raiser Norman Hsu.)

I call it a “synergy of scale” (when many things of the same kind are put together to produce an otherwise unattainable combined effect), and it happens that synergies of scale are a common occurrence in the natural world as well. For instance, many nesting birds congregate into large colonies where the individual birds are able to combine forces and drive off even much larger predators. The practice is known as mobbing. Likewise, small fish like the dwarf herring are able to reduce their joint risk of being eaten by a barracuda or a shark by traveling together in large “schools”.

In politics, bundling is only one of many different synergies of scale. In election processes, it is the aggregate number of individual votes that determines the outcome, and the same thing is true in legislative decision-making. The decisions that result from taking a vote and acting on the outcome can truly be called synergistic effects. Likewise, a politician (like the president) who can draw a large audience (whether in person or on TV) benefits from being able to communicate with many more citizens and attracts more media attention as well. And a lobbyist for a large organization that can raise a sizable war chest or influence a large number of voters (say a trade union) has a sizable advantage in influencing the behavior of legislators. (For more on synergies of scale, see my 2003 book, Nature’s Magic.)

Thought for the day: In politics as elsewhere, if you don’t play by the rules, pretty soon it will turn ugly. To invert the old saying, warfare is politics by other means.

So,What is Holistic Darwinism?

It may sound like an oxymoron to anyone who associates “Darwinism” with biologist Richard Dawkins’ “selfish gene,” or with poet Alfred Lord Tennyson’s carnivorous image – “nature, red in tooth and claw.” Indeed, neo-Darwinism, the reigning paradigm in evolutionary biology for the past three decades, promotes an image of “ruthless” individual competition as the very essence of Darwinian evolution. (Neo-Darwinism was based most especially on the early theoretical work of George Williams and William Hamilton, who later modified their views, not on Dawkins’ popularizations.)

But Holistic Darwinism is not an oxymoron. It’s a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that has been going on in evolutionary biology (and related fields) during the past several years. It is a way of characterizing the evolutionary implications of several convergent theoretical developments, all of which are focused on, or related to, the evolution of organized complexity in living organisms (which is one of their most salient features, after all) as well as, equally important, our ever-broadening understanding of the multiple, and multi-leveled sources of causation in the natural world. In fact, the emerging new paradigm is closer to Darwin’s Darwinism (he’s often been slandered) than to the hard-edged, cutthroat, individualistic model that the neo-Darwinians have purveyed. Some of these recent developments, or trends, include the following:

•A growing respect for the fact that evolution, and natural selection, occurs at multiple levels, from genes to ecosystems.
•A revitalization of group selection theory, which implies a major role for cooperative phenomena.
•A realization that “symbiogenesis” (the emergence of symbiotic partnerships) has played an important role in the evolution of complexity (our eukaryotic cells being perhaps the most stunning example).
•Advances in game theory, which have provided the theoretical basis for a much more balanced view of evolution as a dualistic process in which cooperation shares the stage with competition.
•The rise of “genomics” and “systems biology” which are focused on the systemic properties, and processes, in living systems.
•An outpouring of research and theoretical work on the role of developmental dynamics, “phenotypic plasticity” and organism-environment interactions as shaping influences in evolutionary continuities and changes.
•A flood of publications on the role of behavior, social learning and cultural transmission as “pacemakers” of evolutionary change.
•And last, but not least, the broad, “bioeconomic” theory of complexity in evolution that I first proposed in The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), a theory that is fully consistent with Darwin’s theory (rather than positing some “law” of evolution), has finally gained some traction. (For details, see my website: www.complexsystems.org)

There’s more, but the combined effect of this explosion of exciting theoretical and research work is the growing need for a new way of viewing the evolutionary process. Some theorists have suggested replacing the selfish gene image with the “cooperative gene” (the title of a 1996 journal article of mine and a more recent book by biologist Mark Ridley). But this label is equally one-sided and downplays the undeniable importance of competition in nature, and human societies. But more important, the emerging new paradigm is focused on a different set of questions: How have “wholes” evolved over time? How do they work, and what is their significance in evolution? Indeed, the new paradigm is more about competition via cooperation than some conflict between them. Thus, I have proposed that we use the term “Holistic Darwinism.” (It’s also the title of my most recent book, Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics and the Bioeconomics of Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2005.)

Thought for the day: “Embryos are put together by all the working genes in the developing organism, in collaboration with one another….We have a picture of teams of genes all evolving toward cooperative solutions to problems….It is the ‘team’ that evolves.” – Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker)

The Synergies at Synergy Farm

In our family, we like to practice what we preach. My wife (she’s the semi-retired president of CorningWorks, a health care consulting firm in Palo Alto, California) and I have a long-standing interest in biointensive organic farming that goes back to the 1970s, when the guru of this highly productive method, John Jeavons, had his research gardens in Palo Alto (he’s now in Willits, CA). We also happen to believe that small organic farms are a key to long-term agricultural sustainability in this country, and elsewhere.

So when Susan and I began to think about the next phase of our lives (it’s hardly appropriate to call it retirement), we decided to see if the biointensive method, which is tailored for small subsistance farms and backyard vegetable gardens, could be scaled up to a small market farm. The chief advantages of biointensive farming are that it builds topsoil rather than depleting it, and it is very sparing in the use of land, water, energy and expensive technologies (it’s mostly done with hand tools). Not surprisingly, the biointensive method is extremely popular in land-and-resource-poor third world countries. Yields in biointensive agriculture typically average more than four times as much per acre as in conventional row agriculture.

So now we are in the San Juan Islands, Washington, where we are in the third year of developing Synergy Farm, a diversified year-round farm on the remaining 16-acre core of what was once a 100-acre dairy farm dating back to 1902. (Before we bought it, the farm had been a bed-and-breakfast for over 20 years.) We now have 168 planting beds (each measuring 100 sq. ft.), plus nine small mobile greenhouses (or high tunnels), 25 removable “low tunnels” made of plastic hoops and clear plastic covers that serve to protect our winter vegetable beds, some 50 compost piles (a key element of our growing strategy) and a variety of other activities – pastured broiler chickens, laying hens, a berry patch, a small orchard, and guest sheep in our pasture. So far, everything we produce is sold directly to local islands residents, first through the local farmers’ market and, more important, through our busy on-site farm store.

Of course, all modern farms benefit from various forms of synergy. For instance, there is the “symbiotic” relationship between human workers and their various tools and technologies. Or take the symbiosis between plants and various micro-organisms (such as nitrogen fixing bacteria and fungi). Or what is generally referred to as “companion planting” – pairing up plants that have mutually beneficial effects on one another (say, bush beans and strawberries, or borage flowers and tomato plants). Or consider the nutritional synergies in mixed greens, like our salad mix or braising/stir fry mix, with varying combinations of lettuces, kales, chard, mache, mizuna, tatsoi, arugula, beet greens and the like. According to USDA data, a salad or stir-fry of mixed greens may contain five times as much calcium, four times as much iron, 12 times as much vitamin A and six times as much vitamin C as an equivalent amount of head lettuce.

On our farm, there is also a synergistic “loop” in the relationship between our chickens and our vegetable gardens. Our chickens are fed greens from the gardens twice each day (which greatly enriches their eggs). The chicken bedding, laced with manure, is periodically cleaned out and put into our compost piles where, several months later, the finished compost is distributed in our planting beds to enrich the soil as we transplant our next vegetable crop succession.

Our chickens also benefit from a form of nutritional synergy in their feeding regime. It’s well known that, when corn and beans, or peas, are consumed together, they yield approximately one-third more useable protein than if the two are ingested alone. (The two kinds of vegetables have complementary amino acid constituents.) So we feed our chickens a mixture that we call “chicken granola” -- one-third each of cracked corn and cracked peas, plus a high-protein “starter” mix that is normally fed to baby chicks along with molasses and water. The chickens thrive on it, and so do the customers who consume our high-grade organic eggs.

A final example of synergy on our farm is our farm store. Many farmers have small on-site farm stands to sell their produce. We have gone a step further with a larger facility where we also offer a range of other local islands products: beef, lamb and pork, goat cheese, honey, herbs, syrups, ice cream and various orchard fruits in season. The result is a much higher volume of customers with a broader range of shopping needs and a greater opportunity for point of sale purchases. In marketing circles it’s called “co-location,” a variation on the synergy principle that is also utilized by modern supermarkets and department stores, as well as by the ever-growing number of shopping malls.

Thought for the day: It’s not true that old dogs can’t learn new tricks. For one thing, they have to learn how to be old dogs. And if you don’t think that’s a big deal, just wait.

Why the Truth (Almost) Always Lies in the Middle

Or so it seems. I’ve often been puzzled, and bemused, when the extremists in some debate once again are found to be half right, and half wrong. What is it that seems to drive us to the go to the opposite poles and put us at loggerheads, whatever that may mean? (According to my dictionary, it means that all parties are being “block heads.”)

I suspect the reason is that most arguments are not, at heart, about finding the truth but about being proven “right”. In fact, all manner of selfish interests may be at stake – our personal prestige and the respect of others, political status and influence, material and financial benefits, and so forth. Also, our attitudes and perspectives are inevitably shaped by differences in our personalities and in our life experiences. And if somebody else opposes us, then a competitive psychology can take over the argument to the point that we will give no quarter even if it means saying things that we know are not true, or only partially true.

So the middle-ground between various verbal combatants is often where the truth lies undefended, and the onlookers may be asked to choose sides between two simplistic extremes. What our politics these days seems to lack is a “radical middle” – an open-minded, truth-seeking constituency that will aggressively attack the “Jacobins” of the left and right (the political terrorists) and reject their self-righteous prescriptions.

Thought for the day: I saw a bumper sticker recently that updated the famous line in Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural address: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The bumper stick read: “We have nothing to fear but the fear-mongers.”

Synergy Goes to War

War is, of course, one of the most destructive of human activities. In the past century alone, it has been the cause of enormous human suffering and perhaps 100 million premature deaths. Nor is it a recent phenomenon. In one of my recent books (Nature’s Magic, 2003), I develop a “plausibility argument” for the thesis that various forms of collective violence very likely can be traced back to our earliest hominid ancestors, perhaps five million years ago. Indeed, collective violence is also a common behavioral pattern in the natural world, as I discuss in detail in a newly published article (“Synergy Goes to War: A Bioeconomic Theory of Collective Violence,” Journal of Bioeconomics, 2007). To borrow a line from a Cole Porter song, birds do it, bees do it, even educated chimpanzees do it.

The underlying cause of this distinctive form of behavioral cooperation, I assert, is the synergies that are produced – synergies that enable various animals collectively to achieve ends that would not otherwise be possible by acting alone. As I put it: Synergy is the cause of cooperation in nature, not the other way around.

Among the many forms of synergy that are found in collective violence are synergies of scale (often more is better), as well as the synergies achieved by a “division of labor” (though I prefer to call it a “combination of labor” – the subject for a future blog entry), and, not least, the symbiotic relationship between animals and their “weapons” (humans are not alone in using “technology” to augment their fighting abilities).

The sad conclusion of my article is that the potential for achieving synergies of various kinds serves as a major incentive for engaging in collective violence. If the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived costs/risks, the resort to collective violence (and war) is much more likely.

But perceptions can also be disastrously wrong. Thus, America invaded Iraq with the implicit goal (to tell the truth) of securing its vital oil reserves and, in the bargain, removing a political thorn and creating a friendly regime that could help in deterring other regional threats (read Iran). The American war planners believed that Iraq War Two would be brief and that the cost in lives and treasure would be low. The Americans would be greeted as liberators and would soon install a democratically-elected government that would be partial to U.S. interests. The actual result is the unforeseen reality – one of the great blunders of military history. One of Jane Austen’s most famous novels plays on the all-too-human tendency toward “pride and prejudice” – unfounded assumptions that lead to unintended and self-destructive consequences. (What could be called the “mind-trap” -- making false assumptions and leaping to conclusions -- will also be discussed in a future blog entry.)

Thought for the day: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war” -- Winston Churchill (who knew what he was talking about).